President Jefferson's Chief Measures

HOW rapidly the face of the world changes in these modern times ! As recently as 1794, it was a common occurrence for such a letter as the following to be read out in church at seaport towns, like Boston, Salem, Newburyport, where, perhaps, the writer had been known from his boyhood, and where his family still lived : —“I was captured on the 18th of October by an Algerine corsair and stripped of everything. On arriving at Algiers I was conducted to the Dey’s house, and in the morning was sent to the slaves’ bagnio, and there received an iron shackle round my leg and a chain of twenty pounds, and three loaves of coarse bread for twenty-four hours, and some water, and was immediately put to hard labor. My situation is so deplorable that to mention but a small part of it would require much longer time than I am allowed.” ¹

And the great cost of ransoming a captured brother and fellow-citizen must have been most discouraging to a congregation acquainted only with simple manners and frugal habits, — codfish for Saturday’s dinner, baked beans on Sunday, and a best coat worn for twenty years. Here is the bill sent to Mr. Jefferson, plenipotentiary at Paris, in 1786, for the first American crews ever captured by the Barbary pirates : —

For 3 captains, $ 6,000 each . . . $18,000

2 mates, $4,000 each .... 8,ooo

2 passengers, $ 4,000 each • . . 8,000

14 seamen, $1,400 each . . . 29 600

$ 53,000

For custom, II per cent . . . 5,896

$ 59.496

If he was appalled at such a demand (Congress only empowered him to offer two hundred dollars a man), what must have been the feeling of a Newburyport family in average circumstances, on learning that the release of a father, husband, brother, son, depended on their raising six thousand hard dollars ? Many a homestead was deeply mortgaged, and many sold, to procure the money, which sometimes reached Algiers or Tripoli only to find the ob ject of compassion in a captive’s grave. Nor did the price materially decline during the next ten years. In 1794 we find supercargoes quoted at $ 4,000, cabin passengers at $4,000, and cabinboys at $1,400. Business, it is true, could always be done on more favorable terms if the ransom was paid in guns, powder, sail-cloth, rope, fast-sailing schooners, and naval stores generally ; but against this Jefferson, from first to last, set his face, though all the other powers complied. Two Moors would sometimes be taken in exchange for one Christian, and a single Turk was regarded as equivalent to half a dozen Christian dogs; but it was necessary first to catch your Turk. This traffic in Christians was very profitable. In 1786 the number of captives in Algiers alone was officially reported to Mr. Jefferson at twenty-two hundred ; and during the early autumn of 1793 ten American vessels were taken by the Barbary corsairs ; for the release ot the crews of which a collection was taken in every church in New England on Thanksgiving Day of that year. People gave liberally (one gentleman subscribed $4,000, “enough to redeem a master or supercargo ”) ; but it was not till the general ransom by Congress, in 1796, that the poor fellows saw their homes again. A million dollars it cost the government to buy that shameful peace, and another million during the four years of Mr. Adams’s term to keep the peace ; a large part of which was paid to the pirates in naval stores and ammunition. It is hard to believe that one item in this account was officially described as “a frigate to carry thirtysix guns, for the Dey of Algiers.” But it was even so. The bill that Congress paid for her construction, equipment, and navigation to Algiers amounted to $99 727, and she went crammed with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of powder, lead, timber, rope, shells, canvas, and other means of piracy. One hundred and twentytwo captives, however, came home in that year, 1796.; among whom were ten who had been in slavery for eleven years.

And how can we sufficiently admire the impudence of those corsairs? A man-of-war, one would think, went very far in merely saluting their flag ; but that was only a small part of the infamy. The pirates returned the salute, and then demanded from the man-ofwar one barrel of powder for every gun they had fired ! Every power seems to have conceded this, as a matter of course, until the American consul in 1798 refused. The conversation that occurred on this subject between the Bey of Tunis and Consul William Eaton is a curiosity of negotiation. The consul endeavored at first to pass it over as something too trifling for a sovereign prince to regard.

BEY.However trifling it may appear to you, to me it is important. Fifteen barrels of powder will furnish a cruiser which may capture a prize and net me one hundred thousand dollars.

CONSUL. The concession is so degrading that our nation will not yield to it. Both honor and justice forbid ; and we do not doubt that the world will view the demand as they will the concession.

BEY. YOU consult your honor, I my interest ; but if you wish to save your honor in this instance, give me fifty barrels of powder annually, and I will agree to the alteration.

CONSUL. We shall not expend a thought upon a proposition which aims at making us tributary. We will agree to pay for the powder you burned in the salute.

BEY (addressing his minister in Turkish). These people are Cheribeenas (Persian merchants). They are so hard, there is no dealing with them.

In a spirit not unlike this, the Dey of Algiers said, in 1793, taking the tone of an injured being: “ If I make peace with everybody, what shall I do with my corsairs ? What shall I do with my soldiers ? They would take off my head for want of other prizes, not being able to live upon their miserable allowance.” In 1801, when Mr. Jefferson came to the Presidency, the time had arrived, he thought, to place the intercourse of the United States and the Barbary Powers on a different footing.

The former practice of electing to the Presidency a man grown gray in the service of the public had this advantage : An intelligent and patriotic person, while serving in subordinate stations, acquires a great deal of special knowledge, gets a particular insight into weak places in the system of which he is a part, and perfects in his mind Schemes of change or reform. He has often said to himself, “If I were President, I would recommend such a plan or adopt such a measure.” Of all this knowledge, experience, and reflection the country derives the benefit, if the tried servant of the state happens to be one of those rarely gifted men who possess the strength to execute, in the presence of mankind, what they have meditated in seclusion.

From the beginning of the national part of his public life, Jefferson’s attention had been, of necessity, drawn to this fell business of capturing Christians for ransom. To the reams of despatches and reports which he wrote on the subject as plenipotentiary in Paris, he was obliged to add annual quires as Secretary of State in Philadelphia. Frustration followed frustration ; until, at length, when he was no longer in office, the government, in its extreme desire to procure the release of men wearing out their lives in bondage, yielded to the pirates’ demands, and got the captives home at the prodigious cost of money and dignity just named. But now he was President. The Federalists had availed themselves of the transient delusion of the people in 1797, with regard to the intentions of the French government, to create a navy ; which Jefferson immediately reduced by putting all but six vessels out of commission. His first important act as President was to despatch four of the six —three frigates and a sloop — to the Mediterranean to overawe the pirates, and cruise in protection of American commerce. Thus began the series of events which finally rendered the commerce of the world as safe from piracy in the Mediterranean as it was in the British Channel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant comrades executed the intentions of the government, and how, at last, the tardy naval powers of Europe followed an example they ought to have set, every one is supposed to know. Commodore Decatur was the Farragut of that generation. There was something really exquisite in Jefferson’s turning the infant navy of the infant nation to a use so legitimate, but also so unexpected and so original. What in 1785 he had urged the combined naval powers to attempt, he was enabled to begin to effect in 1805 by the confidence of Congress and the valor of a few heroes. There is something peculiarly pleasing in the spectacle of a peace man’s making a successful fight, when that fight is clearly forced upon him by an essential difference in the grade of civilization between himself and his enemy,— the only justification of a war that will stand modern tests.

