Amid mounting tensions, Federalists accused Republicans of being in league with France against their own country’s government. Writing in June 1798 in the Gazette of the United States, Alexander Hamilton called the Jeffersonians “more Frenchmen than Americans” and claimed that they were prepared “to immolate the independence and welfare of their country at the shrine of France.”
Fears of an imminent French invasion led the Adams administration to begin war preparations and pass a new land tax to pay for them.
With fears of enemy spies infiltrating American society, the Federalist majority in Congress passed four new laws in June and July 1798, collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
With the Naturalization Act, Congress increased residency requirements for U.S. citizenship to 14 years from five. (Many recent immigrants and new citizens favored the Republicans.)
The Alien Enemies Act permitted the government to arrest and deport all male citizens of an enemy nation in the event of war, while the Alien Friends Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen suspected of plotting against the government, even in peacetime.
Most importantly, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which took direct aim at those who spoke out against Adams or the Federalist-dominated government.
Even as the bitter debates between the two fledgling political parties were being played out in rival newspapers and other publications, the new law outlawed any “false, scandalous and malicious writing” against Congress or the president, and made it illegal to conspire “to oppose any measure or measures of the government.”