First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

Viewed in this Roman light, the Sedition Law of 1798 was “the capstone of the new Federalist system,” writes legal historian Leonard Levy.77 But seen in the context of American history, it was the last gasp effort of classical republicanism to stave off surging populism.