After John Adams had been elected to the Presidency in 1796, the Democratic-Republican Party began to use the typical political method of attacking the party in power, namely the Federalists, through newspaper articles and through written pamphlets. Since many of the foreigners who had come to America at this time were Democratic-Republican in their political beliefs, numerous articles criticizing President John Adams and his administration were written by them. In order to combat these political attacks, the Federalist leaders were responsible for getting two most unusual laws passed: the Alien and Sedition Laws. The Alien Act provided that the residence time required of foreigners for naturalization (the process whereby a foreigner becomes a citizen) was to be fourteen years instead of five years and that the President was henceforth authorized to imprison or deport without trial foreigners whom he considered dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States or to allow others to remain. The Sedition Act stated that any person convicted of defaming, either by spoken or by written word, the government of the United States or the President of the United States or the Congress of the United States was subject to a fine of not more than $2,000 and to imprisonment for not more than two years. Several Federalists considered the passage of these laws unjust. Thomas Jefferson, the Vice-President of the United States at the time of their passage, decided to attract the attention of voters to the passage of such laws. He drew up resolutions in 1789 which stated that: (1) the Alien and Sedition Laws were unconstitutional because the President of the United States had no power to imprison or deport any person without a judicial trial and because Congress did not have the right to limit the freedom of speech and of press and (2) since the Union was a compact of states and since the federal government had only the particular powers granted to it by the states, each state had the right to decide the constitutionality of Congressional laws. Because these resolutions were first introduced into the Kentucky legislature, they were later called the Kentucky Resolutions. At the same time, James Madison drew up similar resolutions which were introduced into the Virginia Assembly. The Virginia Resolutions are significant since they explain the theory of "strict construction" (that the federal government has only those powers specifically delegated to it) and they illustrate the strong "states' rights" feeling which existed in the State of Virginia. Virginia and Kentucky were the only two states to openly protest the Alien and Sedition Acts. Many of the northern states denied on this occasion the right of a state to judge a federal law. They affirmed, on the contrary, the belief that only the federal courts can decide the constitutionality of a federal law.