Thomas Dodson
March 16, 2003
Edgar Huntly, Seditious Libel, and the Limits of Certainty
Before relating the unlikely tale of a young American infected with sleepwalking as a result of his encounter with a deranged Irishman, Charles Brockden Brown offers a set of prefatory remarks about the aims of his novel. In his address "to the public,"
Brown observes that although "America has opened new views to the naturalist and politician [it] has seldome [sic] furnished themes to the moral painter" (EH 3). Brown suggests, however, that "the condition of our country" poses a set of distinctive moral dilemmas to the public-spirited author: "the field of investigation, opened to us by our own country, should differ essentially from those that exist in Europe" (EH 3).
The conditions of America in 1799, convulsed in a national crisis brought on by hysterical fears of French invasion and internal conspiracies, provoked a number of troubling questions about civic identity, press liberty, and political passions. I will argue that the concerns expressed in Brown's novel about truth, motive, and the power of writing to inflict harm disclose anxieties surrounding the construction of seditious libel in
Anglo-American legal theory, specifically in relation to the Sedition Act of 1798.
Mark Patterson accurately characterizes the late eighteenth century in America as
“a frightened age” (61). In his discussion of the historical context of Brown’s novels,
Patterson suggests that “the social aftershocks of the Revolution” continued to be felt as the century slouched towards what seemed to be an “apocalyptic end” (61). Americans' faith in the stability of their republic was shaken by the bitter struggle for hegemony

Dodson 2 between Federalists, who championed centralization, the interests of property owners, and social order and Republicans, who continued to argue for the Anti-Federalist causes of state sovereignty, populism, and individual liberty. Niether side held to the modern principle that recognizes the legitimacy of political opposition. To the reigning
Federalists, Republicans were traitors, Jacobins, and devils (Miller 21, Levy 299). To dissenting Republicans, Federalists were aristocrats, tories, and villains (Miller 21, Smith
159).
“Aggravating these internecine battles,” Patterson explains, “were fears of an international conspiracy stemming from the French Revolution (61). In 1795, The U.S. offended France’s revolutionary government by ratifying Jay’s Treaty, thereby aligning itself with Great Britain. France, still allied with the U.S., nevertheless withdrew its minister from Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital, and turned away the American minister to France. More disturbing still was France’s seizure of American shipping
(Miller 4).
Relations between France and America worsened in 1798 due to the XYZ Affair.
A delegation sent to Paris by President Adams to resolve the conflict over Jay's Treaty was refused access to official communication with the French government. The
Americans were contacted, however, by three agents. "Designated in the American ministers’ dispatches as X, Y, and Z,” these agents “demanded a bribe for the Directory and a loan to France as prerequisites for negotiation” (Miller 4). As John C. Miller reports, when the U.S. government published the XYZ Correspondence, “the country was swept by an unexampled wave of patriotic feeling; and with the slogan ‘Millions for
Defense and Not One Cent for Tribute’” (4).

Dodson 3
The ill-treatment of the American ministers, the evident corruption of the French
Republic, and the threat of economic isolation inspired not only nationalism, but also racialized paranoia. Americans envisioned French invasion and plots to overthrow the nation from within. Federalists in particular constructed elaborate fantasies in which
French agents, acting through their Republican and Irish allies, fomented slave revolt, undermined the authority of the government, and recruited the passionate and unwary to their cause. In a passage from Crisis in Freedom that is worth quoting at some length,
Miller provides a succinct account of this social fantasy:
In their imaginations, Americans beheld their dearest possessions endangered: “Your houses and farms with fire, plunder and pillage! And your wives and sweethearts with ravishment and assassination, by horrid outlandish sans-culotte Frenchmen!!’ Every man must arm himself or "be torn limb from gut, and devoured alive by bloodthirsty cannibals." So menacing did this danger appear that, if Americans chose appeasement rather than war, they were advised by a Federalist newspaper to ‘remove your wives far from the Infernal Fraternal embrace, or you may prove witnesses of their violation and expiring agonies, or if reserved for future infamy, may increase your families not only with a spurious, but with a colored breed” (6).
This last pamphlet continues with images of daughters “deflowered” by “lusty Othellos” and advises fathers that it may be “more merciful and humane” to thrust their "paternal daggers" into the "innocent bosoms" of their youngest children rather than give them up to the imagined brutality of slave violence (qtd. in Miller 6). Miller also suggests that

