On a hot July day in 1798, Luther Baldwin spent the afternoon in his local tavern in Newark, New Jersey, tossing back mugs of hard cider.....Adams was a Federalist, and Baldwin—a veteran of the Continental Army who worked on a garbage dinghy—was a Democratic-Republican, the opposition party led by Vice President Thomas Jefferson. Adams had just signed into law the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, including a law that made it a crime to criticize the federal government.