X, Y, and Z; hence the term XYZ Affair. The commission dissolved, and the three-man commission was never received. Adams had acted with the “temper of a man divested of his reason, and wholly under the dominion of his passions.”(33)

With the increasing shrillness of the press and polarization of the two political factions, in May of 1798, Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, commented about Bache in a letter to her sister: “If that fellow & his Agents Chronical, and all is not surpressed, we shall come to a civil war.”(34) One month later, in June of 1798, just ten days after the Aurora had published the letter from French foreign minister Talleyrand concerning the XYZ Affair, Bache was under arrest by the federal government under the Sedition Act – although the Sedition Act had still not passed through Congress at this point in June, it would soon pass and be signed by President Adams on July 14. The Sedition Act made illegal anything that the federal government arbitrarily deemed “false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States.” With the French Revolution taking place, and with so many republicans supporting it, this was a time when those in political power had a serious fear of revolution within their own country.

The Sedition Act was a piece of legislation that the Federalists propelled through Congress for “the suppression of the Whig presses,” as Vice President Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison on 26 April 1798, and “Bache’s [newspaper] has been particularly named.”(35) Not surprisingly, Representative John Allen of Connecticut, launched a blistering attack against the Aurora on the Congressional floor, stating that its purpose was “to overturn and ruin the Government by publishing the most shameless falsehoods against the Representatives of the people of all denominations.” Allen went still further by claiming that “a conspiracy against the Constitution, the Government, the peace and safety of this country, is formed, and is in full operation.”(36) As a result, on 27 June 1798, the Aurora reported, “The Editor of the Aurora was yesterday arrested… on the charge of libeling the President & the Executive Government, in a manner tending to excite sedition and opposition to the laws, by sundry publication and re-publications.”(37) Bache had been arrested before the Sedition Act even made it through the legal process, thus showing just how much the legislation was meant to target him even more so than other opposition press. On 29 June 1798, Bache was released on $4000 bail with a trial scheduled for October.