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Federalist leaders were largely responsible for inciting the public's fears, a useful tactic for striking at their Republican opponents: "the party elders seem to have acted upon the assumption that their duty was to whip up the frenzy by screaming 'Jacobins, Hell, and all the devils' at every street corner" (22).
The legislative agenda of the party would seem to confirm Miller's assessment.
As Rogers Smith states in his study of American civic identity: "The political warfare became all-out when the Federalists enacted the naturalization, Alien Friends, Alien
Enemies and Sedition Acts of 1798 as part of stridently nativist efforts to censor, disenfranchise, and deport immigrant Jeffersonian [Republicans]" (162). The
Naturalization Act of 1798 extended the naturalization period for immigrants from five years (as it had been established in 1759) to fourteen. The act was designed, at least in part, to disenfranchise foreign voters, who were more likely to sympathize with the
Republicans (Miller 47). Some Federalist leaders suggested withholding civic membership entirely from the foreign-born.
Taking a more moderate position, Massachusetts senator Harrison Gray Otis argued that "federal offices, at least, [should] be limited to natives" (Smith162). Otis was particularly interested in barring any Irishmen from participation in national political institutions. Republican opposition, however, successfully blocked Otis's proposal by pointing out that such a denial would result in a form of second-class citizenship for naturalized aliens. Smith explains the racialized logic of the Republican argument:
"Although second-class citizenship for free blacks, women, and assimilated Native
Americans already existed, tiers among white men were less tolerable" (162).

Dodson 5
Federalists were also able to pass the Alien Enemies Act, which empowered the
President, "in case of war or threat of invasion [. . .] to seize, secure or remove from the country all resident aliens [who were] citizens of the enemy nation" (Miller 50). Clearly, the act was intended to apply only under the most dire circumstances, and only to citizens of France. Although Republicans "worked to ensure that this law could not apply to citizens," most did not oppose it (Smith 162).
The Alien Enemies Act did little to quell Federalist fears of Irish immigrants. Otis expressed the party's nativist sentiments when he stated that he had no "wish to invite hordes of wild Irishmen, nor turbulent and disorderly from all parts of the world, to come here with a view to disturb our tranquility, after having succeeded in the overthrow of their own Governments" (qtd. in Miller 44). The Irish were, for the Federalists, nothing less than "objects of terror" (Miller 45). Irish revolutionary leaders had "conspired with the French" and revolutionary organizations such as the United Irishman, "which demanded universal suffrage and other reforms based upon social and political ideals inspired by the French Revolution," had already found their way to America (Miller 45).
To deal with this perceived threat, Federalists passed the Alien Friends Act, which "made all 'dangerous' aliens in the U.S. subject to arbitrary arrest and deportation in peace and war, even if the U.S. was not officially an enemy of their homeland" (Smith 164).
The greatest victory of the Federalist campaign against imagined internal enemies was certainly the Sedition Act. Applicable to aliens, naturalized immigrants, and native citizens alike, the act allowed for federal prosecution of any person involved in any way in the "writ[ing], print[ing], utter[ing] or publishing" of "false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government of the United States" or any of its officials (sec. 2). The

