Alien and Sedition Acts, protests occurred across the country, with some of the largest being seen in Kentucky, where the crowds were so large they filled the streets and the entire town square of Lexington. Critics argued that they were primarily an attempt to suppress voters who disagreed with the Federalist party and its teachings, and violated the right of freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They also raised concerns that the Alien and Sedition acts gave disproportionate power to the federal executive compared to state governments and other branches of the federal government. Noting the outrage among the populace, the Democratic-Republicans made the Alien and Sedition Acts an important issue in the 1800 presidential election campaign. While government authorities prepared lists of aliens for deportation, many aliens fled the country during the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Adams never signed a deportation order. The Virginia and Kentucky state legislatures also passed the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, secretly authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, denouncing the federal legislation. While the eventual resolutions followed Madison in advocating "interposition", Jefferson's initial draft would have nullified the Acts and even threatened secession. Jefferson's biographer Dumas Malone argued that this might have gotten Jefferson impeached for treason, had his actions become known at the time. In writing the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood". The Alien and Sedition Acts were never appealed to the Supreme Court, whose power of judicial review was not established until Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Subsequent mentions in Supreme Court opinions beginning in the mid-20th century have assumed that the Sedition Act would today be found unconstitutional. Most modern historians view the Alien and Sedition Acts in a negative light, considering them to have been a mistake. See also Alien Act of 1705 in Great Britain Seditious Meetings Act 1795 in Great Britain Espionage Act of 1917 Logan Act of 1799 Sedition Act of 1918 Alien Registration Act of 1940 Notes References Bibliography Further reading Berkin, Carol. A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism (2017) pp 201–44. Bird, Wendell. Criminal Dissent: Prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Harvard University Press, 2020. Bird, Wendell. Press and Speech Under Assault: The Early Supreme Court