363 duals in New England from the year 1803, if not indeed from 1796.' He had the most specific assurances from J. Q. Adams and others, that such feelings existed, and even took the form of definite designs in the years 1808 and 1809. On the 14th of January, 1811, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared in Congress, in the debate on the bill to enable the people of the territory of Orleans to form a constitution and State government, that the passage of the bill "would justify a revolution. in this country," and he subsequently added:

"I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that, as it will be right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation-amicably if they can, violently if they must."

Being called to order, Quincy, "to save all misapprehension," reduced his declarations to writing in the above form. He was, at the time, the leading Federal member of the House.

At the Federal caucus held in Boston on the Sunday evening preceding the State elections of 1811, resolutions were passed denouncing the Non-intercourse law, and in favor of "the election of such men to the various offices of the State government, as would oppose by peaceable but firm measures, the execution of laws which, if persisted in, must and would be resisted.” Gerry, the Republican candidate, was chosen governor, and in his opening message, in June, denounced such doctrines as "seditious." The Legislature went further, and declared the holders of them "inceptive traitors" and "domestic partisans of a foreign power." Gerry removed them from office wherever they held by the tenure of the Executive will; and it was for this Jefferson had "given him glory" in the preceding letter to Dearborn."

1 A brief summary of these proofs will be found in APPENDIX No. 24. 2 See Annals of Congress, by Gales and Seaton.

3 The real spirit of Jefferson's remarks will be better understood after perusing a letter written by him not long afterwards (June 11th, 1812) to Gerry himself:

"What, then, does this English faction with you mean? Their newspapers say rebellion, and that they will not remain united with us unless we will permit them to govern the majority. If this be their purpose, their anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at once. But a Government like ours should be slow in believing this, should put forth its whole might when necessary to suppress it, and promptly return to the paths of reconciliation. The extent of our country secures it, I hope, from the vindictive passions of the petty incorporations of Greece.

But I trust that such perverseness will not be that of the honest and well-meaning mass of the Federalists of Massachusetts; and that when the questions of separation and rebellion shall be nakedly proposed to them, the Gores and the Pickerings will find their

Mr. Jefferson had an attack of illness during the summer, and he thus described it and its effects in a letter to Dr. Rush, August 17th:

"I have had a long attack of rheumatism, without fever and without pain, while I keep myself still. A total prostration of the muscles of the back, hips and thighs, deprived me of the power of walking, and leaves it still in a very impaired state. A pain when I walk, seems to have fixed itself in the hip, and to threaten permanence. I take moderate rides, without much fatigue; but my journey to this place, in a hard-going gig, gave me great sufferings, which I expect will be renewed on my return as soon as I am able. The loss of the power of taking exercise would be a sore affliction to me. It has been the delight of my retirement to be in constant bodily activity, looking after my affairs. It was never damped as the pleasures of reading are, by the question of cui bono? for what object? I hope your health of body continues firm. Your works show that of your mind. The habits of exercise which your calling has given to both, will tend long to preserve them. The sedentary character of my public occupations sapped a constitution naturally sound and vigorous, and draws it to an earlier close. But it will still last quite as long as I wish it. There is a fullness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance. We must continue while here to exchange occasionally our mutual good wishes. I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial. God bless you and preserve you through a long and healthy old age."

Like most other vigorous and healthy men, he was much inclined to consider his "constitution sapped" whenever he suffered temporarily under the effects of severe disease. His rheumatic malady had commenced about a month before writing the above. After a continuance of three weeks, it was so far abated, that he rode to Poplar Forest, from which the preceding letter was written. He went there for two objects-to escape the company at Monticello, and because he thought this period of forced inaction would afford an excellent opportunity to review his early mathematical studies. For the last, he had now, as he supposed, a special object, being determined to take upon himself the mathematical education of his oldest grandson. This scheme did not proceed far.

levees crowded with silk-stocking gentry, but no yeomanry; an army of officers without soldiers. I hope, then, all will still end well; the Anglomen will consent to make peace with their bread and butter, and you and I shall sink to rest, without having been actors or spectators in another civil war.

.

We have not timed these things well together, or we might have begun a re-alliance between Massachusetts and the Old Dominion, faithful companions in the war of Independence, peculiarly tallied in interests, by each wanting exactly what the other has to spare; and estranged to each other, in latter times, only by the practices of a third nation, the common enemy of both. Let us live only to see this re-union, and I will say with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.' In that peace may you long remain, my friend, and depart only in the fullness of years, all passed in health and prosperity. God bless you."

He wrote to Rush that he had "forgotten much" of his mathematical knowledge-that he "recovered it with more difficulty than when in the vigor of his mind he originally acquired it"that it was strange "that old men should not be sensible that their minds keep pace with their bodies in the progress of decay" and he declared that had no other considerations impelled him to retire from the Presidency, "the fear of becoming a dotard, and of being insensible of it, would of itself have resisted all solicitations to remain."

These expressions sound like the vagaries of a sick man. Their tone was undoubtedly deepened by illness, but Mr. Jefferson was inclined, in certain moods of the mind, to this habit of self-depreciation. The impression that age was telling on his faculties, seems to have been persistent with him after his retirement from public life. But he had no such dread of its effects on others. Very little did he reason in that strain in his reply to the remonstrance against Judge Bishop's appointment as collector of New Haven. Very little did he act on that hypothesis in the deference he paid to the wisdom of the Wythes, the Pendletons, the Samuel Adamses, and the Dickinsons, when they were advanced a score of years beyond his own present age. His respect for the counsel of the aged was proverbial among his acquaintances.

