only for a fortnight; and I supposed you were gone. It was not till
yesterday I received information that you were still there, had been
very ill, but were on the recovery. I sincerely rejoice that you are
so. Yours is one of the few lives precious to mankind, and for the
continuance of which every thinking man is solicitous. Bigots may be
an exception. What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in politics
and religion have we gone through. The barbarians really flattered
themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism,
when ignorance put every thing into the hands of power and priestcraft.
All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended
to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our
ancestors. We were to look backwards not forwards for improvement: the
President himself declaring in one of his answers to addresses, that
we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science. This was the
real ground of all the attacks on you: those who live by mystery and
charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the
Christian philosophy, the most sublime and benevolent but most perverted
system that ever shone on man, endeavored to crush your well-earned
and well-deserved fame. But it was the Lilliputians upon Gulliver. Our
countrymen have recovered from the alarm into which art and industry had
thrown them; science and honesty are replaced on their high ground; and
you, my dear Sir, as their great apostle, are on its pinnacle. It is
with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the first moments of my public
action, I can hail you with welcome to our land, tender to you the
homage of its respect and esteem, cover you under the protection of
those laws which were made for the wise and good like you, and disclaim
the legitimacy of that libel on legislation, which under the form of a
law was for some time placed among them.*
[* In the margin, is written by the author, ‘Alien law.’]
As the storm is now subsiding and the horizon becoming serene, it is
pleasant to consider the phenomenon with attention. We can no longer
say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole chapter in the
history of man is new. The great extent of our republic is new. Its
sparse habitation is new. The mighty wave of public opinion which has
rolled over it is new. But the most pleasing novelty is, its so quietly
subsiding over such an extent of surface to its true level again. The
order and good sense displayed in this recovery from delusion, and in
the momentous crisis which lately arose, really bespeak a strength
of character in our nation which augurs well for the duration of our
republic: and I am much better satisfied now of its stability, than I
was before it was tried, I have been above all things solaced by
the prospect which opened on us, in the event of a non-election of a
President; in which case, the federal government would have been in the
situation of a clock or watch run down. There was no idea of force, nor
of any occasion for it. A convention, invited by the republican members
of Congress with the virtual President and Vice-President, would have
been on the ground in eight weeks, would have repaired the constitution
where it was defective, and wound it up again. This peaceable and
legitimate resource, to which we are in the habit of implicit obedience,
superseding all appeal to force, and being always within our reach,
shows a precious principle of self-preservation in our composition, till
a change of circumstances shall take place, which is not within prospect
at any definite period.
But I have got into a long disquisition on politics when I only meant to
express my sympathy in the state of your health, and to tender you all
the affections of public and private hospitality. I should be very happy
indeed to see you here. I leave this about the 30th instant, to return
about the 25th of April. If you do not leave Philadelphia before that,
a little excursion hither would help your health. I should be much
gratified with the possession of a guest I so much esteem, and should
claim a right to lodge you, should you make such an excursion.
Accept the homage of my high consideration and respect, and assurances
of affectionate attachment.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CCLXXX.--TO MOSES ROBINSON, March 23,1801
TO MOSES ROBINSON.
Washington, March 23,1801.
Dear Sir,
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 3rd instant, and
to thank you for the friendly expressions it contains. I entertain real
hope that the whole body of your fellow-citizens (many of whom had been
carried away by the X. Y. Z. business) will shortly be consolidated
in the same sentiments. When they examine the real principles of both
parties, I think they will find little to differ about. I know, indeed,
that there are some of their leaders who have so committed themselves,
that pride, if no other passion, will prevent their coalescing. We must
be easy with them. The eastern States will be the last to come over
on account of the dominion of the clergy, who had got a smell of union
between Church and State, and began to indulge reveries which can never
be realized in the present state of science. If, indeed, they could
have prevailed on us to view all advances in science as dangerous
innovations, and to look back to the opinions and practices of our
forefathers, instead of looking forward, for improvement, a promising
groundwork would have been laid. But I am in hopes their good sense will
dictate to them, that since the mountain will not come to them, they
had better go to the mountain: that they will find their interest in
acquiescing in the liberty and science of their country, and that
the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they have
enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of its
benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to
liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.
I sincerely wish with you, we could see our government so secured as to
depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted.
Bad men will sometimes get in, and, with such an immense patronage, may
make great progress in corrupting the public mind and principles. This
is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied.