The acquisition of Louisiana was, also, the completion of much which Jefferson had meditated years before. He may have heard Dr. Franklin repeat, in 1784, the remark which the acute old man once made to Mr. Jay, “ I would rather agree with the Spaniards to buy at a great price the whole of their right on the Mississippi than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my streetdoor.” Whether he heard it or not, his public acts and utterances show that he agreed with Dr. Franklin. As Secretary of State, in 1790, when there appeared some danger of Great Britain seizing New Orleans, he gave it as his official opinion to President Washington, that, rather than see Louisiana and Florida added to the British Empire, the United States should brave the risks of joining actively in the general war then supposed to be impending. But, not less averse to the French possessing it, he warned them also, in the same year, to let it alone. The French Minister in Philadelphia was supposed to have indulged a dream of planting a new colony of his countrymen somewhere within the vast and vague Louisiana that was once all their own. The Secretary of State gave him Punch’s advice, DON’T. He caused it to be softly intimated to him after his return to France, through the American Minister there, that such a project could not be advantageous to France, and would not be pleasing to the United States. France, he owned, might sell a few more yards of cloth and silk in that country ; but, said he, the Count de Moustier did not take into consideration “what it would cost France to nurse and protect a colony there till it should be able to join its neighbors, or to stand by itself, and then what it would cost her to get rid of it.” And there was something else the Count did not think of. “The place being ours,” added Mr. Jefferson, “ their yards of cloth and silk would be as freely sold as if it were theirs.” This in 1790, twelve years before there was any expectation of the place being ours.

The war-cloud of 1790 blew over, and the Spaniards remained in possession. Trouble enough they gave the government during the rest of Jefferson’s tenure of office. Holding both Florida and Louisiana, they sometimes stirred up the Creeks to war ; they always interposed obstacles to the free outlet of the products of Kentucky ; and they occasionally threatened to close the mouth of the river altogether to American commerce. In many a vigorous despatch, Jefferson remonstrated with the Spanish government, warning them, that a spark might kindle a flame in the breasts of “our borderers” which could not be controlled. “In such an event,” he wrote in 1791, “Spain cannot possibly gain; and what may she not lose?” Next year he demanded a frank and complete concession of the right to navigate the river ; appealing, finally, to the law of nature, written on the heart of man in the deepest characters, that the ocean is free to all men, and the rivers to all who inhabit their shores. The treaty was concluded ; but there was never a year thereafter in which the Kentuckians were not in feud, more or less violent, with the Spanish authorities at New Orleans. There were times when only the strong, instinctive regard for law and decorum which marks men who own no laws but of their own making, prevented “our borderers” from seizing New Orleans, and setting the Spaniards floating down toward the sea.

Jefferson had not been President two months before Louisiana became again a subject of anxious concern with him. A despatch from Rufus King, American Minister in London, dated March 29, 1801, contained an intimation of startling import. It was whispered about, he said, in diplomatic circles, that Spain had ceded Louisiana and Florida to France ! Can it be true ? Some weeks later, Mr. King, who felt all the import of such a change, conversed with Lord Hawksbury on the subject, using as a text Montesquieu’s remark, “ It is happy for the commercial powers that God has permitted Turks and Spaniards to be in the world, since of all nations they are the most proper to possess a great empire with insignificance.” “ We are contented,” said Mr. King, “that the Floridas should remain in the hands of Spain, but should not be willing to see them transferred, except to ourselves.” By Floridas he meant Louisiana and h Florida. Lord Hawksbury proved on this occasion that he perfectly divined Bonaparte’s object. He said, in June, 1801, what Bonaparte avowed in April, 1803, that the acquisition of Louisiana was the beginning of an attempt to undo the work of the Seven Years’ War. During all the rest of the year 1801, we see Mr. Madison writing anxiously to the American Ministers in Paris, London, and Madrid : How is it about this rumored cession of Louisiana ? Inquire. Send us information.

Those gentlemen inquired diligently. Mr. King, in December, I8OI, was all but sure the cession had been made, and sent what he believed to be a true copy of one of the treaties involving the cession. Mr. Livingston had “broken the subject” to two of Bonaparte’s ministers. Botlh denied that the province had been ceded. One of them, in reply to an intimation that the United States would buy it, said,

“ None but spendthrifts satisfy their debts by selling their lands” ; adding, after a pause, “but it is not ours to give.” Talleyrand also(December, 1801) declared that the cession had only been talked of. In March, 1802, when Mr. Livingston had been several months in Paris, he was still unable to get official information of a treaty which had then been in existence a year. But he had no serious doubts. “It is a darling object with the First Consul,” he wrote to Mr. Madison, March, 24, “ who sees in it a means to gratify his friends and to dispose of his armies. There is a man here who calls himself a Frenchman by the name of Francis Tatergem, who pretends to have great interest with the Creek nations. He has been advanced to the rank of a general of division. He persuades them that the Indians are extremely attached to France, and hate the Americans; that they can raise twenty thousand warriors ; that the country is a paradise.

I believe him to be a mere adventurer, but he is listened to.”

This news, confirmed from many quarters and inferred from many facts, was alarming indeed. Nor could it be longer confined to official circles. Kentucky was in a flame. The President was deeply stirred ; for he was as well aware as Rufus King that the new master of the mouth of the Mississippi was not a person whom an eloquent despatch could intimidate. The Spaniards had retained Louisiana on sufferance ; the United States could have it at any time from them; but the French would be likely to hold their ancient possession with a tighter clutch, and not content themselves with two or three trading-posts in a fertile territory large enough for an empire. Jefferson, from the hour when the intelligence reached him, had only this thought: The French must not have New Orleans ; no one but ourselves must own our own street-door. He had been a year in pursuit of his object, before the public suspected that the peace of Amiens was only a truce ; and he was prepared to join the next coalition against Bonaparte, rather than not accomplish it. So far was Mr. Livingston from anticipating Jefferson’s scheme, that he, as he himself reports, “on all occasions declared that, as long as France conforms to the existing treaty between us and Spain, the government of the United States does not consider herself as having any interest in oppposing the exchange.” These words were written January 13, 1802. The despatches which he received from Washington in May must have surprised him, for they notified him that the government of the United States was resolved to prevent the exchange.

Besides the formal and official despatches which Mr. Madison wrote on the subject, the President himself addressed to Mr. Livingston one of those letters of fire which he occasionally produced when his whole soul was set upon accomplishing a purpose. On the one hand, the United States could not let the French control the mouth of the Mississippi ; on the other, the President felt that a conflict with Napoleon would finally necessitate an “ entangling alliance ” with Great Britain. The one chance, he thought, of avoiding both these giant evils lay in an appeal to the reason of Napoleon, for whose understanding he had then some respect. This powerful letter, though directed to the American Minister, was evidently aimed at the intellect of the First Consul. He began by saying that, of all the nations in the world, France was the one with which the United States had the fewest points of probable collision, and the most of a communion of interests ; and for this reason we had ever esteemed her our natural friend ; viewing her growth as our own, her misfortunes ours. BUT - “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will erelong yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants. France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would not, perhaps, be very long before some circumstance might arise which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her. Not so can it ever be in the hands of France ; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth, — these circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends, when they meet in so irritating a position. They, as well as we, must be blind if they do not see this ; and we must be very improvident if we do not begin to make arrangements on that hypothesis. The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water-mark. It seals the union of two nations, who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. We must turn all our attentions to a maritime force, for which our resources place us on very high ground ; and having formed and connected together a power which may render reinforcement of her settlements here impossible to France, make the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the signal for tearing up any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the United British and American nations.”

His is conclusion was, that it was for the most obvious interest of both nations for France to cede Louisiana to the United States ; but if that could not be, then, at least, the island of New Orleans and Florida, making the Mississippi River the boundary between the possessions of the two countries. “But, still,” added the President, “we should consider New Orleans and the Floridas no equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with France produced by her vicinage.” At this time the rumor prevailed that Florida also had been ceded to France ; which proved to be not the case, much to the cost of the United States a quarter of a century later.

