To: longnshort who wrote (332078 ) 4/7/2007 4:23:00 PM From: tejek Respond to YAWN "The only known civil criminal indictment under the Logan Act was one that occurred in 1803 when a grand jury indicted Francis Flournoy, a Kentucky farmer, who had written an article in the Frankfort Guardian of Freedom under the pen name of "A Western American." In the article, Flournoy advocated a separate nation in the western part of the United States that would ally with France. The United States Attorney for Kentucky, an Adams appointee and brother-in-law of Chief Justice John Marshall, went no further than procuring the indictment of Flournoy. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory later that year appeared to cause the separatism issue to become obsolete.[4]As a point of interest, after a quarrel with President John Adams over Adams's plan to make peace with France, Timothy Pickering, who had called for enactment of the Logan Act as Secretary of State, was dismissed from office in May 1800. In 1802, he and a band of Federalists, agitated at the lack of support for Federalists, attempted to gain support for the secession of New England from the rest of the Jeffersonian United States. The irony of a Federalist moving against the national government was not lost among his dissenters. He was named to the United States Senate as a senator from Massachusetts in 1803 as a member of the Federalist Party. He lost his senate seat in 1811, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in U.S. House election, 1812, where he remained until 1817. His congressional career is best remembered for his leadership of the New England secession movement (see Essex Junto and the Hartford Convention). No charges under the Logan Act were filed against Pickering and his succession supporters."en.wikipedia.org
