egun, told heavily against
the Federalists. They could be denounced now, not only as the enemies of
liberty in France, but as refusing it to men of any nation or any race
who should seek it in the United States,--it being, of course,
understood that races of black or yellow complexion need not apply. It
was, indeed, advanced as an argument against one of the acts,--which
gave the President power to order out of the country all aliens whose
presence he thought dangerous,--that it might be used to prevent the
importation of persons from Africa. On this point Mr. Gallatin, a native
of Switzerland, was exceedingly anxious lest there be a violation of
the Constitution. But the outrage upon the rights of man here
apprehended was the right of white men to make black men slaves.

Against the enactment of these laws Mr. Jefferson did nothing as
Vice-President. But whatever was his motive for official inaction, it
was not because he approved them. He wrote the Kentucky "resolutions of
'98,"--the strongest protest that could be made against them, and to be
thenceforth held by nullifiers and secessionists as their covenant of
faith. But he acted secretly, taking counsel only with George Nicholas
of Kentucky and William C. Nicholas of Virginia (brothers), and,
Hildreth says, "probably with Madison." The resolutions were to be
offered in the Kentucky legislature by George Nicholas, and, with some
modifications, were passed by that body in November. A year afterward
other resolutions were passed to reassert the opinions of the previous
session, and to record against the laws the "solemn protest" of the
legislature; and further declaring "that a nullification by those
sovereignties [the States] of all unauthorized acts done under color of
that instrument [the Constitution] is the rightful remedy." In the
resolutions which Mr. Jefferson had prepared for Nicholas the year
before, this essential doctrine is found in that portion which Nicholas
had omitted, in these words,--"where powers are assumed which have not
been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." As
originally prepared, the resolutions were found in Jefferson's
handwriting after his death. Hildreth's conjecture that Madison, as well
as the brothers Nicholas, was consulted in the preparation of these
resolutions, rests only on circumstantial evidence. The Kentucky
resolutions were passed in November; those of Virginia in December; the
former were written b