Virginia and Kentucky Resolves

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 236

Resolutions passed by the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures in 1798 and 1799 protesting the federal ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS of 1798.

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolves were expressions of opposition by the Jeffersonian Republicans against the Federalist-sponsored Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Besides opposing these particular measures, the legislative resolutions proposed a "compact" theory of the U.S. Constitution that contended that state legislatures possessed all powers not specifically granted to the federal government and gave the states the right to rule upon the constitutionality of federal legislation. The resolutions became the basis for nineteenth-century STATES' RIGHTS doctrines, which were employed by Southern states to defend the institution of SLAVERY.

The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed as internal security laws, restricting ALIENS and limiting FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, based on the assumption in 1798 that the United States might soon be at war with France. Though the acts were widely popular, THOMAS JEFFERSON (then vice president in the administration of JOHN ADAMS) and JAMES MADISON (one of the primary architects of the U.S. Constitution) opposed the measures. They expressed their opposition through the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves. Madison drafted the Virginia Resolves (December 21, 1798), and Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolves (November 10, 1798, and November 14, 1799), though their roles were not disclosed to the public for twenty-five years.

The resolves expressed the Republicans' theory of the limited nature of the grant of power to the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. This theory was buttressed by the TENTH AMENDMENT, which stipulates that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Because the Constitution did not give Congress the express power to provide for the expulsion of aliens who had committed no crimes and whose countries were not at war with the United States, the Republicans reasoned that the provisions of the Alien and Sedition Acts that provided for such deportation proceedings were unconstitutional. Likewise, Congress had not been given the express power to impose punishments for seditious libel, leading Republicans to conclude that these provisions were unconstitutional.

Jefferson and Madison asserted in the...