Sedition Act Question

Use document 1 to provide basic and extended analysis to support the argument that the Sedition Act was Constitutional.

Document 1: Secretary of State Pickering on the Alien and Sedition Laws

The Alien Law has been bitterly inveighed against as a direct attack upon our liberties, when in fact it affects only foreigners who are conspiring against us, and has no relation whatever to an American citizen ... It is only necessary to ask whether, without such a power vested in some department, any government ever did, or ever can, long protect itself ...

The Sedition Act has likewise been shamefully misrepresented as· an attack upon the freedom of speech and of the press. But we find, on the contrary, that it prescribes a punishment only for those pests of society . . . "who write, print, utter, or publish any false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring them into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against them the hatred of the good people of the United States ..."

C. W. Upham, Life of Timothy Pickering. Boston. Little, Brown, 1873,475 ff.