It happened that an ancient French friend of Jefferson’s, M. Dupont de Nemours, a republican exile of the Revolution, was going home, in the spring of 1802, after a long residence in the United States, to spend the evening of his life in his native country. To him the President entrusted this letter open, urging him, before sealing it, to possess himself thoroughly of its contents, in order that he might aid in “ informing the wisdom of Bonaparte ” and enlightening the circle that surrounded him. “ In Europe,” wrote Jefferson to this republican statesman and author, “ nothing but Europe is seen ” ; a remark nearly as true in 1873 as it was in 1802. “ But,” he continued, “this little event, of France’s possessing herself of Louisiana, which is thrown in as nothing, as a mere makeweight in the general settlement of accounts,— this speck which now appears as an almost invisible point in the horizon,— is the embyro of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic, and involve in its effects their highest destinies.” He asked another service of this friend, who was not less a friend to the United States than to the President. Talleyrand, Minister for Foreign Affairs, was at this moment, if we may believe M. Thiers, the minister who could do most to soothe the blinding passions of Napoleon, and dispose him to a reasonable view of things. But Talleyrand was supposed to be out of humor with the United States, on account of the explosion of 1797, commonly called the XY Z affair ; when it was a point of party tactics with the Federalists to maintain that Talleyrand was the person who “ struck ” the American envoys for twelve hundred thousand francs. The President requested M. Dupont to endeavor to talk Talleyrand out of this ill-humor, by assuring him that the people who spread abroad that story had been consigned to private life, while those now in power were “precisely those who disbelieved it, and saw nothing in it but an attempt to deceive our country.” He had even another request, so intent was he upon this vital business. He begged M. Dupont to deliver the letter to Chancellor Livingston with his own hands, and to charge Madame Dupont, if any accident happened to him, to deliver it with her own hands.

The letter and Mr. Madison’s despatches reached Mr. Livingston in due time. M. Dupont could not do much toward “informing the wisdom of Bonaparte.” He did himself the honor of detesting Bonaparte and all his works ; refused to serve under him when office was offered ; and, at last, when the tyrant returned from Elba, the old man, past seventy-five then, despairing of his country, declared he would no longer be exposed to pass, in a day, from one master to another, comme une courtisane ou an courtisan, took ship for the United States, and spent the rest of his life on his son’s farm in Delaware.

Nor can it be said that Mr. Livingston made much impression upon Bonaparte’s wisdom. Bonaparte had no wisdom to inform. He was fully resolved upon his scheme of colonizing Louisiana on a grand scale ; the ships were designated, and officers were appointed. The expedition was to consist of two ships of the line, “ several frigates,” three thousand troops, and three thousand workmen. Bernadotte was first thought of for governor of the colony, but the appointment finally fell to Lieutenant-General Victor, who afterwards bore the ridiculous title of Due de Bellune, and survived all that histrionic pageant nearly long enough to see its mimickry mimicked in our own day. Mr. Livingston could make no head against the infatuation of the First Consul. He wrote an “ essay,” of which he had twenty copies printed, and extracted from Talleyrand a promise to “ give it an attentive perusal.” But he could not so much as prevail upon him to submit the case to his master. It would be “premature,” said the minister; “for the french government has determined to take possession first.” Mr. Livingston felt the uselessness of all attempts to prevent the departure of the fleet. “ There never was,” he wrote to Mr. Madison, September I, 1802, “a government in which less could be done by negotiation than here. There is no people, no legislature, no counsellors. One man is everything, He seldom asks advice, and never hears it unasked. His ministers are mere clerks ; and his legislature and counsellors are parade officers. Though the sense of every reflecting man about him is against this wild expedition, no one dares to tell him so.”

The whole twenty-eight volumes of the Correspondence of Napoleon, recently given to the world, might be cited in proof of Mr. Livingston’s remarks ; but the man never appears to have lived in quite such a tumult of business and passion as during that year and a half of “ peace.” In turning over the other volumes, the reader hears, from first to last, the steady roll of the drum, the rattle of musketry, the thunder of cannonade, the short, sharp word of command ; and he marks everywhere an assumption that fighting is the chief end of man, to which all other pursuits are immeasurably inferior. But in these two volumes of the year X., vulgarly styled 1802, there is such a rush of projects and topics demanding notice of the head of the nation, that we cannot discover a gap large enough to admit a modest and polite old gentleman, hard of hearing, with a request that the First Consul would please to be so good as to relinquish his Louisiana scheme, and cede all those uncounted and unknown square miles to a country which, according to Talleyrand, was of no more account in general politics that Genoa. Suppose it was on the 4th of May that Mr. Livingston desired a hearing. That day, in the lingo of the Revolution, which Bonaparte still employed, was called Floréal 14, An X. It was a busy day, indeed, with the First Consul ; for he was disposing the minds of men to view his next step toward an imperial throne, without an unmanageable excess of consternation. How sweetly this great histrionic genius discoursed to the Council ot State that morning! “In all lands, force yields to civic qualities. Bayonets fall before the priest who speaks in the name of Heaven, and before the man whose learning inspires respect. I have said to military men who had scruples, that a military government could never prevail in France until the nation had become brutalized by fifty years of ignorance. Soldiers are only the children of the citizens. The army, it is the nation.” Turn over a few leaves, and you catch him scolding Bcrthier for not pushing the conscription vigorously enough. “ Recruiting,” he adds, “ is the first and most important concern of the nation” Meanwhile, we see him thanking the Senate for a new proof of their confidence, in having made him First Consul for ten years longer. “ You judge that I owe a new sacrifice to the people. I shall make it if the will of the people commands that which your suffrage authorizes.”

This new lease of absolute power brought with it a world of urgent business, in the intervals of which there was nothing too high for him to meditate and no detail too trifling for him to rule. It was a case of one mind trying to govern a country, instead of all the mind in it, which alone is competent to the task. If a general fights a duel, it is the First Consul who exiles him to that dread Siberia of the French of that age, “ thirty leagues from Paris.” A soldier kills himself for love; it is the First Consul who issues an Order of the Day on the subject : “A soldier should know how to bear up under the grief and melancholy of the passions ; there is as much true courage in enduring anguish of mind with constancy as in standing firm under the steady fire of a battery.” A young lady is attentive to the poor during an epidemic ; and it is still the First Consul who sends her twenty thousand francs, and a note telling her what a good girl she is.

In his strong desire to accomplish the purpose of his government, Mr. Livingston had recourse, like many others anxious diplomatists, to Joseph Bonaparte. Joseph told him that his brother was his own counseller, but at the same time an affectionate brother, to whom he had access at all times, and whose attention he could call to any subject. He assured the American Minister that his brother had read with attention the essay, or memoir, upon Louisiana which Mr. Livingston had prepared. Perhaps he had. One thing is certain ; the First Consul held to his purpose. The expedition was delayed, but not abandoned. December 19, 1802, Victor was ordered to despatch a member of his staff to Washington to notify the French Minister there that the French government was about to take possession of Louisiana ; and, February 3, 1803, there was an order given (8 Correspondence, 199) showing that the expedition was still under sailing, orders, and soon to depart. Livingston despaired of getting New Orleans by negotiation. His earnest “ notes” to Talleyrand remained unnoticed. His opinion was this : If we want New Orleans, we must seize it first and negotiate afterwards. To Madison he wrote in November, 1802 : Nothing can now prevent the sailing of the expedition ; it will be off in twenty days ; two and a half millions of francs are appropriated to it. Fortify Natchez, strengthen all the upper posts.

