Meanwhile, the U.S. and France had drifted into an armed conflict later known as the “Quasi-War.” Federalist fears of pro-French radicalism led to the Alien Act and the Alien Enemies Act, the first anti-immigrant statutes in American history. These laws gave the president sweeping power to arrest and deport any alien who was from an “unfriendly” country, who was “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,” or who was “concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government.”

The Alien and Sedition Acts provoked the nation’s first civil liberties crisis. They spurred fierce resistance from ordinary Americans, who rejected xenophobia and treasured the right to criticize their leaders. By early 1800, a major popular backlash had set in. Sober Federalists realized that Adams faced long odds against his re-election that fall.

So they did what many politicians today would: they decided to fix the election. Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania introduced in the Senate an “electoral count act.” In Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties, the historian James Morton Smith called this proposed act “a thoroughly vicious measure.” It would have ended the public counting of electoral votes by Congress, instead giving the task to a secret “grand committee” made up entirely of Federalist legislators and judges, empowered to reject behind closed doors any electoral votes it decided were obtained by fraud or illegality—and thus tip an election from Jefferson to Adams regardless of the popular will.

Proceedings, and proposed laws, in the Senate at that time were not public. However, three Jeffersonian senators, alarmed at the attempted coup, leaked the text of the proposed bill to Duane, who published a report in the Aurora on February 19, 1800.

Popular revulsion at this power grab doomed the “electoral count” measure, but (surprise!) what truly outraged Senate Federalists was the leak. Federalists in the Senate voted to summon Duane to face “trial” in front of them for “contempt”—the “crime” of breaching the unwritten “privilege” of the Senate. In that proceeding, he would be required to reveal who had given him the proposed bill. Senator Uriah Tracy, a Federalist from Connecticut, told his colleagues that the proceedings might “lead us to discover some person whom we can punish,” and perhaps allow the body to expel the senators who had dared leak the draft bill to the Aurora.

Duane requested the assistance of counsel and the right to present evidence. The Federalist majority replied that lawyers could appear but could make no challenge to the Senate’s power to conduct the trial, and that Duane could not introduce evidence in his defense, only ask for leniency. Rather than face prison, the editor went into hiding, but continued taunting his would-be persecutors in the pages of the Aurora. Frustrated in their plans for a star-chamber trial, the Federalist senators finally requested the administration to prosecute the cheeky editor in federal court under the Sedition Act. This Adams dutifully did—but by the time the case came to trial, he had been turned out of office. Jefferson, his successor, instructed federal officials to treat the Act as a legal nullity; Duane’s case was dropped.