Dodson 6 act specifically prohibited "defam[ing] the [. . .] government" or writing anything that might "aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the
United States " (sec. 2).
As we will see, Brown's novel poses a series of questions--about truth, intention, and the power of writing--that relate directly to the conception of seditious libel in Anglo-
American jurisprudence that guided the drafting of the Sedition Act. Early Americans inherited a notion of seditious libel from the tradition of British common law. As
Leonard Levy explains in Emergence of a Free Press , the common-law definition of sedition was flexible and inconsistently defined (8). Judged in terms of legal practice,
"the crime consisted of defaming or contemning or ridiculing the government: its form, constitution, officers, laws, conduct, or policies, to the jeopardy of the public peace"
(Levy 8). The elaborate definitions provided by legal theorists sought to account for a number of factors: "the malicious or criminal intent of the accused, the bad tendency of his remarks [their threat to public order], and their truth or falsity" (Levy 8).
Throughout the eighteenth century, Levy maintains, few significant challenges were mounted to common law assumptions regarding seditious libel that might render it
"incompatible with free government" (Levy 89).
1 Almost no one was willing to argue
"that publications tending to damage the reputation of the government in the minds of the people should be free from prosecution" (Levy 127). Prosecution for seditious libel was not considered to be opposed to press liberty, which "meant simply freedom from prior restraint," that is, from government censorship (Levy 147). The common law theory of seditious libel also took what seems to us today a counterintuitive approach to the
1 Cato and James Alexander representing the exceptions that prove the rule.

Dodson 7 question of the truth or falsity of seditious utterances. Far from serving as a defense against prosecution for libel, the truth of seditious statements only aggravated the offence. The common law theory suggested that "the truth of a libel made it even worse, because it was more provocative, thereby increasing the tendency to breach of the peace and exacerbating the scandal against the government" (Levy 12).
English and American critics of the conservative conception of press freedom embodied in the common law theory suggested a number of reforms. They recommended, for example, that truth should serve as a defense. In 1735, James
Alexander and Andrew Hamilton argued precisely for this position in their defense of a
German printer, John Peter Zenger. Zenger had been publishing a magazine which included Whig tracts as well as letters written by a dissenting faction attacking the governor of New York; he was soon brought before a jury handpicked by the governor
(Levy 38-39).
Zenger stood accused of publishing "false, scandalous, malicious, and seditious libels" (qtd. in Levy 40). Seizing on the inclusion of the word "false" in the charges,
Hamilton required that the prosecution to establish the falsity of the claims published in
Zenger's magazine. He rejected the tenant of the conservative theory offered by the Chief
Justice, that truth aggravated a libel. He asked instead whether "the jurers [were] supposed to believe that 'truth is a greater sin than falsehood'" (Levy 41). Although the
Zenger case did not establish a precedent, it did establish in the court of public opinion that the truth of a claim ought to serve as a defense for seditious libel.
This principle, which so inspired eighteenth century reformers was, however, deeply flawed. As Levy remarks, if "truth could not be a libel," then "truth fixed the

Dodson 8 bounds of the right to speak, write, and publish opinions on the conduct of men in power"
(129). It is clear, however, that not all claims lend themselves equally to verification.
Thus, it was one thing to plead truth as a defense when claiming that an official had written letters endorsing monarchy--the accused could be expected to produce these letters. It was something else entirely to accuse an official or an administration of being corrupt. When facts were not available, questions of truth and falsehood would have to be decided based upon the political opinions of the jury.
Other reformers argued that in order to punish a writer or printer for sedition, the state should have to prove not only the spuriousness of his statements, but also establish that he published these with a malicious, criminal intent. In a 1764 tract, a writer calling himself Father of Candor, argued that to be truly seditious "a falsehood had to be willfully or maliciously made" (Levy 150). Still others, James Madison among them, realized the flimsiness of such a defense: "the defendants fate would [. . .] depend on whether or not the jury found his intent to be malicious, a judgment which they would form from their subjective evaluation of the harmless or harmful tendency of his words"
(Levy 151). If the jury shared the defendant's political opinions, then they would likely see his words as harmless. If they did not, they would be just as likely to view them as injurious to public order.
Ironically, the Sedition Act of 1798 contained all of the changes that reformers had been calling for. It allowed the jury to decide not only the facts of the case, but also whether a seditious libel had been committed (rather than leaving this as a matter to be decided by the judge). The act also required that the state demonstrate criminal intent on the part of the accused and acknowledged truth as a defense. As one well-acquainted

