ABSTRACT
In the late 1790s, the Federalists regarded the Jeffersonian Republicans as a subversive faction, likely to betray the republic to the French. During an undeclared war with France over violations against American shipping, the Federalists passed some laws in 1798 to weaken and silence the Republican opposition party. Had the first governing party of the United States been successful in using these Alien and Sedition Acts against its opponents, the experiment of self-government in the United States, so eloquently advocated by Thomas Jefferson, might have disintegrated into tyranny by a minority. One of the first victims of the Sedition Act was congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont. Some Federalists calculated that they could use the hysteria to eradicate their political enemies. The Federalists did not distinguish between liberal democrats and subversive radicals; some Federalists even advocated burning the seditious writings of Tom Paine.