All these efforts on the part of the administration to solve this problem by peaceful methods were unknown to the people of the United States. Kentucky saw the right of deposit denied by a foolish Spanish governor, and heard rumors of the French expedition which magnified it four times, making its three thousand troops and three thousand workmen, “ twenty thousand troops.” The press and stump of Kentucky, it is said, began to utter words like these: “The Mississippi is ours by the law of nature, by the authority of numbers, and by the right of necessity. If Congress cannot give it to us, we must take it ourselves. No protection, no allegiance !" The Federalists were not backward to take up this promising cry. “ The French troops are already at sea,” said Gouverneur Morris ; “ their arrival should be anticipated ; it is time to come to an open rupture.” With all his own fine patience, the President bore in silence, for a whole year, the outcry of the Kentuckians and the misinterpretation of the Federalists. But only a tew days of the new year, 1803, had passed before he perceived the necessity of some measure which the people could know, discuss, and observe. He wrote to his old friend, Monroe, January 10 : —

“ I have but a moment to inform you that the fever into which the Western mind is thrown by the affairs at New Orleans (denying the right of deposit), stimulated by the mercantile and generally the federal interest, threatens to overbear our peace..... I shall to-morrow nominate you to the Senate for an extraordinary mission to France..... Pray, work night and day to arrange your affairs for a temporary absence, perhaps for a long one.”

Two months later, Mr. Monroe was travelling posthaste from Havre to Paris, charged with the President’s fullest instructions, authorized to give two millions of dollars, if he could do no better, for the island of New Orleans alone, and empowered by Congress to pay cash down on the conclusion of the bargain. X Y Z was not forgotten. Ready money might still have a certain weight in Paris, the President thought, when he recommended the appropriation.

How changed the situation in April, 1803, from the time when the President stunned Mr. Monroe with the announcement of his nomination ! For some months, as we see so plainly in his Correspondence, Bonaparte had been working himself up to the point of breaking the peace of Amiens ; fuming about Malta, about the assaults of the London press, about the Count d’Artois wearing the decorations of the old monarchy at a dress parade in England, and all those other silly halfpretexts which he afterwards enumerated ; while urging his Minister of War to take every man from the villages which a merciless conscription could extort. At length, February 19, 1803, there fell from his pen, while he was writing his imitation-Message to his sham legislature, the taunt, once so familiar to all the world, “ In England, two parties contend for power. One has made peace with us and seems decided to maintain it. The other has sworn implacable hate against France. While this struggle lasts, it is but prudence on our part to have five hundred thousand men ready to defend and avenge ourselves. However the intrigue in London may issue, no other people will be drawn into the contest ; and the government says with just pride, ALONE ENGLAND CANNOT TO-DAY HOLD HER OWN AGAINST FRANCE ! ” The very next day, the order went to the Louisiana expedition at Dunkirk : Don’t sail till further orders. George III. was prompt enough with his retort. He read Bonaparte’s message about February 23, and on March 8 he sent to the House of Commons the lumbering message in twenty lines that gave Napoleon Bonaparte the pretext he longed for, and began the war that ended at —Sedan. The king merely acquainted his faithful Commons that, as considerable military preparations were going on in France, England, too, must begin to think of “additional measures of precaution.” Bonaparte continued the contest by storming at the English ambassador in the Tuileries, at a Sunday reception, in the sight and hearing of the whole diplomatic corps, two hundred in number. In a word: Both parties meant war; and war they had, to their hearts’ content.

A month passed of intensest preparation on both sides. Bonaparte’s plan was to invade England, — a thing of immense difficulty and vast expense. He wanted money, and dared not press the French people further at the beginning of a war. On Easter Sunday, April 10, in the afternoon, after having taken conspicuous part in the revived ceremonies of the occasion (Mr. Monroe being still many leagues from Paris, but expected hourly), the First Consul opened a conversation with two of his ministers upon Louisiana. One of these ministers, who reports the scene, was that old friend of Jefferson’s, Barbé-Marbois, for whom, twenty-six years before, he had compiled his Notes on Virginia, — a gentleman ten years resident at Philadelphia, where he married the daughter of a governor of Pennsylvania. The other minister had served in America under Rochambeau during the Revolutionary War.

“ I know,” said the First Consul, speakingwith “passion and vehemence, " — “ I know the full value of Louisiana, and I have been desirous of repairing the fault of the French negotiator who abandoned it in 1763. A few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me, it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it than to those to whom I wish to deliver it. The English have successively taken from France Canada, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the richest portions of Asia. They shall not have the Mississippi, which they covet. I have not a moment to lose in putting it out of their reach ; I think of ceding it to the United States, I can scarcely say that I cede it to them, for it is not yet in our possession. If, however, I leave the least time to our enemies, I shall only transmit an empty title to those republicans whose friendship I seek. They only ask of me one town in Louisiana ; but I already consider the colony as entirely lost ; and it appears to me that in the hands of this growing power, it will be more useful to the policy and even to the commerce of France than if I should attempt to keep it.”

He paused to hear the opinion of the two ministers. Barbé-Marbois said, in a long discourse : The province is as good as gone. Let the Americans have it. The other said at great length : No ; there is still a chance of our being able to keep it; it will be time to give up so precious a possession when we must. The three continued to converse on the subject till late at night, and the master broke up the conference without announcing his decision. The ministers remained at St. Cloud. At daybreak, Barbé-Marbois received a summons to attend the First Consul in his cabinet. Despatches had arrived from England showing that the king and ministry were entirely resolved upon war, and were pushing preparations with extraordinary vigor. When M. Marbois had read these, Bonaparte resumed the subject of the evening’s conversation : —

“ Irresolution and deliberation,” he said, “are no longer in reason. I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede ; it is the whole colony, without any reservation. I renounce it with the greatest regret. To attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate this affair with the envoys of the United States. Do not even await the arrival of Mr. Monroe ; have an interview this very day with Mr. Livingston. But I require a great deal of money for this war, and I would not like to commence it with new contributions. If I should regulate my terms according to the value of those vast regions to the United States, the indemnity would have no limits. I will be moderate, in consideration of the necessity in which I am of making a sale. But keep this to yourself. I want fifty millions of francs, and for less than that sum I will not treat ; I would rather make a desperate attempt to keep those fine countries. To-morrow you shall have your full powers.”

The deed was done. The rest was merely the usual cheapening and chaffering that passes between buyer and seller when the commodity has no market price. Mr. Monroe’s arrival was exquisitely timed ; for, by this time, Mr. Livingston had lost all faith in the possibility of getting New Orleans by purchase, and was unprepared even to consider a proposition for buying the whole province. He evidently thought that the French ministers were all liars together, and he looked upon this sudden change of tone, after so many months of neglect or evasion, as a mere artifice for delay. “ If Mr. Monroe agrees with me,” said Livingston to Talleyrand, a day or two before Monroe’s arrival, “ we shall negotiate no further on the subject, but advise our government to take possession. The times are critical, and, though I do not know what instructions Mr. Monroe may bring, I am perfectly satisfied they will require a precise and prompt notice. I am fearful, from the little progress I have made, that my government will consider me a very indolent negotiator.” Talleyrand laughed. “ I will give you a certificate,” said he, “that you are the most importunate one I have yet met with.”

