Trump wants to invoke a 1798 law. He’s channeling John Adams in a famous fight with Thomas Jefferson.

Whatever you think of him, Donald Trump has done us all a great service.

He has caused us to re-examine our own history.

All of Trump’s most controversial proposals have some precedent.

Trump wants a mass deportation of people who are not here with legal sanction. Dwight Eisenhower did that in the 1950s, just on a smaller scale.

Trump wants to reduce immigration. The Johnson-Reed Act, better known as the Immigration Act of 1924, did that, too.

Trump wants to raise tariffs. So did then-Rep. William McKinley, who authored the so-called McKinley Tariff in 1890 that raised the price of imports by as much as 49.5% — not as much as the 60% Trump wants on goods from China or the 20% he wants on goods from elsewhere.

Economists still debate the impact of many of these actions, but the political consequences are more clear. The Eisenhower deportations became politically unpopular because they swept up too many U.S. citizens and were eventually defunded; the McKinley tariffs raised consumer prices so much that Republicans lost their House majority that fall and the presidency two years later (although McKinley himself emerged politically unscathed). You can, as they say, “do your own research” on all these things.

Now Trump has invoked another law from history: During a recent rally, he vowed: “I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.”

This would be legally interesting, which is to say it would be quickly contested in court. The law starts off by saying it can only be used “whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government.” Trump considered unauthorized immigration to be an “invasion,” but there’s no particular foreign government behind this; these are simply people “voting with their feet,” as Ronald Reagan used to say. This seems the natural consequence of a free and affluent society living within walking distance of countries that are neither; you’d think we’d be better prepared to deal with this.

In any case, there are lots of places where you can read about the nuances of immigration policy. What’s notable for our readers is that this interest in the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 takes us back to one of the first controversies of our young republic, one in which two Virginians — Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — played prominent but also secretive roles.

Some of the details of that controversy are no longer applicable: Was the United States obligated to protect the French West Indies against the British and the Dutch as repayment for France’s help during the American Revolution? Should the French Revolution be regarded as a welcome event or not?

Other questions, though, remain quite pertinent: What level of immigration is appropriate? To what extent should we take in political refugees? Can a nation polarized between two political factions hold together?

Let’s go back in time to the year that spawned the Alien Enemies Act.

In France, the French Revolution was still underway, although fewer heads were rolling by then. Some 25,000 French refugees had fled for the United States, where some welcomed them as fellow champions of liberty and others saw them as dangerous radicals. Virginia historian Virginius Dabney called them “strongly leftist” — and their main champion was that noted Francophile, Vice President Thomas Jefferson.

Meanwhile, the young United States feared war with that same France. Strapped for money, the U.S. had suspended payment on loans France had made during the American Revolution. Unhappy that the U.S. had reneged on the deal, France started seizing American ships. That would seem pretty straightforward but wasn’t. The political problem was that its two main political factions — what today we’d call political parties — saw France in different ways. The Federalists were skeptical of France and felt more affinity towards Great Britain. The anti-Federalists (who later came to be called Democratic-Republicans, or sometimes just Republicans, although those Republicans have no connection to the Republicans of our day) were sympathetic toward France. President John Adams was a Federalist; Vice President Jefferson was an anti-Federalist. (In those days, the presidential runner-up became president, a system now thankfully discarded, otherwise, Hillary Clinton would have been Donald Trump’s vice president, and Trump would be Biden’s VP today.)

The Federalists, who controlled both Congress and the White House, feared there were too many French sympathizers and wanted to get them out of the country: They passed four laws which, together, became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts and inflamed the country even more than it had been.

The Alien Friends Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen who was deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” The Federalists saw this as a common-sense measure; Jefferson condemned it as “a most detestable thing… worthy of the 8th or 9th century.”

The Alien Enemies Act allowed the president, during a time of war, to detain and deport any males 14 and older who weren’t citizens (more on this to come).

The Sedition Act made it illegal to publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against the federal government. “False” seems sufficiently clear (although often isn’t) but “scandalous and malicious writing” against the government would today cover a lot of the things people post on social media. There was no social media then, but anti-Federalists were alarmed, nonetheless, that this undermined the First Amendment protections against a free press and free speech.

