Really, what was Jefferson trying to say when he wrote that?
Jefferson opposed vehemently the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 which granted the President enormous powers to restrict the activities of supporters of the French Revolution in the United States. Jefferson kept his authorship of the opposing Kentucky Resolutions a secret until 1821.
Amid mounting tensions, Federalists accused Republicans of being in league with France against their own country’s government. Writing in June 1798 in the Gazette of the United States, Alexander Hamilton called the Jeffersonians “more Frenchmen than Americans” and claimed that they were prepared “to immolate the independence and welfare of their country at the shrine of France.”
Fears of an imminent French invasion led the Adams administration to begin war preparations and pass a new land tax to pay for them.
With fears of enemy spies infiltrating American society, the Federalist majority in Congress passed four new laws in June and July 1798, collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Even as the bitter debates between the two fledgling political parties were being played out in rival newspapers and other publications, the new law outlawed any “false, scandalous and malicious writing” against Congress or the president, and made it illegal to conspire “to oppose any measure or measures of the government.”
In the end, widespread anger over the Alien and Sedition Acts fueled Jefferson’s victory over Adams in the bitterly contested 1800 presidential election, and their passage is widely considered to be one of the biggest mistakes of Adams’ presidency.
By 1802, all of the Alien and Sedition Acts had been repealed or expired, save for the Alien Enemies Act, which has stayed on the books. In 1918, Congress amended the act to include women.
Suppose that over the course of a few months, a small band of armed militants has coordinated strategies to distribute firearms and take over the nation's capital by force through a website on the clandestine "deep web." All indications show that the group is dead serious in its intentions, but they're thwarted by an FBI investigation that leads to arrests. While sharing information and discussing ideas -- even distasteful ones -- is generally protected as free speech, the FBI believes this crosses the line. The alleged ringleaders of the plot are charged with "seditious conspiracy" (simply referred to as "sedition"), a federal crime related to treason and other anti-government offenses.
Sedition is a serious felony punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison and it refers to the act of inciting revolt or violence against a lawful authority with the goal of destroying or overthrowing it. The following provides an overview of this particular crime against the government, with historical references.
The federal law against seditious conspiracy can be found in Title 18 of the U.S. Code (which includes treason, rebellion, and similar offenses), specifically 18 U.S.C. § 2384. According to the statutory definition of sedition, it is a crime for two or more people within the jurisdiction of the United States:
To conspire to overthrow or destroy by force the government of the United States or to level war against them;
To oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States; or
To take, seize, or possess by force any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.
Many of the more high-profile seditious conspiracy cases won by the U.S. government involve Puerto Rican nationalists plotting to overthrow the U.S. and assert their independence. The first was Pedro Albizu Campos, who (along with nine accomplices) was convicted of sedition in 1937 and jailed for 10 years for attempting to overthrow the government. He and others had been active members of the Nationalist Party, which (according the U.S. prosecutors) was aimed at independence through force. Other, similar cases involving Puerto Rican nationalists followed.
More recently, in 2010, nine members of a militia group called "the Hutaree" spanning Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana were charged with seditious conspiracy on suspicion of planning an armed conflict against federal, state, and local law enforcement. They were acquitted by a judge in 2012, however, due to insufficient evidence.
https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/alien-and-sedition-actshttps://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sedition.html#:~:text=%C2%A7%202384.,jurisdiction%20of%20the%20United%20States%3A&text=To%20oppose%20by%20force%20the,of%20the%20United%20States%3B%20or