But Mr. Livingston soon discovered that all had really changed with regard to Louisiana. On the day after Monroe’s arrival, while sitting at dinner with him and other guests, Livingston espied M Barbé - Marbois strolling about in his garden. During the interview that followed, business made progress. Marbois took the liberty of telling a few diplomatic falsehoods to the American Minister. Instead of the “ fifty millions,” which, in his History of Louisiana, he says Napoleon demanded, he told Mr. Livingston that the sum required was one hundred millions. He represented the First Consul as saying, “ Well, you have charge of the treasury: make the Americans give you one hundred millions, pay their own claims, and take the whole country.” Mr. Livingston was aghast at the magnitude of the sum. After a long conversation, Marbois dropped to sixty millions ; the United States to pay its own claimants, which would require twenty millions more. “ It is in vain to ask such a thing,” said Livingston ; “ it is so greatly beyond our means.” He thought, too, that his government would be “ perfectly satisfied with New Orleans and Florida, and had no disposition to extend across the river.”

Then it was that Mr. Monroe, fresh from Washington, and knowing the full extent of the President’s wishes, knowing his aversion to the mere proximity of the French, came upon the scene with decisive and most happy effect. In a few days, all was arranged. M. Barbé-Marbois’s offer was accepted. Twenty days after the St. Cloud conference, and eighteen days after Mr. Monroe’s arrival, the convention was concluded which gave imperial magnitude and completeness to the United States, and supplied Napoleon with fifteen millions of dollars to squander upon a vain attempt to invade and ravage another country. M. Marbois relates that, as soon as the three negotiators had signed the treaties, they all rose and shook hands. Mr. Livingston gave utterance to the joy and satisfaction of them all.

“We have lived long,” said he, “but this is the noblest work of our whole lives. The treaty which we have just signed has not been obtained by art or dictated by force, and is equally advantageous to the two contracting parties. It will change vast solitudes into flourishing districts. From this day, the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank. The United States will re-establish the maritime rights of all the world, which are now usurped by a single nation. The instruments which we have just signed will cause no tears to be shed ; they prepare ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures. The Mississippi and Missouri will see them succeed one another and multiply, truly worthy of the regard and care of Providence, in the bosom of equality, under just laws, freed from the errors of superstition and bad government.”

Bonaparte was so well pleased with the bargain that he gave M. Marbois one hundred and ninety-two thousand francs of the proceeds. Sixty millions, he said, was a pretty good price for a province of which he had not taken possession, and might not be able to retain twenty-four hours. He also said : “ This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble her pride.” Strange to relate, the British government expressed approval of the cession. All the world, indeed, rejoiced or acquiesced in it, excepting alone the irreconcilable fag-end of the Federalist party, who, from the first rumor of the purchase to the voting of the last dollar necessary to complete it, opposed the acquisition.

One of the Federalist members, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, objected to it on grounds that were elevated and patriotic. Looking into the future with wise but only mortal forecast, he dreaded so vast an increase to the territory out of which many slave States could be made. His son relates that, during the happiest years of the Era of Good Feeling under Monroe, he would say : “ You and I may not live to see the day ; but, before that boy is off the stage, he will see this country torn in pieces by the fierce passions that are now sleeping.” Both father and son lived to “ see the day ” ; and the father, in 1864, his ninety-second year and his last, must have clearly seen that slavery, which vitiated all our politics, spoiled every measure and injured every man, was an evanescent thing. Slavery passed, but Louisiana remains. “ If slavery is not wrong,” Mr. Lincoln said, in that homely, vivid way of his, “nothing is wrong.” It was so wrong that, while it lasted, nothing in America could be quite right, except war upon it.

One consideration embarrassed the President amid the relief and triumph of this peaceful solution of a problem so alarming. He, a strict constructionist, had done an act unauthorized by the Constitution. He owned and justified it thus : “ The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution. The legislature, in casting behind them metaphysical subtleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the case of a guardian, investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory ; and saying to him when of age, I did this for your good ; I pretend to no right to bind you; you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can ; I thought it my duty to risk myself for you. But we shall not be disavowed by the nation, and their act of indemnity will confirm and not weaken the Constitution, by more strongly marking out its lines.” He proposed that the case should be met by an additional article to the Constitution. It is to be regretted that this was not done ; for, let us travel as far away as we will from the strict Jeffersonian rule, to strict construction we must come back at last, if it takes a century of heroic struggle to reach it.

It was like Jefferson, when he had won Louisiana, to think first of offering the governorship to Lafayette. It had to remain a thought only. Upon reconsidering the situation, he deemed it best not to gratify a sentiment by an act which might be construed as a reflection upon the seller. Andrew Jackson, who was then getting tired of serving as Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, was strongly urged for the place ; and because he had been urged, and because he would have liked the appointment, he refrained from calling upon the President when he was in Washington in April, 1804. So I gathered in Nashville from a yellow and musty letter of the learned Judge, — which was, perhaps, the worst spelled and most ungrammatical letter a judge of a supreme court ever wrote. He said that, if he should call upon the President, it would be regarded as “the act of a courteor ” ; and, therefore, he “traviled on, enjoying his own feelings.” He confessed, too, that the governor of Louisiana ought to be acquainted with the French language. People can forgive bad spelling when it expresses sentiments so honorable ; and happy the President when the expectants of office behave in so considerate a manner.

The menacing complications with Spain which plagued the frontier for years, and tempted Burr to his destruction, need not detain us. The great patience of the President, his superiority to the pagan virtue of prompt resentment of injuries, the possession which the Christian spirit had of his nature, was an influence that held back the warlike spirits, and put to shame the malcontents who denied that he was a Christian, without having the least glimmer of an idea what Christianity means. It is amusing to read the expressions of scorn to which eminent churchmen gave utterance, when they spoke of Jefferson’s principle of exhausting every expedient known to the diplomatist’s art before entertaining the thought of war. “ There is just now,” wrote Gouverneur Morris, when he heard of Monroe’s appointment, “so much philosophy among our rulers that we must not be surprised at the charge of pusillanimity. And our people have so much of the mercantile spirit that, if other nations will keep their hands out of our pockets, it will be no trifling insult that will rouse us. Indeed, it is the fashion to say that when injured it is more honorable to wait in patience the uncertain issue of negotiation than promptly to do ourselves right by an act of hostility.” These are light words ; but the spirit which they breathe has desolated many and many a fair province, and shrouded in hopeless gloom millions upon millions of homes. All that hideous, groundless contest between Bonaparte and George III., which added sensibly to the burden of every honest family throughout the whole extent of Christendom, which did harm to every man, and good to no man, — all sprang from the spirit which the jovial Morris expressed in this gay letter to John Parish.

In the effort to keep the United States out of that contest, Jefferson gave a brief access of strength to the anti - Christian party. The outrages of the English captains were, indeed, most hard to bear ; and the question whether or not they ought to be borne, was one upon which the wisest men might well differ. All the Old Adam, and some of the New, rises and swells within us when we read, even at the distance of sixty-eight years, of the Leander firing upon a coasting vessel near Sandy Hook, and killing one of her crew. The President felt both the wrong and the indignity of the act. He ordered the Leander and her two companions out of the waters of the United States. He called upon the civil and military officers to arrest the offending captain if found within their jurisdiction. He warned all persons against giving aid to the vessels of the squadron. But he did something more difficult than such acts as these. When the treaty reached his hands, early in 1807, which Monroe and Pinckney, after a long and difficult negotiation, had concluded with England, discovering that it contained no renunciation of the impressment claim and no adequate concession of the rights of neutrals, he would not submit it to the Senate, but sent it back to London for revision, — to the sore mortification of Monroe. The more monstrous outrage upon the Chesapeake followed, rousing the whole people to a degree seldom equalled since America was settled. The English ship Leopard poured broadsides into the unprepared and unsuspecting Chesapeake, within hearing of the post we now call Fortress Monroe, killed three men, wounded eighteen, and carried away four sailors charged with desertion from the British Navy, — three Americans and one Englishman. The Englishman was hanged, and the three Americans were pardoned, on condition of returning to service.

