It's easy to forget that the Founding Fathers were politicians. They might not have been politicians first and foremost—and certainly not in the modern way of thinking about it—but it was a part of them. There's a tendency to give them lofty motivations for everything, ignoring or forgetting the realities of what they're dealing with.

Take Adams for example. Though he was the head of the ruling party in 1798, he was never really all that popular himself. Unlike Washington, he wasn't a war hero. He couldn't put his name on one of the founding documents of the country, the way Jefferson or Madison could.

With the looming war with France and a growing disgruntled faction led by Jefferson and Madison, Adams was feeling the pinch. Immigrants tended to gravitate toward Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans, so the best way for Adams to maintain his narrow numbers advantage was to cut Jefferson off at the knees.

The Alien and Sedition acts were perfectly suited to do just that. And while it's easy to call Jefferson and Madison the heroes in all this, their responses (especially Jefferson's) helped create an arguably bigger problem.