In today’s political climate, the words “sedition” and “censorship” are being tossed around in public discussions about the Capitol riot and reactions to it. But in constitutional terms, these types of debates happened in the Founders’ time—and were epitomized in incidents such as one involving congressman and publisher Matthew Lyon.
In October 1799, President John Adams and the Federalists jailed the Vermont publisher, Lyon, for criticizing Adams in print and in front of crowds. Lyon also was a sitting member of the House of Representatives when put on trial.
The Adams administration charged Lyon under the 1798 Sedition Act, one of the most controversial laws in American history. To Adams’ supporters, Lyon committed a heinous crime: He wrote President Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.” Lyon also published a letter from poet Joel Barlow that criticized Adams, and Lyon read the letter aloud at his campaign rallies.
The Sedition Act, passed a year before Lyons was jailed, specifically targeted Adams’ opponents, the Jeffersonian Republicans, to suppress dissent and criticism of the government at a time when war with France seemed possible and Adams’ re-election was unsure. The act punished the “writing, printing, uttering or publishing [of] any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings about the government of the United States” with fines and jail. At the time, political speech like Lyon’s was not considered protected under the First Amendment by the Adams administration, and his newspaper did not enjoy similar protections if it criticized President Adams.
Among the critics of the law were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions declaring the act as unconstitutional. Madison said the act “ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.”
Lyon’s prior behavior expressing his views didn’t help matters. The Vermonter started a fight in the House in January 1798 during the William Blount impeachment proceedings when he made light of Connecticut’s Federalists. Roger Griswold of that state objected, pointing out Lyon’s dishonorable discharge from the Continental Army. Lyon responded by spitting tobacco juice on Griswold, forever gaining the nickname “the Spitting Lyon.”
Motions to censure or expel Lyon failed. Despite Lyon’s apology, Griswold attacked Lyon shortly after on the House floor, striking Lyon repeatedly with a walking stick. Lyon grabbed a set of fireplace tongs, and lunged at Griswold. Other House members subdued them.
The fight became a sensation in an era when newspapers openly supported political parties. And soon Lyon would be on the attack in his newly titled newspaper, The Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth. A private letter written by Lyon before the Sedition Act passed played a part in his imprisonment after Spooner’s Vermont Journal published it. Joel Barlow’s letter to his brother-in-law, Founder Abraham Baldwin, said President Adams should be sent to a “madhouse.”
Lyon faced three charges under the Sedition Act and he represented himself in front of Associate Justice William Paterson, a Federalist, in Rutland, Vermont. The district attorney charged Lyon with the “intent and design” to stir up sedition in the United States by defaming the federal government. Lyon argued one charge was unconstitutional because his letter was written before the Sedition Act was passed. He claimed the Sedition Act was illegal because states had jurisdiction over libel laws. In a long concluding statement, Lyon said Barlow’s letter was printed in his own newspaper without his permission, and many of the statements made were true. Lyon also objected on grounds the free press could present “legitimate opposition” to the government.
Paterson instructed the jury, gathered from Federalist towns in Vermont, to ignore the constitutional issues, including Lyon’s political speeches, and decide if Lyon’s actions were intended to bring Adams and the government “into disrepute.” The jury found Lyon guilty on all charges and Paterson sentenced Lyon to four months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Undeterred, Lyon ran his congressional campaign from jail, winning election by a landslide as a Jeffersonian Republican martyred by the Sedition Act. In all, more than two dozen people, mostly opposition publishers, were convicted under the 1798 Sedition Act. The act, which was unpopular, expired when Adams left office in 1801 and it was considered one of the reasons for Jefferson’s victory over Adams in the 1800 presidential election.
Ironically, in the 1801 runoff House election between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, a critical vote fell to the Vermont delegation on the 36th ballot. When Lewis Morris declined to vote, one of deciding votes for Jefferson was cast by Vermont’s other representative: Matthew Lyon.
More than 100 years later, President Woodrow Wilson pressed in 1918 for a second Sedition Act during World War I as an amendment to the Espionage Act. The amended language made it a crime to “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane . . . or abusive language” about the United States government or to disagree with its actions overseas. Nearly 900 people were convicted under the act and related laws in 1919 and 1920 before the Harding administration repealed it.
The second Sedition Act was twice tested in the Supreme Court. In Abrams v. United States (1919), a majority of the Court upheld the act, but Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented, with Justice Louis Brandeis agreeing with Holmes. “I had conceived that the United States, through many years, had shown its repentance for the Sedition Act of 1798, by repaying fines that it imposed,” Holmes wrote.
In 1964, the Supreme Court considered another landmark case, New York Times v. Sullivan, that also involved the defamation of a government figure. Justice William Brennan in his majority opinion said that government officials couldn’t sue for damages when criticized by the press unless a standard of “actual malice” was met. As part of that opinion, Brennan offered a sharp critique of the Sedition Act of 1798. Brennan concluded that, “although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history.”
In a later Supreme Court decision, Watts v. United States, Justice William Douglas came to the same conclusion. The Court decided, without even hearing arguments, that a man who made a hyperbolic threat against President Lyndon Johnson didn’t violate federal law. “The Alien and Sedition Laws constituted one of our sorriest chapters; and I had thought we had done with them forever,” Douglas remarked.
Scott Bomboy is editor and chief of the National Constitution Center.