Parties ceased to exist. “ I had only to open my hand,” wrote Jefferson once, “ and let havoc loose.” Only a President with such a deep hold upon the confidence of the people could have kept the peace ; nor could any but a Jefferson have done it ; because, at such a time, the chief of the state is apt to be himself possessed by the universal feeling. He is a “fellowcitizen,” as well as President. But this benignant spirit remained true to itself. “ If ever,” he wrote in 1812, “I was gratified with the possession of power, and of the confidence of those who had intrusted me with it, it was on that occasion when I was enabled to use both for the prevention of war, toward which the torrent of passion was directed almost irresistibly, and when not another person in the United States less supported by authority and favor could have resisted it.” Nor was his conduct wanting in “ spirit.”He instantly sent a frigate to England with a demand for reparation. He forbade the naval vessels of Great Britain all access to the harbors of the United States, except those in distress and those bearing despatches. Two thousand militia were posted on the coast to prevent British ships from obtaining; supplies. Every vessel in the navy was made ready for active service, and every preparation for war within the compass of the administration was pushed forward with vigor. He privately notified members of Congress to be ready to respond to his summons on the instant of the frigate’s return from England. Decatur, commanding at Norfork, was ordered to attack with all his force if the British fleet, anchored in the outer bay, should attempt to enter the inner. And the farresounding noise of all these proceedings called home from every sea the merchant vessels of the United States.

He expected war, and meant, if it could not be prevented honorably, to make the most of it. He intended, as we see by his confidential letters to Madison, to swoop upon England’s commerce, and to avail himself of the occasion to bring Spain to terms. These peaceable gentlemen, if you absolutely force them to a fight, sometimes lay about them in an unexpected manner. Thus, we find the President, on the cool summit of Monticello, in August, 1807, writing upon the Spanish imbroglio to Mr. Madison: “As soon as we have all the proofs of the Western intrigues, let us make a remonstrance and demand of satisfaction, and, if Congress approves, we may in the same instant make reprisals on the Floridas, until satisfaction for that and for spoliations, and until a settlement of boundary. I had rather have war against Spain than not, if we go to war against England. Our Southern defensive force can take the Floridas, volunteers for a Mexican army will flock to our standard, and rich pabulum will be offered to our privateers in the plunder of their commerce and coasts. Probably Cuba would add itself to our confederation.”

It is evident that he intended to make this war pay expenses, and to come out of it with troublesome neighbors removed farther off. All his letters of that summer show the two trains of thought : First, let us have no war, if we can properly avoid it; secondly, if we must have war, the conflict could not come at a better time than when England has a Bonaparte upon her hands, and we have a Spain to settle with.

Partial reparation was made for the outrage upon the Chesapeake, and formal “ regrets ” were expressed that it should have occurred ; but the claim to board American vessels and carry off deserters was reaffirmed by royal proclamation. No American ship was safe from violation, no American sailor was safe from impressment. In meeting this new aspect of the case, Jefferson took another leaf from Franklin’s book. In the Stamp-Act times, before the Revolution, Dr. Franklin was always an advocate for the peaceful remedy of non-intercourse ; and this had been a favorite idea of Jefferson’s when he was Secretary of State. In 1793, when the allied kings tried to starve France into an acceptance of the Bourbons by excluding supplies from all her ports, he deemed it “ a justifiable cause of war.” But he wrote to Madison that he hoped Congress, instead of declaring war, “ would instantly exclude from our ports all the manufactures, produce, vessels, and subjects of the nations committing the aggression, during the continuance of the aggression.” The embargo of 1807, which kept all American vessels and products safe at home, was conceived in the same spirit and had the same object. That object was, to use Jefferson’s own words, “ TO INTRODUCE BETWEEN NATIONS ANOTHER UMPIRE THAN ARMS.” He thought that Great Britain, so dependent then upon American materials and supplies, could not do without them as long or as easily as we could do without the money they brought.

But this policy was putting human nature to a test which only a very few of our race are wise and strong enough to bear. The embargo, of course, was passed by large majorities and hailed with enthusiasm ; it was striking back, in a new and easy way. But when commerce came to a stand, when ships and men were idle, when produce was of little value, and nothing could be done in the way of remedy but to wait, then the embargo was regarded in a different light. New England suffered most, not because it lost most, but because it was more immediately dependent upon commerce than the other States. Nor did the educated class in New England give moral support to the President in this interesting endeavor to introduce between nations “another umpire than arms.”

The inference which he drew from the power of New England in finally breaking down the embargo is worthy of note. He attributed it to the township system, which he valued most highly, and strove long to introduce into Virginia. “ How powerfully,” he wrote in 1816, “did we feel the energy of this system in the case of the embargo ! I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New England township. There was not an individual in those States whose body was not thrown, with all its momentum, into action ; and, although the whole of the other States were known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union. What could the unwieldy counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do ? Call a county meeting ; and the drunken loungers at and about the court-houses would have collected, the distances being too great for the good people and the industrious generally to attend. As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words, Carthago delendum est, so do I every opinion with the injunction, DIVIDE, THE COUNTIES INTO WARDS.”

But the embargo lasted to the end of his term. To the end of his days, he believed that if it had been faithfully observed by the whole people, it would have saved the country the War of 1812, and procured, what that war did not procure, an explicit renunciation of the claim to board and search. The two great powers of Europe gave it their approval, — Napoleon Bonaparte and the Edinburgh Review. There was then living in a secluded village of Massachusetts a marvellous boy of thirteen, famous in his county for the melodious verses which he had been writing for four or five years past, some of which had been published in the county paper, and one had been spoken with applause at a school exhibition. This wonderful boy, hearing dreadful things said on every side of the embargo, wrote a poem on the subject, which was published in Boston, in 1808, with this title, “The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times. A Satire. Together with the Spanish Revolution and other Poems. By WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.” That the father of Bryant and the other ruling spirits of New England should have refused their support to the embargo is almost of itself enough to show that the system was too far in advance of the time to be long effectual. But it answered the purpose of delay ; which, in the peculiar circumstances, was an immense advantage. “ If,” said the President once, “ we can delay but for a few years the necessity of vindicating the laws of nature on the ocean, we shall be the more sure of doing it with effect. The day is within my time as well as yours, when we may say by what laws other nations shall treat us on the sea. And we will say it.”

How many things were settled, how many happily begun, during these eight years ! At the President’s recommendation, the term of residence before naturalization was restored from fourteen years to five. He tried, but failed, to procure a recession of the District of Columbia to Virginia and Maryland, — a district which the government needs as much as it does Terra del Fuego. The policy was settled, so far as brilliant precedent could settle it, of paying off public debt with all the rapidity that the country can reasonably bear. A great public debt exaggerates the importance, the magnitude, and the complexity of government; and it is a Jeffersonian principle, that government should be as small a thing as it can be without sacrifice of its desirable efficiency. During these eight years, the ocean ports were fortified to a degree that, at least, enabled the government to slam the door in an enemy’s face, and keep it shut during the next war ; a successful contest was carried on in a distant sea ; the militia were reorganized and rearmed ; the Western posts were widely extended ; taxes were sensibly diminished ; thirty-three millions of the old debt were extinguished ; and the only pecuniary embarrassment the administration ever experienced was a surplus, always increasing, for which there was no suitable or legal outlet. Every act and every word of the administration was a proclamation of Welcome to all the world ! All the world came thronging to these western shores, bringing with them power, wealth, hope, resolve, and all the stuff, material and immaterial, of which empire is made. When Jefferson came into power in 1801, that man was a wonder to his friends who had seen the nearest of the Western lakes; when Jefferson retired in 1809, Astor was busy with his expedition to found a town on the Pacific coast.

