Sedition Act is adopted in Philadelphia.

Passed by Congress and signed by President John Adams, the law makes it a crime to publish false, scandalous, or malicious writing about the federal government. Adopted in the wake of harsh and often untrue attacks by the Democratic-Republican press on the Federalist Adams administration, it is used against five publishers and newspapers in Boston, including John Burk of the Boston Advertiser, John Lillie and John Vinal of the Boston Constitutional Telegraph, Aijah Adams and Thomas Adams of the Boston Independent Chronicle.