This legislation made a mockery of the First Amendment and deprived aliens of basic due process of law. The Alien and Sedition Acts were the federal government's first direct assault on American civil liberties. From this assault and the response, we can learn lessons relevant to our own time.

As is often the case with illiberal legislation, the Acts were a product of temporary Strum und Drang. In the 1790s, a number of Americans feared the democratic excesses of the French Revolution would be exported to the United States. They believed that French agents were plotting the destruction of the Constitution and the overthrow of the Adams administration. Rumors abounded in Philadelphia that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison planned to assist a French invasion force that was sailing across the Atlantic. Some expected a guillotine would be set up to deal with patriotic Americans. In this environment, Adams and the Federalists pushed for legislation that would secure the home front in the face of invasion and that would also, they hoped, secure Federalist political hegemony.

Fearing revolutionary France, many Americans at first supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. In Thomas Jefferson's words, the people were "made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves." But the Federalists attacks on civil liberties were soon met with opposition. Local meetings were held throughout the union and the people affixed their signatures to sundry petitions. These public meetings were well attended and sparked much interest. In Lexington, Kentucky, for example, a meeting scheduled at a local church to consider the Acts had to be moved to the town square because 5,000 citizens-twice Lexington's population-assembled.

To combat the Acts, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. In these Resolutions, Madison and Jefferson accused Congress of exceeding its powers and declared the Alien and Sedition Acts void. Times were so tense that Madison and Jefferson hid their authorship because they feared prosecutions under the dreaded Sedition Act. The Acts were seen as such a danger to liberty that there was also some discussion of resisting the measures by force and secession.

Fortunately, drastic measures were not needed because the people had a very powerful weapon at their disposal: the ballot box. In addition, Jefferson and the Republican Party posed quite a contrast to Adams and the Federalist Party. In the so-called "Revolution of 1800," the Republicans won a 24-seat majority in the House of Representatives and Jefferson was elected to the presidency. Upon taking office, Jefferson suspended all pending prosecutions under the Sedition Act and pardoned those convicted under the unconstitutional Act. Jefferson would later boast how this revolution was brought about not by the sword, "but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people."

Under today's PATRIOT Act, government investigators can more easily eavesdrop on Internet activity, FBI agents are charged with gathering domestic intelligence, Treasury Department officials are charged with creating a financial intelligence-gathering system for use by the CIA, and the CIA, banished from the field of domestic intelligence because of abuses in the Vietnam era, is permitted to resume domestic operations. Separate from the PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration unsuccessfully argued to the Supreme Court that it could detain American citizens and foreign nationals on U.S. soil indefinitely and without access to legal counsel-all when the writ of habeas corpus has not even been suspended. Even John Adams only claimed such a power over aliens, not citizens.

Civil libertarians have been very critical of the PATRIOT Act, believing that the balance between liberty and power has tipped too far toward the latter. But, with an election around the corner, the American people can have the final say on this question. Well, not quite.