The correspondence of 1812 opens with a most agreeable circumstance-a complete reconciliation between John Adams and Jefferson. Their common friend and old fellow-laborer in the Revolution, Dr. Rush, had written to Mr. Jefferson early in 1811, deploring the alienation. The latter, in reply, spoke most kindly of Mr. Adams and his public services, and declared that the present state of things had not continued "from the want of sincere desire and of effort" on his part to restore their ancient relations. He inclosed the correspondence between himself and Mrs. Adams in 1804, which he said had not before been communicated to any one, leaving his friend to decide whether the circumstances" admitted of a revival of friendly intercourse," and declaring that "he should certainly not be wanting in anything on his part which might second his [Rush's] efforts." The latter probably judged that Mr. Jefferson had made sufficient overtures, for here the subject appears to have dropped.

On the 5th of December, 1811, Mr. Jefferson again wrote to

Dr. Rush on the same subject. He said that "two of the Mr. Coles, his neighbors and friends, brothers of the one who lived with him as Secretary at Washington, took a tour to the northward during the last summer"-that by the invitation of Mr. Adams, they passed a day with him at Braintree-that in a conversation with them on political subjects, he "adverted to the unprincipled licentiousness of the press against himself [Jefferson], adding, 'I always loved Jefferson, and still love him."" "This," continued the latter, "is enough for me;" and he declared to Rush that he should only wait for an "apposite occasion to express to Mr. Adams his unchanged affections for him." He said that "from this fusion of mutual affections, Mrs. Adams was of course separated-it would only be necessary that he never name her."

One of the Messrs. Coles' has furnished us with recollections of his conversations with Mr. Adams on this occasion, and they will be found in Appendix.'

The interview appears to have led Mr. Adams also to determine to seek a reconciliation with his estranged friend, and he has the honor-no small one-of having made the first overture. A letter addressed to him by Jefferson, January 21st, 1812, thanks him "beforehand" for "the specimens of homespun" he had forwarded by post, and which were not yet arrived. This of course, implies that Mr. Adams had communicated the transmission of the articles in advance. Thenceforth their correspondence was free, at times frequent, and it was always marked on both sides by singular unreserve. There are more of Jefferson's subsequent letters to Adams in print than to any other one correspondent, and Adams not unfrequently overflowed with two or three letters to Jefferson's one. We shall have frequent occasion to refer to this correspondence—and, happily, to record another reconciliation which grew out of it.

A letter from Jefferson to Nelson, April 2d, 1812, shows that the former considered a speedy war with Great Britain

The sentence here quoted (copied from the original by a member of Dr. Rush's family), is given in Randolph's and the Congress edition, with the omission of the name Coles, and also of the words "brothers of the one who lived with me as Secretary at Washington,"-which, without a name, would have designated the individuals.

2 Hon. Edward Coles, now of Philadelphia, and several times before mentioned in this work.

SEE APPENDIX, No. 25.

inevitable, and he wrote to Mr. Maury in England on the same subject on the 25th of the same month:

ocean.

"Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and I. And why should our two countries be at war, when by peace we can be so much more useful to one another? Surely the world will acquit our Government from having sought it. Never before has there been an instance of a nation's bearing so much as we have borne. Two items alone in our catalogue of wrongs will forever acquit us of being the aggressors; the impressment of our seamen, and the excluding us from the The first foundations of the social compact would be broken up, were we definitively to refuse to its members the protection of their persons and property, while in their lawful pursuits. I think the war will not be short, because the object of England, long obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain, and to exact transit duties from every vessel traversing it. This is the sum of her orders of council, which were only a step in this bold experiment, never meant to be retracted if it could be permanently maintained. And this object must continue her in war with all the world. To this I see no termination, until her exaggerated efforts, so much beyond her natural strength and resources, shall have exhausted her to bankruptcy."

On the 1st of June the President recommended a declaration of war against Great Britain, and it was declared on the 18th of that month. Jefferson wrote to Kosciusko on the 28th that "our present enemy would have the sea to herself, while we should be equally predominant at land, and should strip her of all her possessions on this continent." His view of the kind of war which it would be expedient for the United States to wage, appears in the same letter:

"The partisans of England here have endeavored much to goad us into the folly of choosing the ocean instead of the land, for the theatre of war. That would be to meet their strength with our own weakness, instead or their weakness with our strength. I hope we shall confine ourselves to the conquest of their possessions, and defence of our harbors, leaving the war on the ocean to our privateers. These will immediately swarm in every sea, and do more injury to British commerce than the regular fleets of all Europe would do. The government of France may discontinue their license trade. Our privateers will furnish them much more abundantly with colonial produce, and whatever the license trade has given them. Some have apprehended we should be overwhelmed by the new improvements of war, which have not yet reached us. But the British possess them very imperfectly, and what are these improvements? Chiefly in the management of artillery, of which our country admits little use. We have nothing to fear from their armies, and shall put nothing in prize to their fleets. Upon the whole, I have known no war entered into under more favorable auspices."

He wrote the President the next day, that "to continue the war popular, two things were necessary," to stop Indian barba