Biography
Abijah Adams was the brother of Thomas Adams, editor of Boston's Independent Chronicle, and worked at the newspaper. Massachusetts authorities prosecuted him under state common law over an editorial criticizing the legislature's condemnation of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. He was arrested on February 27, 1799 and released on bail before his March trial before Chief Justice Francis Dana. Convicted of seditious libel, he received thirty days in jail. He was released in April 1799. The prosecution was separate from the federal Sedition Act proceedings against his brother, who died in May 1799.
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Abijah Adams was the brother of Thomas Adams, editor of the Boston Independent Chronicle, and the bookkeeper at the paper. After Thomas Adams's federal Sedition Act prosecution lapsed when he died in 1799, Massachusetts state authorities prosecuted Abijah for contempt of the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature) over a Chronicle editorial that had accused the legislature of unconstitutional conduct in passing resolutions condemning Virginia and Kentucky for their opposition to the federal Sedition and Alien Acts.
Tried before Chief Justice Francis Dana of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in February 1799, he was convicted of contempt and sentenced to thirty days in the Boston jail plus \$5 in costs. The case has been described by historians as the only successful state-level common-law prosecution for criticizing a legislature in the Sedition Act period and is regarded as one of the most aggressive uses of judicial contempt against the press in early American history.
