Because the Sedition Act was used to silence critical media, historians and free press advocates tend to take a dim view of it. Scholars have described the Alien and Sedition Acts as “ reprehensible , ...

The Supreme Court would not take up freedom of speech and the press until decades later, in 1821. My research and that of other scholars suggest that Adams was never an advocate of the Sedition Act.

In 1918, during World War I, Congress passed – and President Woodrow Wilson signed – a new Sedition Act that imposed harsh penalties for speech abusing the U.S. government, the flag ...