Alien Sedition Act

During the campaign, former President Donald Trump said that as soon as he becomes president in January, he would have all those who spoke out against him arrested and put in jail. They included — he mentioned some of them by name — Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, President Joe Biden, prosecutor Jack Smith and various newscasters and journalists.

Most people were horrified that this could happen. It would truly mark the end of democracy and the rise of a new dictator. But would it?

It turns out that, today, in America’s supposed democracy, there is a federal law, passed by Congress and signed by the president, that allows the president to do exactly that. As a matter of fact, a local Hamptons journalist was one of those convicted and sent off to prison because of it. This law makes it a crime to criticize those running the country, particularly if what’s said is a lie.

The journalist taken to prison was David Frothingham, who published the first newspaper on Long Island, in Sag Harbor. His home on Main Street was declared a historic site in 2019. And his tombstone — its believed by some he died in prison — is in Sag Harbor’s Oakland Cemetery on Jermain Avenue. He’s revered not because of what he wrote, but for what he did. Published weekly in Sag Harbor beginning in 1791, it was called Frothingham’s Long-Island Herald. Seven years later, Frothingham was sent to prison at the behest of President John Adams, whose signature had made the law possible.

Frothingham was a jack of all trades. He sold the advertising, wrote the stories, printed the newspaper on a big old wooden hand-cranked press in his home, then personally distributed it to the Sag Harbor community.

He didn’t own the newspaper, though. It was owned by the customs collector in Sag Harbor, Henry Dering. At that time, before income tax, practically all the income received by the federal government came from the customs fees collected at the ports. Being the customs collector made you wealthy. And Dering had gotten wealthy. His benefactor was a politician in the federalist party. And the payback was for Dering to publish a newspaper supporting that politician. Since Dering didn’t know how to publish a paper, he hired someone who did, young David Frothingham, age 26, who was an assistant editor and printer for a paper in Boston. Frothingham, newly married, moved to Sag Harbor. Dering told him that he, Frothingham, could write what he wanted, so long as he supported the politician.

Sag Harbor was becoming a prosperous whaling port. Frothingham wrote local news, about the whaling ships that came and went, marriages, crimes, events, fires, obituaries, opinions and, sometimes, jokes. He also wrote national news, supporting who Dering told him to. His wife opened a shop on Main Street. He and his wife raised two children.

It was the national news that got him in trouble. George Washington had been a beloved president. But in 1796, when he said he would not run for a third term, one group of leaders, headed up by Alexander Hamilton, wanted the country to focus on commerce with banking laws similar to those in England. They’d embrace England, recently defeated by the U.S. They formed the Federalist Party. But they were opposed by the Anti-Federalist Party headed up by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wanted the government to focus on agriculture, thus creating an agrarian country with power given to the states. The country would be little more than a confederation. They’d keep up the ties with France who’d helped them defeat the English. If they didn’t do this, they said, France might invade America.

As a result, these two parties, went at it tooth and nail to elect a new president, with lies published freely in newspapers in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Most everybody got sick of these lies. And when John Adams became president, he decided to do something about it.

Thus, Adams created and signed into law The Alien and Sedition Act in 1798, which allowed for the arrest and incarceration of anyone who spoke out against the national government, particularly if what was said or written was a lie. This act was used to persecute Germans in America during World War I, and it became the foundation for the Presidential order during World War II ordering all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast arrested and brought to detention camps for the duration of the war.

As for Sag Harbor, the election of John Adams meant that Charles Dering, to keep his job, would have to support the opposite party from the one he’d supported before.

That meant blaming Frothingham for his earlier position, and now outraged, he’d refuse to continue financing Frothingham’s newspaper. As a result, Frothingham left for Brooklyn to start another new newspaper, the Argus. His wife could continue to run the Herald for awhile. Meanwhile, Frothingham could continue to support the side Dering had abandoned.

It was in the Argus that Frothingham published a lie. It said, inaccurately, that Hamilton had used money given him by the Crown to buy a newspaper in Philadelphia causing it to reverse course and support the Federalist  party. Frothingham didn’t write this story. He’d republished it after it appeared in another like-minded newspaper.

Nevertheless, the police arrested him, took him before a New York judge who sentenced Frothingham requiring him to pay a $100 fine and then serve a four-month jail sentence. And, if he couldn’t repay the fine, his imprisonment would continue until it was paid.

What happened to Frothingham after that is unknown. His trail ends in jail. Before being taken there, however, he wrote his wife Nancy Pell in Sag Harbor, noting that his first newspaper, the Herald, was thriving and to take it over in his absence, which she did. She ran it for the next six years, then sold it to new owners, who changed its name and, after that, went out of business.

For years, Pell led a search for her husband. But after a few years getting nowhere, she had to accept the possibility that he was dead. Thus, she had a tombstone fashioned and held a service for her missing husband in a Sag Harbor graveyard where the tombstone is today.

Is the Alien and Sedition Act in force today? Indeed, although somewhat changed, it is. Ripe for whoever wants it.

Read more of  Dan Rattiner’s stories.