Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

Cultural  

1. Statements of principle adopted by two state legislatures in the 1790s; they affirmed states' rights in response to the federal Alien and Sedition Acts. James Madison wrote the Virginia Resolutions, and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolutions. Jefferson's draft of the Kentucky Resolutions included the statement that nullification was an appropriate course of action for a state in the face of a dangerous increase in the strength of the federal government. Although the Kentucky legislature approved most of his draft, it did not adopt this statement.

---

Example Sentences

The last of the founding fathers beseeched Americans to cherish and perpetuate their union, but the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions along with Madison’s unwillingness to call for the abolition of slavery would continue to imperil the republic he so treasured.

From New York Times

In response, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, whose Democratic-Republican Party was favored by immigrants, wrote the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which held that individual states had the right to nullify unconstitutional laws within their borders.

From The New Yorker

In that role, he worked to undermine Adams’ controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, designed to halt immigration and suppress “harmful speech,” by drafting the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions with James Madison.

From Time

But in its immediate origin nullification arose from the outcry against the protective tariff, and it is almost as unfair to ascribe it in any way to the influence of slavery as it would be to assign a similar cause for the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, or to say that the absence of slavery was the reason for the abortively disloyal agitation in New England, which culminated in the Hartford Convention.

From Project Gutenberg

Its immediate cause was the high tariff; remotely it sprang from the same feelings which produced the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798.

From Project Gutenberg