The Principles of 98

Recent elections have been laden with controversy. Results of the 2024 election appeared to reflect the backlash against the policies of the outgoing administration. As traumatic and unsettling as recent times have been, intense divisions between American political factions are nothing new.

In 1798, under the John Adams administration, the 5th U.S. Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Part of the reasoning for passage was a fear in some circles that a war with France was imminent. This legislation consisted of the Naturalization Act, the Alien Friends Act, the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act. Some of the “features” included: raising U.S. residency requirements to naturalize aliens from five to fourteen years; allowing the U.S. President to deport or have imprisoned aliens deemed “dangerous”; restricting speech if it involved criticism of the government or government officials; and limiting free speech and freedom of the press. This draconian legislation reflected the political schism between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans and was an impetus for Thomas Jefferson’s 1800 defeat of President Adams.

The Alien and Sedition Acts were seen as direct attacks on the Bill of Rights and as a Federalist breach in constitutional interpretation concerning the relationship between the States and Federal government. In response, James Madison wrote the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798/99—they are often referred to as The Principles of 98. The Principles of 98 were rooted in the philosophy of the American Revolution, and much of the logic came from prior episodes of government overreach, such as Patrick Henry and Virginia’s resistance to the Stamp Act.

The resolutions “…declared alien and sedition acts unconstitutional.” They made three basic points: (1) When the States formed the Constitution, by common agreement they created a federal or general government and delegated to it only specific and defined powers. (2) The general government was created as an agent of the States, “which were the real sovereigns, and to do only those things which were specifically granted to it in the compact of the Constitution.” (3) Since the States created the general government, it was they who should decide if this government acted within its delegated authority. The federal government was not granted authority to determine the limits of its own power.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions are pivotal to understanding States’ Rights, nullification, and the defined limits of the constitution. Madison explained that the powers granted to the federal government are “limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact.” He also noted:

“In case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.” 

In the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson argued “whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force,” and that “as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

The eighth resolution of Jefferson’s draft spelled out the means of redressing constitutional violations: “that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the general government being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but where powers are assumed which have not been delegated a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every state has a natural right, in cases not within the compact [casus non foederis] to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits.”

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were not particularly popular in the Northeastern States, which were largely controlled by the Federalist Party--a party that vigorously supported the centralization of power. Several States, including Massachusetts, passed resolutions condemning the “rhetoric” of

Kentucky and Virginia. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party later took up where the Federalists left off by centralizing power and undermining the entire basis of the American Revolution when they militarily denied the Southern States the right of self-government.

Many early Americans, e.g., the Anti-Federalists, understood the predictably disastrous results of centralized power. The Principles of 98 sought to rein in Federalists’ efforts to repeat that unwise historical course. Big government advocates such as Lincoln and the Radical Republicans did immeasurable damage. Wilson, Roosevelt, LBJ, and others followed in lockstep, and we continue to live under the bureaucratic leviathan predicted by the Anti-Federalists, and later, by Robert E. Lee, through his written correspondence with England’s Lord Acton.

Sources: Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation, by John M. Taylor; “Principles of ’98: Rooted in the American Revolution,” by Mike Maharrey, Tenth Amendment Center, at: https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2024/09/27/principles-of-98-rooted-in-the-american-revolution/; “The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Were Just a Starting Point,” by Mike Maharrey, Tenth Amendment Center, at: https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2014/07/13/the-kentucky-and-virginia-resolutions-a-starting-point/; “The Principles of 98,” by Marco Bassani, Abbeville Blog, at: https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2024/09/27/principles-of-98-rooted-in-the-american-revolution/; and A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and the War of 1861-1865, by Captain S.A. Ashe, (Ruffin Flag Company, 1997 – published from the 1938 edition.)