Tea at Trianon: America’s Earliest Political War

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

America’s Earliest Political War

From Daniel McCarthy:

Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, the ancestor of today’s Democratic Party, thought Adams and his Federalist Party were monarchists and traitors to the American Revolution because they were pro-British and anti-French. The Federalists thought Jefferson’s pro-French party was as radical as France’s own revolutionaries: The phrase “godless communists” didn’t exist yet, but Federalists perceived Jeffersonians as atheists who would abolish private property if they got the chance.

Federalists were anti-democratic, said Republicans. Republicans were against the Constitution, Federalists shot back. Each side fervently believed the other was “illiberal” and in league with foreign regimes antithetical to America’s principles. Immigration was a red-hot issue then as well and tied to fears of anti-American influences from abroad. Under President Adams, Congress raised the number of years a foreigner would have to live in the United States before being naturalized as a citizen.

The Federalist-controlled Congress also gave the president broad powers to deport immigrants — or “aliens,” as they were then called. How about complaints of government being used against domestic opponents? With the Sedition Act of 1798, Congress criminalized “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” critical of the government. Nowadays, administrations like President Biden’s lean on social media companies to do their censoring for them, as critics of COVID policy, such as Jay Bhattacharya, discovered.

Jefferson and his supporters didn’t just oppose the Alien and Sedition Acts, they were prepared to resist them to the point of inciting states to defy the federal government. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 — the former written by Jefferson, the latter by James Madison, both making their case anonymously — argued states could obstruct or even “nullify” federal law. The “sanctuary city” progressive mayors declare this in response to federal immigration restrictions that have a precedent here. (Read more.)