The general policy of the government with regard to the Indians was then established as it has since remained. Jefferson had more Indian business than all the other Presidents put together. To “extinguish” their titles by fair purchase, to introduce among them the arts of civilization, to accustom them to depend more upon agriculture and less upon hunting, and to push them gently back over the Mississippi in advance of the coming pioneer, — these were among the objects which he desired most to promote. He was not sanguine of speedy results. That is an amusing passage in his second Inaugural, in which he explains the hindrances in the way of the Indian’s improvement, and, at the same time, gives some of his white brethren a box on the ear. Habit, custom, pride, prejudice, and ignorance, he says, all hold the Indians back ; but, in addition to these internal foes to progress, there were among them “ crafty and interested individuals who feel themselves something in the present order of things, and fear to become nothing in any other.” These were the medicine-men ; who “ inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did, must be done through all time ; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel, in their physical, moral, or political condition, is perilous innovation ; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safetty and knowledge full of danger. In short, my friends, among them is seen the action and counteraction of good sense and bigotry ; they, too, have their anti-philosophers, who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency of habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying its mandates.” This is an exact description of the arts and arguments employed, four or five years after, by the Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, in rousing the Ohio tribes to war upon the white men.

The last two years of Mr. Jefferson’s second term were laborious and troubled ; and the old longing for home, rest, and tranquillity gained full possession of him. The precedent of retiring at the end of eight years had not then acquired the force of law, and he could unquestionably have been elected to a third term. But eight years of the Presidency is enough for any man. General Washington himself in eight years exhausted his power to render good service in that office ; and Jefferson never for a moment had a thought but to retire at the end of his second term. During his Presidency, one sad, irreparable breach had been made in the circle upon which he relied for the solace of his old age. His younger daughter, Maria, Mrs. Eppes, died at Monticello, in 1804. He stood then upon the pinnacle of his career. Triumph of every kind had followed his endeavors, and a great majority of the people gave him heartfelt approval. It was then that this blow fell. “ My loss,” he wrote to his oldest friend, John Page, “is great indeed. Others may lose of their abundance ; but I, of my want, have lost even the half of all I had.”

Among the letters of condolence which reached him on this occasion was one from Mrs. Adams, which led to the most interesting correspondence of these years. The President, without knowing it, had given the deepest offence to this gifted lady ; but when the intelligence reached her secluded home on the Massachusetts coast, of the death of the lovely girl, whom she had taken to her arms in London eighteen years before, and had cherished ever since as a friend, her tenderness proved stronger than her resentment, and she was moved irresistibly to write to the bereaved father. She told him she would have done so before if he had been only the private inhabitant of Monticello ; but reasons of various kinds had withheld her pen, until the powerful feelings of her heart burst through the restraint. She recalled the incidents of her acquaintance with his daughter, and, after distantly alluding to the recent estrangement between the families, expressed “ the sincere and ardent wish,” that he might find comfort and consolation in this day of his sorrow and affliction. This, she said, was the desire of “ her who once took pleasure in subscribing herself his friend.”

In his acknowledgment, after due recognition of her goodness to his daughter and to himself, he frankly told her what had given him personal offence in the conduct of Mr. Adams : “ I can say with truth, that one act of Mr. Adams’s life, and one only, ever gave me a moment’s personal displeasure. I did consider his last appointments to office as personally unkind. They were from among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful co-operation could ever be expected ; and laid me under the embarrassment of acting through men whose views were to defeat mine, or to encounter the odium of putting others in their places. It seems but common justice to leave a successor free to act by instruments of his own choice. If my respect for him did not permit me to ascribe the whole blame to the influence of others, it left something for friendship to forgive, and after brooding over it for some little time, and not always resisting the expression of it, I forgave it cordially, and returned to the same state of esteem and respect for him which had so long subsisted.”

She replied with great spirit and ability, without a whisper to her husband of what was transpiring. General Washington, she said, had left no vacancies for his successor to fill ; and she was sure that Mr. Adams, in the last appointments, had meant no disrespect to his successor; nor, indeed, had it been certain, until after many of them had been made, that Mr. Jefferson was to be his successor. That point disposed of, she opened her heart as to the causes of offence which Mr. Adams had against him. One of these was his remission of the fine of Callender, condemned under the Sedition Law for a libel upon President Adams. Besides: “One of the first acts of your administration was to liberate a wretch who was suffering the just punishment of his crimes for publishing the basest libel, the lowest and vilest slander, which malice could invent or calumny exhibit against the character and reputation of your predecessor; of him, for whom you professed a friendship and esteem, and whom you certainly knew incapable of such complicated baseness. The remission of Callender’s fine was a public approbation of his conduct.” Upon this she expanded with eloquence. But Mr. Jefferson had done more than remit the fine. He had given Callender fifty dollars, and complimented him upon his writings. “ This, sir,” she added, “ was .the sword that cut asunder the Gordian knot, which could not be untied by all the efforts of party spirit, by rivalry, by jealousy, or any other malignant fiend.” There was one other act of his administration, she said, which she considered “ personally unkind,” and which his own mind would easily suggest to him ; but, “ as it affected neither character nor reputation, she forbore to state it.”

He replied to this fine burst of a wife’s loyal indignation with something of her own warmth and point. “ I do not know,” said he, “ who was the particular wretch alluded to ; but 1 discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition Law, because I consider, and now consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image ; and that it was as much my duty to arrest its execution at every stage as it would have been to rescue from the fiery furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship the image. It was accordingly done in every instance, without asking what the offenders had done, or against whom they had offended, but whether the pains they were suffering were inflicted under the pretended Sedition Law.” He showed her, too, that his compliment to Callender had been written before that writer’s homely truth had lapsed into coarse libel, and that the gifts of money were bestowed to relieve his destitution, not reward his scurrility. But there was another act of personal unkindness to which Mrs. Adams had referred. “ I declare, on my honor, madam,” said he, “ I have not the least conception what act was alluded to.”

In her reply, which betrayed a mind only slightly mollified, she told him what this act was. The wife had spoken in the previous letters ; but it was now the mother’s turn: “Soon after my eldest son’s return from Europe, he was appointed by the district judge to an office in which no political concerns entered. Personally known to you, and possessing all the qualifications, you yourself being judge, which vou had designated for office, as soon as Congress gave the appointments to the President, you removed him. This looked so particularly pointed that some of your best friends in Boston at that time expressed their regret that you had done so.”

This was news to Mr. Jefferson. He had sinned, without knowing it. With a patient consideration not usual in the head of a state, nor even possible to one not gifted with a genius for toil, he entered into a minute statement respecting the appointment of the commissioners of bankruptcy in Boston ; showing her that the former commissioners, of whom John Quincy Adams was one, had not been removed by an act of the President, but discontinued by a change in the law. “Had I known,” he added, “ that your son had acted, it would have been a real pleasure to me to have preferred him to some who were named in Boston, in what was deemed the same line of politics.” This last letter, all kindness and benignity, was a distinct proffer of reconciliation to the whole family.

“ I hope,” said he, in conclusion, “ you will see these intrusions on your time to be, what they really are, proofs of my great respect for you. I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion, without imputing to them criminality. I know too well the weakness and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results. Both of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object,— the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers ; the other, by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people ; the other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. We think that one side of this experiment has been long enough tried, and proved not to promote the good of the many ; and that the other has not been fairly and sufficiently tried. Our opponents think the reverse. With whichever opinion the body of the nation concurs, that must prevail. My anxieties on this subject will never carry me beyond the use of fair and honorable means, of truth and reason ; nor have they ever lessened my esteem for moral worth, nor alienated my affections from a single friend, who did not first withdraw himself. Whenever this has happened, I confess I have not been insensible to it ; yet have ever kept myself open to a return of their justice.

