RESOLUTIONS OF '96, the designation commonly given to the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, defining the relations be tween the State and Federal governments, and protesting against certain acts of Congress as unconstitutional, and as violating the rights re served to the States. The Resolutions offered in the Kentucky legislature, and adopted by that body, were drafted by Thomas Jefferson, who, in common with other leading American states men, and the majority of the people, was alarmed by the enactment of the Alien and 'Sedition Laws, and other measures regarded as indicating a purpose to create a centralized despotism in place of the Union formed under the Constitution.
The first Resolution declared that the Federal Constitution was a compact between the States, by which a general government was created for special purposes, and that, "as in other cases of compact between the parties hav ing no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress? The Alien and Sedition and other laws were pro nounced "not law, but• altogether void and of no forces and one of the Resolutions postponed to time of greater tranquillity" the and corrections of other acts' of Congress al leged to be unconstitutional The eighth Resolution directed the appoint ment of a committee of correspondence, to communicate the Resolutions to the several 'States, and to inform them that the State of Kentucky was determined "to submit to un ,delegated and consequently unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth; that in the ease of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the general government being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but when powers are assumed which have not been dele gated, a nullification of the act is the right remedy; and that every State has a natural right, in cases not within the compact, to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits? The Committee of Correspondence was instructed to request the other States "to concur in declaring those acts void and of no force, and each to take measures of his own for providing that neither these acts, nor any other of the general government, not plainly and intentionally authorized. by the
Constitution, shall be exercised within their re. spective territories? The Resolutions passed the Kentucky legjs lature, 14 Nov. 1798, with only two or three dis seining votes, and similar Resolutions, drafted by James Madison, were adopted by the Virginia legislature, 24 Dec. 1798, by a vote of 100 to 63 in the house of delegates, and 14 to 3 in the senate. The fact that both Jefferson and Madi son were afterward elected Presidents of the United States, and that the Democratic party, which they represented, remained in power for many years, has been accepted as indicating that the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions had the substantial approval of the American people.
See UNITED STATES.