Dodson 9 with the law, and a partisan to the conflict surrounding the Sedition Act, Brown could not help but consider the legal and moral questions raised by the new law about the status of truth, the ability to judge the intention of others, and the power of utterances to inflict harm (Levy 296).
These are, in fact, some of Brown's central preoccupations in Edgar Huntly .
Before turning to the novel, however, we will consider an article published in The
Monthly Magazine the same year as Edgar Huntly . In "Walstein's School of History,"
Brown makes a number of explicit statements about the nature of truth and the opacity of intention. Brown suggests that "actions and motives cannot be truly described. We can only make approaches to the truth" (WSH 336). As we gain more knowledge and experience, we become only more convinced of the inaccessibility of truth in the face of human complexity: "The more attentively we observe mankind, and study ourselves, the greater will this uncertainty appear, and the farther shall we find ourselves from the truth"
(WSH 336). Here, uncertainty is offered as a sign of understanding and self-knowledge, a mature recognition of the impossibility of stable truth in human affairs.
"Uncertainty," Brown argues, is never complete and always "has some bounds"
(WSH 336). In a passage that could just as easily be read as a position on the Sedition
Act, Brown argues:
The same may be said of motives. Our guesses as to the motives of some actions are more probable than the guesses that relate to other actions.
Though no one can state the motives from which any action has flowed, he may enumerate motives from which it is quite certain, that the action did not flow. (Walstein 336-337).

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As those who came to be prosecuted under the Sedition Acts learned, some truths are easier to verify than others. Further, questions of intention can never be resolved with certainty. We must hazard "guesses," eliminate motives that seem impossible to us, and choose the most "probable" from among those that remain. These statements in
"Walstein" point to the shaky foundations on which we may rest our claims to truth and knowledge of intention. Thus, it would seem to disclose Brown's ambivalence, if not complete rejection, of the principles upon which the Sedition Act could be justly enforced. If truth cannot be certainly determined, how can it be made the measure of sedition? If identifying motives amounts to making informed guesses, by what standard can we determine if a statement against the government was made with criminal intent?
Far from providing resolution to these contradictions, Edgar Huntly engages with their complexity.
Brown first raises the question of truth and the limits certainty at the conclusion of
Clithero's narrative. At this moment, Edgar reconsiders his earlier supposition that
Clithero had a hand in the death of Waldegrave. Previously, every sign had seemed to point to Clithero as the murderer of Edward's friend: "Not a circumstance, from the moment when Clithero's character became the subject of my meditations, till the conclusion of his tale, but served to confirm my suspicion" (EH 86). Despite the weight of circumstantial evidence tying Clithero to the crime--his sleepwalking, his remorseful sobbing, his foreigness--Edgar concludes that he must have been mistaken. Yet, "would not anyone," he asks, "have drawn similar conclusion" given the same evidence?" (EH
86). This leads Edward to pose the question that discloses one of the novel's

Dodson 11 problematics and which it cannot answer: "is there a criterion by which truth can always be judged"? (EH 86).
This expression of doubt, which appears in line with Brown's own statements in his Monthly Magazine , places Huntly completely at odds with the disposition of his mentor, Sarsefield. Unlike Edward, Sarsefield seems to think himself capable of determining whether the narratives of others are true or false--in at least one instance, without even being present for the tale. When Huntly relates the story of his misadventures in the wilderness, Sarsefield ruminates for a moment before declaring:
"Your Tale, Huntly, is true" (EH 237). Discovering Huntly's acquaintance with Clithero,
Sarsefield presumes to know not only what Clithero has told Edward, but also that it must be false: "These things he has hidden from you, and has supplied their place by a tale specious as false" (EH 254).
Nowhere is the contrast starker between Edward's doubts and Sarsefield's certainty than on the question of Clithero's motives. Sarsefield presumes a perfect knowledge of Clithero's motives, a knowledge that is superior to Edward's: "You know not his motives" (EH 255). Sarsefield assures his gullible pupil that the "monstrous and infernal" acts that Clithero has committed could only have been inspired by "sordid and flagitious" intentions (EH 253).
Edgar's consideration of motive does not lead him to easy conclusions. Rather, he is led to exclaim: "How little congnizance have men over the actions and motives of each other! How total is our blindness with regard to our own performances" (EH 268). Edgar realizes that the motives that drive men's actions are often opaque even to themselves, much less to others. In some cases the forces that move men to action seem to have no