I pray you to accept assurances of my high respect and esteem.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CCLXXXI.--TO WILLIAM B. GILES, March 23, 1801
TO WILLIAM B. GILES.
Washington, March 23, 1801.
Dear Sir,
I received two days ago your favor of the 16th, and thank you for your
kind felicitations on my election: but whether it will be a subject of
felicitation permanently, will be for chapters of future history to
say. The important subjects of the government I meet with some degree
of courage and confidence, because I do believe the talents to be
associated with me, the honest line of conduct we will religiously
pursue at home and abroad, and the confidence of my fellow-citizens
dawning on us, will be equal to these objects.
But there is another branch of duty which I must meet with courage
too, though I cannot without pain; that is, the appointments and
disappointments as to offices. Madison and Gallatin being still absent,
we have not yet decided on our rules of conduct as to these. That some
ought to be removed from office, and that all ought not, all mankind
will agree. But where to draw the line, perhaps no two will agree.
Consequently, nothing like a general approbation on this subject can be
looked for. Some principles have been the subject of conversation, but
not of determination; e.g. all appointments to civil offices during
pleasure, made after the event of the election was certainly known
to Mr. Adams, are considered as nullities. I do not view the persons
appointed as even candidates for the office, but make others without
noticing or notifying them. Mr. Adams’s best friends have agreed this
is right. 2. Officers who have been guilty of official mal-conduct are
proper subjects of removal. 3. Good men, to whom there is no objection
but a difference of political principle, practised on only as far as
the right of a private citizen will justify, are not proper subjects of
removal, except in the case of attorneys and marshals. The courts being
so decidedly federal and irremovable, it is believed that republican
attorneys and marshals, being the doors of entrance into the courts,
are indispensably necessary as a shield to the republican part of our
fellow-citizens, which, I believe, is the main body of the people.
These principles are yet to be considered of, and I sketch them to
you in confidence. Not that there is objection to your mooting them as
subjects of conversation, and as proceeding from yourself, but not as
matters of executive determination. Nay, farther, I will thank you for
your own sentiments and those of others on them. If received before the
20th of April, they will be in time for our deliberation on the subject.
You know that it was in the year X. Y. Z. that so great a transition
from us to the other side took place, and with as real republicans as we
were ourselves; that these, after getting over that delusion, have been
returning to us, and that it is to that return we owe a triumph in 1800,
which in 1799 would have been the other way. The week’s suspension
of the election before Congress, seems almost to have completed that
business, and to have brought over nearly the whole remaining mass. They
now find themselves with us, and separated from their quondam leaders.
If we can but avoid shocking their feelings by unnecessary acts of
severity against their late friends, they will in a little time cement
and from one mass with us, and by these means harmony and union be
restored to our country, which would be the greatest good we could
effect. It was a conviction that these people did not differ from us
in principle, which induced me to define the principles which I deemed
orthodox, and to urge a re-union on these principles; and I am induced
to hope it has conciliated many. I do not speak of the desperadoes
of the quondam faction in and out of Congress. These I consider as
incurables, on whom all attentions would be lost, and therefore will not
be wasted. But my wish is, to keep their flock from returning to them.
On the subject of the marshal of Virginia, I refer you confidentially to
Major Egglestone for information. I leave this about this day se’nnight,
to make some arrangements at home preparatory to my final removal to
this place, from which I shall be absent about three weeks.
Accept assurances of my constant esteem and high consideration and
respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CCLXXXII.--TO SAMUEL ADAMS, March 29, 1801
TO SAMUEL ADAMS.
Washington, March 29, 1801.
I addressed a letter to you, my very dear and ancient friend, on the 4th
of March: not indeed to you by name, but through the medium of some of
my fellow-citizens, whom occasion called on me to address. In meditating
the matter of that address, I often asked myself, Is this exactly in
the spirit of the patriarch, Samuel Adams? Is it as he would express it?
Will he approve of it? I have felt a great deal for our country in the
times we have seen. But individually for no one so much as yourself.
When I have been told that you were avoided, insulted, frowned on, I
could but ejaculate, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.’ I confess I felt an indignation for you, which for myself I have
been able, under every trial, to keep entirely passive. However, the
storm is over, and we are in port. The ship was not rigged for the
service she was put on. We will show the smoothness of her motions on
her republican tack. I hope we shall once more see harmony restored
among our citizens, and an entire oblivion of past feuds. Some of the
leaders, who have most committed themselves, cannot come into this.
