In 1798, president John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, a set of laws that restricted immigration and free speech. At the time, our infant nation was on the verge of war with France, and Adams was looking for a handy way to remove anyone he thought might be working with the enemy. But critics, including his vice president and future successor, Thomas Jefferson, accused Adams of using his power to silence dissent and infringe on Americans’ First Amendment rights.
So Adams did what any thin-skinned wannabe autocrat would do and jailed one of his leading critics, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. He also ordered the arrest of a congressman from Vermont, Matthew Lyon of Fair Haven, who published a newspaper, The Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth, that was critical of Adams. Lyons printed it on a press purchased from Franklin, using typeset letters made from melted-down bullets left from the Revolutionary War.
Federal marshals arrested Lyon in October 1798, marching him 40 miles north from Fair Haven to Vergennes, where he would sit in a cold jail cell while he ran for reelection — and won, handily.
If the idea of a sitting congressman being jailed for criticizing the president seems preposterous, Richmond singer-songwriter John Daly says, well … watch out.
“The Alien and Sedition laws that Adams signed, those are the same laws that Trump is going to use after being inaugurated to start kicking people out of the country,” Daly said, referring to incoming president Donald Trump. “History is seriously repeating itself.” (Three of the four Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were soon repealed or allowed to lapse. Only the Alien Enemies Act remains on the books. It allows a president to deport noncitizens in some circumstances.)
In 2017, shortly after Trump began his first term, the musician and piano tuner penned a musical called Spit’n Lyon: An Unsung Soldier’s Song. Written with longtime friend and collaborator Greg Goldman and aided by Hinesburg-based teacher Niel Maurer, Spit’n Lyon is a 30-song opus telling the story of Lyon’s life, from his youth as an Irish revolutionary to his arrival in America as an indentured servant to his service in the Revolutionary War as one of the Green Mountain Boys to his battle with Adams and censorship.
Daly released the album and performed some of it at the Vermont Statehouse in 2019. Dressed in period-accurate garb including breeches, a doublet and a tricorn hat, Daly and members of his folk-rock outfit the John Daly Band played songs and read excerpts from Lyon’s writings.
“I’m not going to lie, I was really hoping the relevance of the story would diminish,” Daly said in a phone call last week. Trump’s reelection in November caused Daly to revisit the musical. “I’m shocked and dismayed that it still parallels what’s happening in the country right now, but boy, does it ever.”
To that end, Daly will perform Spit’n Lyon once again on January 19 — the day before Trump is inaugurated — at the American Legion Post 49 in Fair Haven on behalf of the Fair Haven Historical Society. When he does, once again dressed for the part, Daly will be continuing a long tradition of musicians serving as truth tellers in society.
“The Green Mountain Boys had a bard named Thomas Rowley,” Daly said. “Back then you needed someone to sing songs to let you know what was going on because the vast majority of people were illiterate. The bard was the truth teller.”
It’s a role Daly believes is more important than ever, even as he sees TV networks and corporate media “kissing the ring,” as he described it, cozying up to the incoming Trump administration and paring back their criticism. He pointed to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg‘s recent announcement that Instagram and Facebook postings will no longer be subject to independent fact-checking. The decision is seen by many as designed to appease Trump, whose shaky relationship with the truth saw him banned from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook after the January 6 insurrection in 2021.
But Daly stressed that performing the musical isn’t just about drawing parallels to the present. “I also want Vermont kids to know what they’re made of,” he said. “This one person stood up to the corrupt, even when they jailed him for it. He wouldn’t bow before a king — Adams literally demanded people genuflect before him and wanted to be referred to as ‘His Majesty.'”
Daly is concerned journalists and artists could be jailed under the Trump administration.
“Some of Adams’ speeches really parallel Trump’s,” Daly said. “Adams wanted to get rid of the Irish and French, particularly, which made up a huge portion of Vermont’s population at the time, so it was an important fight for Lyon.”
In the end, Lyon’s resistance played a part in helping Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party defeat Adams for reelection in 1800 in a nice bit of “turnabout is fair play.”
“It’s the 250th anniversary of democracy in America in 2026,” Daly said. “Thomas Jefferson knew democracy couldn’t survive without an informed electorate. It’s more important than ever to look at our history. Vermonters should know about the man who fought against a fledgling nation slipping back into the clutches of monarchy, who was jailed for speaking truth to power.”
This article appears in The Wellness Issue 2025.
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