Kentucky Resolutions

These resolutions were the outgrowth, together with the Virginia Resolutions, of a feeling that the Federal. party was making a strained and illegitimate use of the powers granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution. The resolutions were directly due to the pa age of the Alien and Sedition laws. The Kentucky Resolutions were framed by Thomas Jefferson, and introduced, in 1798, into the Kentucky Legislature by, John Breckenridge. They were pa ed for the purpose of defining the strict-construction view of the relative powers of State and Government. They were nine in number. They declared that the Union was not based on the ‘“ principle of unlimited submi ion to the General Government;’’ that the Constitution was a compact, to which each State was a party as over against its fellow States; and that, in all cases not specified in the compact, each party had a right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redre . They proceeded to set forth the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and invited other States to join in declaring them void.. No favorable response was evoked. In 1799 the Kentucky Legislature went further, and declared a nullification of a Federal law by a State to be the rightful remedy in cases of Federal usurpation. Upon these resolutions the doctrines of nullification and sece ion were later founded.