But I hope the great body of our fellow-citizens will do it. I will
sacrifice every thing but principle to procure it. A few examples of
justice on officers who have perverted their functions to the oppression
of their fellow-citizens, must, in justice to those citizens, be made.
But opinion, and the just maintenance of it, shall never be a crime in
my view; nor bring injury on the individual. Those whose misconduct in
office ought to have produced their removal even by my predecessor,
must not be protected by the delicacy due only to honest men. How much
I lament that time has deprived me of your aid. It would have been a
day of glory which should have called you to the first office of the
administration. But give us your counsel, my friend, and give us your
blessing: and be assured that there exists not in the heart of man a
more faithful esteem than mine to you, and that I shall ever bear you
the most affectionate veneration and respect.
Th: Jefferson*
LETTER CCLXXXIII..--TO ELBRIDGE GERRY, March 29, 1801
TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.
Washington, March 29, 1801,
My Dear Sir,
Your two letters of January the 5th and February the 24th came safely to
hand, and I thank you for the history of a transaction which will ever
be interesting in our affairs. It has been very precisely as I had
imagined. I thought, on your return, that if you had come forward
boldly, and appealed to the public by a full statement, it would have
had a great effect in your favor personally, and that of the republican
cause then oppressed almost unto death. But I judged from a tact of the
southern pulse. I suspect that of the north was different, and decided
your conduct: and perhaps it has been as well. If the revolution of
sentiment has been later, it has perhaps been not less sure. At length
it has arrived. What with the natural current of opinion which has been
setting over to us for eighteen months, and the immense impetus which
was given it from the 11th to the 17th of February, we may now say that
the United States, from New York southwardly, are as unanimous in the
principles of ‘76, as they were in ‘76. The only difference is, that the
leaders who remain behind are more numerous and colder than the apostles
of toryism in ‘76. The reason is, that we are now justly more tolerant
than we could safely have been then, circumstanced as we were. Your part
of the Union, though as absolutely republican as ours, had drunk deeper
of the delusion, and is therefore slower in recovering from it. The
aegis of government, and the temples of religion and of justice, have
all been prostituted there to toll us back to the times when we burnt
witches. But your people will rise again. They will awake like Samson
from his sleep, and carry away the gates and the posts of the city. You,
my friend, are destined to rally them again under their former banners,
and when called to the post, exercise it with firmness and with
inflexible adherence to your own principles. The people will support
you, notwithstanding the howlings of the ravenous crew from whose jaws
they are escaping. It will be a great blessing to our country if we can
once more restore harmony and social love among its citizens. I confess,
as to myself, it is almost the first object of my heart, and one to
which I would sacrifice every thing but principle. With the people I
have hopes of effecting it. But their Coryphæi are incurables. I expect
little from them.
I was not deluded by the eulogiums of the public papers in the first
moments of change. If they could have continued to get all the loaves
and fishes, that is, if I would have gone over to them, they would
continue to eulogize. But I well knew that the moment that such removals
should take place, as the justice of the preceding administration ought
to have executed, their hue and cry would be set up, and they would
take their old stand. I shall disregard that also. Mr. Adams’s last
appointments, when he knew he was naming counsellors and aids for me and
not for himself, I set aside as far as depends on me. Officers who have
been guilty of gross abuses of office, such as marshals packing juries,
&c, I shall now remove, as my predecessor ought in justice to have done.
The instances will be few, and governed by strict rule, and not party
passion. The right of opinion shall suffer no invasion from me. Those
who have acted well, have nothing to fear, however they may have
differed from me in opinion: those who have done ill, however, have
nothing to hope; nor shall I fail to do justice lest it should be
ascribed to that difference of opinion. A coalition of sentiments is
not for the interest of the printers. They, like the clergy, live by the
zeal they can kindle, and the schisms they can create. It is contest
of opinion in politics as well as religion which makes us take great
interest in them, and bestow our money liberally on those who furnish
aliment to our appetite. The mild and simple principles of the Christian
philosophy would produce too much calm, too much regularity of good,
to extract from its disciples a support for a numerous priesthood, were
they not to sophisticate it, ramify it, split it into hairs, and
twist its texts till they cover the divine morality of its author with
mysteries, and require a priesthood to explain them. The Quakers seem to
have discovered this. They have no priests, therefore no schisms. They
judge of the text by the dictates of common sense and common morality.
