SEAN WILENTZ
(Robert Sean Wilentz)
He was providing historical perspective to the 2016 Republican Party split in which nativism and anti-immigration was a major factor.
President John Adams, once he became President, was greatly disturbed by the insults and attacks on him and his Federalist Party by many newspapers who preferred Thomas Jefferson and his view of democracy and freedom. Many of his supporters were also concerned about the new different immigrants that were coming to America in large numbers—–namely Roman Catholics. Adams and his Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts which not only worked against new immigrants but was the first major attempt at government censorship of the press in American History. Ironically, these laws—–a blight on American democratic history—–were finally repealed in large part due to the effort of Adams son, John Quincy Adams, who served int the House of Representatives after his presidency and had always been an inveterate foe of the laws that his father had instituted.
Robert Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979. His primary research interests include U.S. social and political history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written numerous award-winning books and articles including, most notably, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
