In 1800, the country was mostly fed up with members of the Federalist Party who were using the Alien and Sedition Acts to silence their critics. The Alien and Sedition Acts were four separate bills that were passed by Congress in 1798 when the United States was fighting the Quasi-War with the French.
- The Naturalization Act
- The Alien Friends Act
- The Alien Enemies Act
- The Sedition Act
The first three Acts dealt with Resident Aliens. The first increasing the time of residency before an alien could become a citizen. The second, allowing the president to deport any resident alien who is considered dangerous to the United States. And the last, allowing the president to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home country was at war with the United States.
While those three acts were certainly a main reason for the Revolution of 1800, the real reason was the Sedition Act. The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the government or its officials. While the Federalists assumed that the Sedition Act would allow them to control the information that being sent to the masses, it turned against them when publishers still would write negative pieces on the Federalists and this eventually to their demise.
In 1800, you had John Adams as the incumbent Federalist President who was running against Thomas Jefferson for the Democratic-Republicans. This election was prior to the passing of the 12th Amendment. Electors were only able to vote for president so they would cast two votes. Whoever received the most votes would be president and the person with the second highest vote total would be vice president. In this election, Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr who both received 73 electoral votes. One of the two men would be president.
After a very long battle in the House of Representatives (36 ballots were cast over a period of seven days), and a furious campaign by Federalist Alexander Hamilton for Jefferson in which he supported Jefferson as he is "by far not so dangerous a man", Jefferson won and Burr was his vice president.
The election also featured voting for the House of Representatives. In that election, the Democratic-Republicans increased their numbers by 22 seats to take a 64% to 36% majority in the House. Appointments to the Senate were done by the state legislatures in those days and the Democratic-Republicans took control of that house of Congress as well.
Democratic-Republicans now controlled the Executive and Judicial branches of government. At the time, the Federalists controlled the Supreme Court however the power of judicial review wasn't established until 1803 in the landmark case of Marbury vs. Madison.
In effect, the Democratic-Republicans held the entire Federal Government (and most state governments as well). With this power, they were able to pass legislation which was extremely detrimental to the early growth of the nation, including but not limited to the Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 which led to the war of 1812 and the burning of Washington, D.C. by the British.
To recognize why the Revolution of 1800 is so important, you need to look at what is happening with the country today. For a long period of time, the Federal government has been dominated by the Republican party. Drunk on power, the Republicans moved away from their classic stance of limited government, economic viability and limiting spending. Following the September 11th attacks, the Patriot Act was passed which was not unlike the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Patriot Act has been seen by many people as ever encroaching on freedoms that are protected by the Constitution.
Over the past five and a half years, with the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, the Republican party has continued to push for increased funding of the occupation and reconstruction efforts which have left a lot of the general public at ill ease. This situation, along with the Patriot Act, finally reached a tipping point in the 2006 elections when many incumbent Republican Senators lost races to Democratic Challengers in traditionally Republican strongholds.
The election of 2008 looks to be just the same as the election of 1800. With unprecedented amounts of voters going to the polls and voting for a perceived change in the direction of the country we are seeing the same backlash towards the Republican Party that was seen towards the Federalist party 208 years ago.
Unfortunately we have a very different circumstance in that Electors no longer only cast their ballots for president. If it were the other case, I could hold out hope that Joe Biden would be elected president over Obama because Joe Biden is "by far not so dangerous a man". Instead, we will be left with a man who has no voting record, wishes to nationalize health care, proposes to slash military spending by at least 20-25%, wishes to increase taxes on Wall Street (where the State of New York can not last if more of those institutions fail or leave) and has the possibility of appointing up to 6 judges to the Supreme Court. That final number should scare you. A man who has no voting record at either the state or federal level could soon appoint up to half of the Supreme Court. A Supreme Court, that thanks to the work of John Marshall and the other Federalist justices in 1803, has the power of judicial review.