So the printers can never leave us in a state of perfect rest and union
of opinion. They would be no longer useful, and would have to go to
the plough. In the first moments of quietude which have succeeded the
election, they seem to have aroused their lying faculties beyond their
ordinary state, to re-agitate the public mind. What appointments to
office have they detailed which had never been thought of, merely to
found a text for their calumniating commentaries. However, the steady
character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor:
and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early
discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate, and steady conduct
will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country.
Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able, I
hope, to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom and harmony. I
shall be happy to hear from you often, to know your own sentiments
and those of others on the course of things, and to concur with you in
efforts for the common good. Your letters through the post will now
come safely. Present my best respects to Mrs. Gerry, and accept yourself
assurances of my constant esteem and high consideration.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CCLXXXIV.--TO GIDEON GRANGER, May 3, 1801
TO GIDEON GRANGER.
Washington, May 3, 1801.
Dear Sir,
I wrote you on the 29th of March. Yours of the 25th of that month, with
the address it covered, had not reached this place on the 1st of April,
when I set out on a short visit to my residence in Virginia, where some
arrangements were necessary previous to my settlement here. In fact,
your letter came to me at Monticello only the 24th of April, two
days before my departure from thence. This, I hope, will sufficiently
apologize for the delay of the answer, which those unapprized of these
circumstances will have thought extraordinary.
A new subject of congratulation has arisen. I mean the regeneration of
Rhode Island. I hope it is the beginning of that resurrection of the
genuine spirit of New England which rises for life eternal. According
to natural order, Vermont will emerge next, because least, after Rhode
Island, under the yoke of hierocracy. I have never dreamed that all
opposition was to cease. The clergy, who have missed their union with
the State, the Anglomen, who have missed their union with England, and
the political adventurers, who have lost the chance of swindling and
plunder in the waste of public money, will never cease to bawl, on the
breaking up of their sanctuary. But among the people, the schism is
healed, and with tender treatment the wound will not re-open. Their
quondam leaders have been astounded with the suddenness of the
desertion: and their silence and appearance of acquiescence have
proceeded not from a thought of joining us, but the uncertainty
what ground to take. The very first acts of the administration, the
nominations, have accordingly furnished something to yelp on; and all
our subsequent acts will furnish them fresh matter, because there is
nothing against which human ingenuity will not be able to find something
to say.
Accept assurances of my sincere attachment and high respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CCLXXXV.--TO NATHANIEL MACON, May 14, 1801
TO NATHANIEL MACON.
Washington, May 14, 1801.
Dear Sir,
Your favors of April the 20th and 23rd had been received, and the
commission made out for Mr. Potts, before I received the letter of the
1st instant. I have still thought it better to forward the commission,
in the hope that reconsideration, or the influence of yourself and
friends, might induce an acceptance of it. Should it be otherwise, you
must recommend some other good person, as I had rather be guided by your
opinion than that of the person you refer me to. Perhaps Mr. Potts may
be willing to stop the gap till you meet and repeal the law. If he does
not, let me receive a recommendation from you as quickly as possible.
And in all cases, when an office becomes vacant in your State, as the
distance would occasion a great delay, were you to wait to be regularly
consulted, I shall be much obliged to you to recommend the best
characters. There is nothing I am so anxious about as making the best
possible appointments, and no case in which the best men are more liable
to mislead us, by yielding to the solicitations of applicants. For this
reason your own spontaneous recommendation would be desirable. Now to
answer your particulars, _seriatim_.
Levees are done away.
The first communication to the nest Congress will be, like all
subsequent ones, by message, to which no answer will be expected.
The diplomatic establishment in Europe will be reduced to three
ministers.
The compensations to collectors depend on you, and not on me.
The army is undergoing a chaste reformation.
The navy will be reduced to the legal establishment by the last of this
month.
Agencies in every department will be revised.
We shall push you to the uttermost in economizing.
A very early recommendation had been given to the Postmaster-General
to employ no printer, foreigner, or revolutionary tory in any of his
offices. This department is still untouched.
The arrival of Mr. Gallatin, yesterday, completed the organization of
our administration.
Accept assurances of my sincere esteem and high respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CCLXXXVI.--TO LEVI LINCOLN, July 11, 1801
TO LEVI LINCOLN.
Washington, July 11, 1801,
Dear Sir,