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Alien And Sedition Acts Essay

1288 Words6 Pages

In 2017, history repeated itself as millions of people in America and around the world stood on the streets to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order to prevent immigration and people from entering into the United States of America. Trump’s order mirrored the Alien and Sedition Acts created in 1798 to hurt French immigrants and Democratic-Republicans. Similar to Trump's executive order, the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts disregarded the United States founding principles of democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality. The Alien and Sedition Acts violated the founding principles of the United States because they violated individual protections under the first amendment and they allowed the president to overstep his …show more content…

One of the ways the acts were unconditionally enforced was by punishing those who spoke out against the Federalist run government. For example, “John Daly Burk, a Republican rabble-rouser, was accused of making seditious and libelous statements in his newspaper, The Time -Piece and was arrested. When David Brown of Dedham Massachusetts put up a “liberty pole” with the motto, “A Speedy Retirement to the President. No Sedition bill, No Alien bill, downfall to the Tyrants of America” he was also arrested and he was charged with “uttering seditious pieces.” Another person named Franklin Bache, who was an editor of Philadelphia's Democrat-Republican Aurora and the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was accused of "libeling the President and the executive Government in a manner tending to excite sedition and opposition to the laws." Bache asked for a trial because he protested that his freedom of speech and press had been violated, but he died of yellow fever before his trial went to court” (Lynch, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, pg. 1 2007). Unjustly punishing those who disobeyed the Alien and Sedition further shows the violation of America’s founding principles. Punishing people for just saying what they believe in is unconstitutional and violates America’s founding principal of democracy and rights. It is impossible to have a democracy where citizens are punished for saying their

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