CHAPTER XI.

RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE OCCUPATIONS RELATIONS WITH JEFFERSON-DEATH.

On the 4th of March, 1801, the day upon which Mr. Jefferson was inaugurated President of the United States, Mr. Adams retired from public life, after an uninterrupted course of service of six and twenty years, in a greater variety of trusts than fell to the share of any other American of his time. He had gone through all of them with acknowledged credit to himself and honor to the country, excepting the last, and in that he felt that by a concurrence of adverse circumstances he was visited with censure which neither his motives nor his acts had merited. Sensitive and ardent in his temperament, he would not wait to be present at the installation of his successor, or to exchange the customary forms of civility in transferring the office. In this course, as not consistent with true dignity, or with the highest class of Christian virtue, he was perhaps wrong. It certainly would have been more politic to have made professions of confidence in Mr. Jefferson. But that was not his way, when he did not entertain them. He shared strongly in the distrust universal among the federalists, of that gentleman's intentions, and he believed, not without color of reason, that he had acted somewhat disingenuously towards himself. This was a strong motive for declining to be present at the inauguration, but it was not by any means the only one. Had the party which elected him really made him its head; had it stood unitedly and cordially by him in the policy which he had felt it his duty to prefer, he believed that he should never have been exposed to the necessity of any such trial. But even if, in spite of every exertion, defeat had followed, with a united support, the exultation of the victors might have been easily endured, as an inevitable concomitant of the chances of the popular

favor. Such had not been the case. He felt that his most bitter enemies had been of his own household, whom he had offended because he would not submit to be a mere instrument to execute a policy, which he could not approve. Although he did not even then suspect the extent to which he had been circumvented, he knew enough to convince him that he had been a victim of treachery, and that, as such, he must, if he remained, be shown up before both his opponents and his friends. Many of his own side, who had arraigned his policy and attributed to it their overthrow, would draw some consolation to themselves from seeing him pay any penalty, however severe, for having pursued it. Of these a considerable number were in the Senate, friends of the individual who had destroyed him. To them, then, as well as to Mr. Jefferson's followers he was to be made a spectacle, if he should stay to be a part of the pageant. No. His proud spirit would not endure it. He would not consent to enact the captive chief in the triumphant procession of the victor to the capitol.

But in addition to this, there were other and better reasons for desiring to escape a burdensome ceremonial. The state of his feelings at home was not in harmony with such a scene. He had just passed through the first severe domestic affliction of his life. His second son, Charles, who had grown up to manhood, had been married, and settled in the city of New York with fair prospects of success, had but a few weeks before breathed his last, leaving a wife and two infant children as his only legacy to his father's care. In a note, addressed to Mr. Jefferson, who had opened a letter relating to the matter, which had come by mistake to him after his accession, but which he transmitted unread, Mr. Adams feelingly alludes to this. "Had you read the papers inclosed," he said, "they might have given you a moment of melancholy, or, at least, of sympathy with a mourning father. They related wholly to the funeral of a son, who was once the delight of my eyes, and a darling of my heart, cut off in the flower of his days, amidst very flattering prospects, by causes which have been the greatest grief of my heart, and the deepest affliction of my life." In the state of mind here described, gloomy from the combined pressure of public and private evils, it surely cannot be matter for much wonder that he should resolve to avoid a situation in which