Capitol of Freedom by Ken Buck

Author:Ken Buck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2020-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Although Taulbee chose not to run again after the story was published, his new job as a lobbyist required him to walk the halls of Congress. Over the years, he and Kincaid would run into each other on the Hill, with an increasing amount of vitriol in their exchanges. One particularly sharp argument prompted Taulbee to warn the reporter to arm himself. Kincaid took the threat seriously, returned to the Capitol with a gun, and shot the former congressman, who died two weeks later from the wound.

Those blood stains serve as a reminder of the tensions between politicians and the press. I also tell my guests a jury acquitted Kincaid—further proving Congress was every bit as popular in 1890 as it is today.

John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798

John Adams held a troubling view of the press, and his administration used the pretext of a possible war with France as an excuse to crack down on the media. The federalists in charge of the government in the 1790s, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which the Adams administration used to target his opponents, seeking to jail anyone who would “write, print, utter or publish” anything opposing President Adams, his administration, or Congress.

Jefferson and Madison saw the tyrannical roots of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and they penned their opposition anonymously in two documents known as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Those resolutions argued the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional.

Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolution identified the acts as “nothing short of despotism” and argued the laws were “palpable violations of the said constitution.”17

Madison, the author of the Virginia Resolution, gave an even more biting analysis. The Sedition Act “exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the Constitution…which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against the 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.”

The freedom of the press and the closely related freedom of speech remain today the guardians of every other right we enjoy. Without that free flow of communication among the people, as Madison noted, the government is free to implement the most tyrannical measures.

The criticisms Madison and Jefferson raised were more than theoretical concerns. The federal government convicted more than two dozen people under the onerous act. One publisher, and even a member of Congress (Matthew Lyon from Vermont), served time in jail for daring to criticize President Adams. In an indication of the unpopularity of the Sedition Act, Lyon won re-election from jail.

The Philadelphia Aurora, a paper supportive of Jefferson’s party, argued in its October 14, 1800 issue, that a Jefferson victory on election day would help usher in “the liberty of the press.”18 President Adams, it should be noted, attempted to charge the printer of that paper, William Duane, on sedition. The editors’ wager on whether Americans’ disliked Adams’ crackdown on the press proved correct; Jefferson won the presidency on the promise of restoring freedom of the press.

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