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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO C. LEE, ATTORNEY-GENERAL. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO C. LEE, ATTORNEY-GENERAL.

I thank you for your favor of the 10th. I am told that Mr. Lewis is of opinion that Fries’s crime amounts not to treason. Can you give me a minute of his reasons?2

[2 ]The following abstract was sent by the Attorney-General in answer to this application.

Copy of Mr. Rawle’s note of Mr. Lewis’s reasons for the opinion that the crime of Fries was not treason.

United States v. Fries.

The substance of Mr. Lewis’s argument, as to the question of treason in this case, was as follows:

“Treason consists in resisting, by force or means of intimidation, the government and laws of the country.

To resist the execution of a single law is not treason, unless it is the militia law.

It is treason to resist the militia law, because the militia is the ultimate remedy to be employed by the executive authority to enforce all laws, and, therefore, if the militia law cannot be enforced, it may disable the executive from enforcing any of the laws.”

Mr. Adams afterwards obtained from Messrs. Lewis and Dallas a full statement of their argument. This has been already printed in Wharton’s State Trials, pp. 646-8.