The Alien Act of 1798, formally titled “An Act concerning Aliens,” was a federal law signed by President John Adams on June 25, 1798, that gave the President personal authority to deport any non-citizen he judged dangerous to the United States. 1GovInfo. 1 Stat. 570 – An Act Concerning Aliens No criminal charge was required, no hearing was held, and no court reviewed the decision. The law expired on its own terms two years later, and Adams never actually used it to remove anyone from the country.
What the Law Let the President Do
Section 1 authorized the President to order any non-citizen to leave the United States if he judged that person “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,” or if he had “reasonable grounds to suspect” the person of conspiracies against the government. 2National Archives. Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) That was the whole standard. The President’s suspicion, on his own reasoning, was enough.
An order was served by handing a copy to the individual or leaving it at their residence. It set a deadline for departure, and once the deadline passed the person could be arrested. The President could also issue a discretionary license letting someone stay, sometimes conditioned on posting a bond for good behavior, and he could revoke that license whenever he chose.
Who the Act Covered
The Act applied to what 18th-century law called “alien friends”: foreign nationals whose home countries were at peace with the United States. A separate statute passed eleven days later, the Alien Enemies Act, covered citizens of hostile nations during wartime and is still on the books today at 50 U.S.C. ยง 21. 3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 US Code 21 – Restraint, Regulation, and Removal The distinction matters for anyone reading the Alien Act of 1798 today: this was not a wartime measure. It reached people whose home governments were on friendly terms with Washington. In practice that meant French nationals (the Quasi-War with France was undeclared), Irish immigrants, and any other unnaturalized resident.
Penalties for Staying
A non-citizen who ignored a deportation order faced up to three years in prison. On top of that, the person was permanently barred from ever becoming a United States citizen. 2National Archives. Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) The prison term ended eventually. The citizenship bar did not.
No Hearing, No Court
The feature that drew the sharpest attacks was the total absence of judicial process. A non-citizen facing removal had no right to a hearing, no jury trial, and no chance to see or challenge the evidence behind the President’s decision. The Federalists treated deportation as an executive action rather than a criminal punishment, so in their reading the constitutional protections owed to criminal defendants simply did not apply.
Critics called that a legal fiction. Being forced from the country, losing your livelihood, and facing prison for refusing looked like punishment whatever label Congress used. James Madison argued that the Act combined legislative, judicial, and executive power in one branch, “exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government,” and “subverts the general principles of free government.” 4The Avalon Project. Virginia Resolution – Alien and Sedition Acts
Ship Captain Reporting
The Act also set up an information-gathering system at American ports. Section 3 required every ship captain arriving from a foreign port to file a written report with the local customs collector listing every non-citizen on board, including name, age, birthplace, country of allegiance, occupation, and physical description. 2National Archives. Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) Captains who failed to file faced a $300 fine for each unreported passenger, and the vessel itself could be held in port until the fines were paid. In 1798 dollars, that was a serious sum.
Why Congress Passed It
The law was a product of a specific moment. By the late 1790s the United States was in the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval conflict with France. French privateers were seizing American merchant ships, and diplomatic relations had collapsed after the XYZ Affair, in which French officials demanded bribes from American envoys. Adams and the Federalist Party viewed foreign-born residents as a possible internal threat while hostilities escalated abroad.
Federalists were especially wary of immigrants from France and Ireland, many of whom backed Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican opposition. The Alien Act was, at bottom, a partisan tool wrapped in the language of national security, and Democratic-Republicans treated it that way from day one. It was one of four related laws that summer, together known as the Alien and Sedition Acts; the others tightened naturalization, authorized removal of enemy aliens in wartime, and criminalized “false, scandalous, and malicious” writing about the federal government.
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
The most consequential response came from Jefferson and Madison, who secretly drafted resolutions adopted by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures in 1798 and 1799. Madison’s Virginia Resolution attacked the Alien Friends Act for uniting “legislative and judicial powers to those of executive” and framed a duty for states to “interpose” against federal overreach. 4The Avalon Project. Virginia Resolution – Alien and Sedition Acts
Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolution went further, arguing that because the states created the Constitution, they retained the right to judge when the federal government exceeded its authority, and proposing “nullification” of unauthorized federal acts as the remedy. 5Bill of Rights Institute. Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions No other state legislatures signed on at the time, and the nullification theory was later discredited. The resolutions still set a template for challenging federal power and helped carry Jefferson to the presidency in 1800.
Expiration and What It Left Behind
The Alien Friends Act carried a two-year sunset clause and expired on June 25, 1800. Adams never used it to deport anyone, though several French nationals reportedly left the country voluntarily once it was signed. After Jefferson took office, the Sedition Act was allowed to expire and the fourteen-year naturalization residency requirement was repealed, restoring the earlier five-year standard. 2National Archives. Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
The Act’s lasting significance is conceptual. It set an early precedent for broad executive authority over immigration, and the arguments it provoked, about due process for non-citizens, separation of powers, and how far national security can stretch federal power, have never really settled.