The fourth law was the Naturalization Act of 1798, which made it harder to become a U.S. citizen. This is where the politics of then start to intersect with the politics of now. Immigration has always been a touchy subject.

The Anti-Federalists were popular with many immigrants, which made the Federalists very skeptical of them. At the time, it was quite easy to immigrate to the United States: You just got off the boat. There was no such thing as an “undocumented” immigrant because back then, there were no documents required. One of the first things that the very first U.S. Congress did was pass a naturalization law — the Naturalization Law of 1790. By today’s standards, it was quite lenient. All an immigrant had to do was live in the United States for two years and then apply for citizenship. If the applicant had “good character,” citizenship was granted. The Naturalization Law of 1795 increased that waiting period to five years (which is what it is today). By 1798, the politics had changed, and the new law increased the residency requirement to 14 years. Among the goals that the Federalists had was to make it harder for the Anti-Federalists to build support in the immigrant community. Today we might call this a form of voter suppression.

The political fight over the Alien and Sedition Acts foreshadowed much that was to come. By then, the young nation was already splitting geographically along partisan lines. The Federalists were strong in the North, the Anti-Federalists (who were increasingly called Democratic-Republicans or Republicans) were strong in the South. Virginia in those days had 19 U.S. House members (today we have 11). Of those, just two were Federalists — George Hancock of Botetourt County and Josiah Parker of Isle of Wight County (Hancock’s home was the Santillane estate, which today is a popular wedding venue). I don’t need to tell you what that sectionalism eventually led to. Here’s an irony, though: Back then, it was the North that tended to be cool on immigration while the South was more enthusiastic. In time, it was the industrializing North that drew the most immigrants while large-scale immigration tended to pass the South by, something that still has implications today.

Anyway, back to 1798: Some anti-Federalist newspaper editors were arrested. So was an anti-Federalist member of Congress from Vermont, who ran for re-election from jail and won. “The wrath and indignation of the libertarian Thomas Jefferson knew no bounds,” Dabney writes. “He and James Madison considered that [the Alien and Sedition Acts] involved unconstitutional infringements on human rights.”

They secretly set in motion a series of protests. The Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution against the laws; only later was it revealed that Madison was the author. The Kentucky state legislature passed a similar resolution; that one was authored by Jefferson. Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone calls this a “closely guarded secret” that wasn’t revealed for decades. Dabney explains why: “If Jefferson, then Vice President, had acknowledged his authorship of the Kentucky Resolutions, he might well have been charged with sedition and even impeached for treason. An atmosphere of hysteria prevailed at the time.”

Here’s why it’s dangerous for modern politicians from both parties to claim Jefferson and Madison as one of their own or try to fit them into modern political alignments: At the time, Jefferson and Madison were associated with what today we’d call leftists, but the arguments they advanced are today considered quite conservative ones. Specifically, they leaned on the concept of “state’s rights” and even advanced the notion of “interposition” — that a state could “interpose” itself between the people and federal law and effectively cancel it. Generations later, segregationists tried to revive that argument as part of Virginia’s Massive Resistance to Supreme Court orders to integrate schools.

History is complicated and often doesn’t fit neatly on a bumper sticker.

The presidential election of 1800 — between Adams and Jefferson — was a tumultuous one, perhaps even more so than ours today. The threat of secession and civil war hung in the air. Jefferson won, after much drama (see the musical “Hamilton” for a refresher, particularly the song “The Election of 1800”).

This marked the first time the U.S. had transferred political power from one party to another and did so peacefully; a hallmark of American politics that is now in jeopardy. (Locally, we’ve seen 5^th District Republican nominee John McGuire and Lynchburg Republican council candidate Rodney Hubbard say they might not accept the election results.) President Jefferson delivered a conciliatory inaugural address that’s still worth reading — “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

He and his new majority then set about undoing much of what Adams and the Federalists had done.

The Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act had passed with what today we’d call “sunset clauses.” Jefferson allowed those to expire. Congress passed a new naturalization law that eliminated the 14-year waiting period and restored the previous 5-year one. Interestingly, the Alien Enemies Act stayed in place. During the War of 1812, President James Madison invoked it against British nationals. During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson used it against citizens of the Central Powers. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked it, as well. Now Trump vows to use it outside of wartime.

What would Jefferson think?