Dodson 12 basis in intention at all. Clithero's killing of Wiatte is an act of self-defense in which his will seems to play no part: "He acted in obedience to an impulse which he could not control, nor resist" (EH 87). Huntly wonders if Clithero should be held responsible for an action of which he was not the conscious agent: "an action to which it is not enough to say that he was actuated by no culpable intention, but that he was swayed by no intention whatever?" (EH 87).
Edgar's conclusions derive from a depth of consideration apparently alien to
Sarsefield, who believes in truth and in the possibility of accurately ascribing intention.
Edgar suggests that the question of certainty and the limits of human knowledge is inextricable from the question of motive. Clithero acted as he did without foreknowledge of the effect of his actions, a condition he shares with all human actors. Edgar notes that
"nature has imposed [. . .] limitations on human faculties" (EH 88). Human beings are not omniscient; they "do not enjoy the attributes of deity" and their "power and knowledge are confined by impassable boundaries" (EH 88). Thus, whenever humans act in the world, "consequences arise that cannot be foreseen" by them (EH 87).
Given this state of affairs, Edgar must "conclude," with other "dispassionate observers," that "proofs of a just intention are all that are requisite to exempt us from blame" (EH 88). Edgar holds to this opinion even to the end of the novel. With the last lines of his final letter, he tries, unsuccessfully it seems, to convince Sarsefield of this conclusion: "I shall not escape your censure, but I shall, likewise, gain your compassion.
I have erred, not through sinister or malignant intentions, but from the impulse of misguided, indeed, but powerful, benevolence" (EH 281).

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Despite his questioning of the possibility of determining truth or intention, Brown does not dispute the assumption, implicit in the Sedition Act, that writing can inflict harm. Edgar learns from Sarsefield's final letter that his inadvertent disclosure of the danger posed to Mrs. Larimer by Clithero's arrival in New York has caused her to miscarry. Edgar's intentions were "benevolent," and his account faithful, yet his words have still murdered Sarsfield's heir.
Reading Brown's novel as a national allegory engaged with the political crisis of the 1790s, we do not find an unequivocal endorsement the principles of the Sedition Act.
It is left an open question whether "there is a criterion by which truth can always be judged." Without such a criterion in cases of seditious libel, however, justice seems capable of transforming into the arbitrary exercise of power. It is also unresolved whether intentions, criminal or benevolent, can ever be known. In the absence of such knowledge, it is impossible to know who deserves imprisonment and who merits only censure. Still, even those with the best intentions may still injure the body politic through their writing. Despite the author's partisanship for the Federalist cause, Brown's novel resists ideological closure. His own intentions are, perhaps, as unfathomable to us as
Clithero's are to Edgars. Regardless of his intention, however, Edgar Huntly does act to complicate and undermine the principles grounding the Federalists' most powerful weapon against alien Americans and Jeffersonian Republicans.

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Works Cited
Brown, Charles Brockden. Edgar Hunly Or, Memoires of A Sleep-Walker. New York:
Penguin, 1988.
---, "Walstein's School of History, From the German of Krants of Gotha." The Monthly
Magazine, and American Review. August 1779: 335-338, 407-411. American
Periodicals Service Online. Ohio State University Library. Mar. 2004.
Levy, Leonard W. Emergence of a Free Press. New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985.
Miller, John C. Crisis In Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts . Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
Patterson, Mark R. "Charles Brockden Brown, Authority, and Intentionality." Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988. 61-78.
Smith, Rogers. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997.