James Madison (1751-1836) of Orange County, Virginia, was the leading draftsman of the Virginia Plan at the Constitutional Convention, a coauthor of The Federalist, and the congressman who proposed the amendments that became the Bill of Rights; he later served as Secretary of State and as fourth President. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) of Albemarle County, Virginia, wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, served as minister to France and Secretary of State, and was Vice President under John Adams when he drafted the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798; he became third President in 1801. The two men were close friends and political allies for half a century, and in 1798 each wrote his resolutions privately for a state legislature to which he did not belong.
“in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil”
“that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.”
“this government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”
The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were the state legislatures' protests against the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed by a Federalist Congress and signed by President John Adams in June and July 1798 during the undeclared naval war with France. The Alien Friends Act let the President order dangerous aliens out of the country without trial; the Sedition Act made it a crime to publish false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government, Congress or the President.
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