I conclude with sincere prayers for your health and happiness, that yourself and Mr. Adams may long enjoy the tranquillity you desire and merit, and see in the prosperity of your family what is the consummation of the last and warmest of human wishes.”

When a poisoned arrow has rankled long in living flesh, the wound cannot heal as soon as the arrow is withdrawn. This noble-minded lady accepted her correspondent’s personal explanations, but she could not help giving him a little lecture about the very great importance of appointing the right men to office. The arrow was withdrawn, but Time, the all-healer, had to perform his part before the reconciliation could be complete. Time began upon it at once. Soon after she had “ closed this correspondence ” with one of those admonitory prayers by which pious souls sometimes bestow a parting slap, she gave the letters to her husband to read. The old man was still under a cloud of obloquy, and, perhaps, not reconciled to that sudden and unexpected change in his way of life which had occurred four years before. In the year 1800, his grandson tells us, the letters addressed to him might be counted by thousands; but after his retirement to Quincy, he received about two letters a week ! He could not but be pleased to learn from Mr. Jefferson’s letters that his good-will was still an object of desire with the chief of the nation. When he had read the packet of letters all through, he wrote upon the last one these words: “Quincy, November 19, 1804. The whole of this correspondence was begun and conducted without my knowledge or suspicion. Last evening and this morning, at the desire of Mrs. Adams, I read the whole. I have no remarks to make upon it, at this time and in this place. J. ADAMS.” Time did the rest, with the help of John Quincy Adams. It was all right between them in 1812, and the letters they exchanged during the rest of their lives are among the most interesting the world possesses.

Jefferson’s final release from public life, after a nearly continuous service of forty-four years, was now at hand. During the last years of his Presidency he had lost in some degree “ the run ” of his private affairs, — a fact which any one will understand who has ever been absorbed for a long time in concerns of magnitude and difficulty, not personal. Every one who has ever put his whole heart into writing a book or conducting a periodical understands it. Groceries elude the sweep of vision that takes in all the affairs and interests of a great country or a great “ subject ” ; and no man can easily subside from the triumph of an important measure or the rapture of a “good number,” to that exact consideration which monthly accounts demand. Little by little, the mind floats away from all that detail ; until, at last, a kind of real inability to grasp it takes the place of former vigilant attention ; which is only another way of saying, that a President should be, if convenient, a married man. A few months before his retirement it occurred to him to look into his affairs, and see how he was coming out on the 4th of March, 1809. To his consternation and horror, he found that there would be a most serious deficit. His plantations had only yielded four or five thousand dollars a year, at the best; but the embargo, by preventing the exportation of tobacco, had cut his private income down two thirds. “ Nothing,” he wrote to his merchant in Richmond, “had been more fixed than my determination to keep my expenses here within the limits of my salary, and I had great confidence that I had done so. Having, however, trusted to rough estimates by my head, and not being sufficiently apprised of the outstanding accounts, I find, on a review of my affairs here, as they will stand on the 3d of March, that I shall be three or four months’ salary behindhand. In ordinary cases this degree of arrearage would not be serious, but on the scale of the establishment here it amounts to seven or eight thousand dollars, which being to come out of my private funds will be felt by them sensibly.” He requests his correspondent to arrange a loan for him at a Richmond bank, and urges him to lose no time. “ Since I have become sensible of this deficit,” he added, “ I have been under an agony of mortification, and therefore must solicit as much urgency in the negotiation as the case will admit. My intervening nights will be almost sleepless, as nothing could be more distressing to me than to leave debts here unpaid, if indeed I should be permitted to depart with them unpaid, of which I am by no means certain.”

Such is the price, or, rather, a very small part of the price, which citizens of the United States have often had to pay for the privilege of serving their country. The privilege is worth the price ; but it is not safe to put the price so high that only a very great or a very little man can find his account in paying it. Poverty and abuse,— a Tweed will undertake a city on those terms. So will a Jeflferson. But Jeffersons do not grow on every bush, and Tweeds can be had on most wharves of any extent. The loan was effected, however, and Mr. Jefferson was thus enabled to get home to Monticello without danger of being arrested for debt upon the suit of a Federalist with a taste for a sensation.

Captain Bacon, with two great wagons each drawn by six mules and one drawn by four horses, came from Monticello. He left Washington with his wagons loaded on the 3d of March, leaving Mr. Jefferson behind to attend the inauguration of his successor, and to close up his various affairs of business and friendship. From every quarter of the country came testimonials of grateful regard from Republicans ; and Federalists, to the last, bestowed upon him the homage of their hate and apprehension. Josiah Quincy was relieved by his departure. “ Jefferson is a host,” he wrote in his diary during one of the last embargo debates, “ and if the wand of that magician is not broken, he will yet defeat the attempt. But I hope his power is drawing to an end in this world.” All things end at last. Captain Bacon’s train of wagons moved away; and a remarkable procession indeed must have arrested the attention of passers-by as it hove in sight, heaped high with boxes and shrubbery, and eleven colored servants stowed away in convenient spots on the various summits, followed by the President’s four-horse carriage. In this last vehicle rode Mr. Bacon, and thus caught some of the roadside “ovations ” intended for another. The worthy manager was nearly three weeks in getting home through the mud and storm of a cold, dismal spring ; so that Mr. Jefferson overtook him at Culpeper Court-House, though he did not start till the wagons had been a week on the road.

“ On our way home,” Bacon reports, “it snowed very fast, and when we reached Culpeper Court-House it was half-leg deep. A large crowd of people had collected there, expecting that the President would be along. When I rode up, they thought 1 was the President, and shouted and hurrahed tremendously. When I got out of the carriage, they laughed very heartily at their mistake. There was a platform along the whole front of the tavern, and it was full of people. Some of them had been waiting a good while, and drinking a good deal, and they made so much noise that they scared the horses, and Diomede backed, and trod upon my foot, and lamed me so that I could hardly get into the carriage the next morning. There was one very tall old fellow that was noiser than any of the rest, who said he was bound to see the President, — ‘ Old Tom,’ he called him. Theyasked me when he would be along, and I told them I thought he would certainly be along that night, and I looked for him every moment. The tavern was kept by an old man named Shackleford. I told him to have a large fire built in a private room, as Mr. Jefferson would be very cold when he got there, and he did so. 1 soon heard shouting, went out, and Mr. Jefferson was in sight. He was in a one-horse vehicle, — a phaeton, — with a driver, and a servant on horseback. When he came up, there was great cheering again. I motioned to him to follow me ; took him straight to his room, and locked the door. The tall old fellow came and knocked very often, but I would not let him in. 1 told Mr. Jefferson not to mind him, he was drunk. Finally the door was opened, and they rushed in and filled the room. It was as full as I ever saw a bar-room. He stood up, and made a short address to them. Afterwards some of them told him how they had mistaken me for him. He went on next day, and reached Monticello before we did.”

But not till he had encountered another snow-storm, still more violent. “ As disagreeable a snow-storm as I was ever in,” wrote Jefferson. During the last three days of the journey he was glad to abandon his phaeton and take to one of his horses. On reaching Monticello, he found that his sixty-six years had not sensibly lessened the vigor of his frame, for this rough journey had done him no harm which a night’s rest could not repair.

Fames Parton.