Ch. 4.3. Prosecuting the Sedition Act, 3
Eleven Additional Cases under the Sedition Act for Conspiracy to Oppose Government During the Fries Rebellion
The Fries Rebellion began with obstruction of federal assessors seeking to measure houses under the new direct tax that Congress passed in 1798 to finance the military buildup approved that year, and ended with an armed rescue of arrested tax opponents in rural Pennsylvania in early March 1799. John Fries and other leaders were charged with treason for leading 100–400 armed men to rescue twenty-two individuals, who had been arrested for resisting and preventing federal assessors from valuing houses, and resisting and preventing the federal marshal from arresting tax opponents. Both the initial trial and the retrial of Fries led to his conviction for treason.
The leading work on the Fries Rebellion, by Paul Douglas Newman, paints a very different picture from a treasonous army of tax insurrectionists. He instead portrays the “rebellion” or “insurrection” as the spin of Federalists eager to justify and use the new army weeks after the tax protest ceased, to stamp out a French-inspired plot that did not exist, and to raise a stern warning against future challenges to the new federal government.
By contrast, Newman points out that the basis of opposition was constitutional, that “not a single assessor or any federal official came to harm,” and that there was “absolutely no interpersonal violence, outside of threats.” At the time of the rescue, Fries and his armed followers repeatedly sought to bail out the prisoners legally, and only when the federal marshal resolutely refused did they free the prisoners “without gunfire, fisticuffs, or bloodshed.”
Newman’s position is supported by testimony of various witnesses in the trial record that throughout the day of rescue there was no violence, but instead consistent proposals to provide bail, and that after President Adams’ proclamation demanding that the “insurgency” end, the protesters met and “unanimously agreed … to desist from opposing any public officer … and to give due submission to the laws,” weeks before the army arrived and the trials began.
The John Fries trial records and the Chase impeachment transcripts show that the nontreason cases related to the Fries Rebellion were brought under the Sedition Act. In his grand jury charge, Justice Iredell stressed that the Sedition Act prohibited “combinations to defeat the execution of the laws.” … In the second John Fries trial, as it was described in the subsequent impeachment trial, Justice Chase stated that others were “charged with seditious combinations” …
The only federal statute making conspiracy and obstruction criminal at the time was Section 1 of the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to
unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty; and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, . . . he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and on conviction … shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months nor exceeding five years.
The nontreason indictments essentially tracked that statutory language, and occasionally referred to sedition. Although these Section 1 prosecutions were not of words or publications, they were brought under the Sedition Act, and were for opposing the government…
The nontreason prosecutions in connection with the Fries Rebellion, in addition to the four already discussed under Section 2 of the Sedition Act, were ultimately grouped into eleven cases prosecuting eighty-three defendants who were alleged to combine or conspire to oppose government in violation of Section 1 of the Act…
Conclusion
These additional prosecutions more than double the number of confirmed prosecutions under the Sedition Act, from the recognized prosecutions of fourteen individuals (plus federal common law libel prosecutions of three more) to added prosecutions in eleven additional cases of seventeen more individuals plus prosecutions in eleven conspiracy cases of eighty-three individuals.
Most of the prosecutions of opposition newspaper editors and publishers involved an unexpected arrest that could prevent publication for months, and an unhealthful jail that could bring illness or death, necessitating a strong measure of courage to run a Republican newspaper. The additional prosecutions also show a broader administration attack against seditious words, such as Luther Baldwin and Brown Clark for wishing that celebratory cannon fire had hit the president’s posterior, Lespenard Colie for “damning the President,” and Jacob Greenawalt for speaking against high taxes.
A total of five Supreme Court justices presided over Sedition Act proceedings, including William Paterson, Bushrod Washington, Samuel Chase, James Iredell, and William Cushing.
Many Section 2 sentences reached or approached the maximum of a $2,000 fine and 2 years’ imprisonment, whereas no Section 1 sentence came anywhere near the maximum sentence of a $5,000 fine and 5 years’ imprisonment (the longest was $1,000 and 2 years).
These persecutions may have been an important factor in shifting political support towards the Republican Party between 1798 and 1801, and in explaining the surprisingly rapid demise of the Federalist Party.