John Adams take on the Alien and Sedition Acts into law on July 14, 1798—the anniversary of the raid of the Bastille in Paris. Adams wanted to express his dissatisfaction of the French Revolution by passing the bills into law on that date. Though the laws were state security actions intended to quiet support for the French, they were also intended to quiet Adams’s political conflict. Settlers have a habit to vote Republican. And the only editors indicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts were the Republicans.