country, and created a storm about him which did not end for many years. He made no public answer to the assaults upon him, on its account. From this time no interchange of sentiment occurred between him and the President, and he took his own way as the determined head of the radical Anti-Federalist or Democratic opposition.

It would, perhaps, be looked upon as a difficult feat to reconcile Mr. Jefferson's Mazzei letter and his former course against the Federalists, with these protestations as to his preferences for Mr. Adams. It would involve the impossible performance of harmonizing the contradictory moods, and unstable temper in an extraordinary character reliable always in but few things. With the most determined purposes of accuracy and justice it may be safely asserted as impossible to read all of Mr. Jefferson's published writings and utterances of every description, and sit down with the firm conviction of the truth or falsehood of any or all the charges against him. A conscientious study of his character and life is, indeed, beset with great difficulties. A glimpse of this fact may no more plainly be seen than in Mr. Madison's conduct in withholding the gushing letter to Mr. Adams. Mr. Madison saw what Jefferson did not, with all his tendency to teach some lesson favorable to his political theories, or give his words a direct pointing towards desired political results; namely, first, that the letter would, perhaps, throw him in a false light among his party supporters, and sometime among his opponents; and secondly, that there was evident impropriety in putting such a letter into the hands of a man whom it might become a political necessity to destroy.

CHAPTER XVI.

WAR WITH FRANCE-THE X Y Z DIPLOMACY-ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS AND THEIR ANTIDOTE

THE CONTEST

FOR THE PRESIDENCY-MR. JEFFERSON AND HIS
SERVICES IN THE VICE-PRESIDENCY.

CONG

ONGRESS assembled in regular session in November, 1797, and among its members appeared, for the first time, Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee.

Early in the spring of 1798, the agents to France, C. C. Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, began to return the results of their reception and attempts at negotiation, and at this time Mr. Adams sent the Senate what Mr. Jefferson politely termed the President's insane message. The Senate soon afterwards published the dispatches from France. The shameful treatment of the American ministers by the French leaders, styled the "Directory," excited a just feeling of indignation throughout the country. And although public sentiment had stood largely on the side of France, the tide now set in an opposite direction, and notwithstanding Mr. Jefferson and other Democratic leaders threw every thing possible in the way of the war, the mass of the people went with the President. Party lines were wiped out, indeed, and the opposition leaders were left without followers. The common voice was for war. Mr. Marshall and General Pinckney returned home, and their very pres

ence fanned the spirit of resistance to France. The President was authorized to increase the navy, equip the army ordered to be raised, and put the country on a war footing.

And now poor Jefferson and his sort of patriots were left far in the distance. So much of the same spirit of the present time infected the politics of that day as to put this whole affair of war with France on the basis of party policy. Many of the Anti-Federalist leaders were bitterly opposed to the war, and believing it a vast scheme on the part of the Federalists to regain their broken fortunes among the people, always held them responsible for its burden upon the country. But a large number of leading men among the Democrats fell into the popular current, and what was felt to be real patriotism carried the day. In Congress the ranks of the Federalists were swelled, and that party again took the lead in that body. So urgent did matters become, and so great was the disposition to give strength to the American cause that, in 1798, the famous "Alien and Sedition Laws" were enacted, and the whole race of foreigners, supposed to be inimical to the American cause, who had not already through apprehension taken to flight, now left the country. But when the smoke of the excitement died away, these laws began to be regarded as very objectionable, as they had from the first been considered by the Anti-Federalists, and although they were soon repealed, or terminated by limitation, when the objects for which they were enacted ceased, to a great extent, to be dangerous, they were made the means of many severe attacks upon the Federal party, and it was to these, among other things, that its downfall was attributed.

It does not appear unlikely that the danger of the country from the presence of foreign refugees, red republicans, Jacobin societies, etc., was greatly exaggerated by the ultra Federalists amidst the excitements of the times. But, for the time, the Administration and war party was in the ascendant, and when Congress adjourned in the spring of 1798, Mr. Jefferson was glad to return to the quiet of Monticello, nor did he, during these exciting times, write much or in any way discuss the progress of events.

Of the "Alien and Sedition Laws" Mr. Jefferson wrote to S. T. Mason from Monticello, October 11, 1798, as follows, and his remarks on Cæsarism sound much like the cant of to-day, which nobody in his calm moments believes worthy of intelligent consideration :

"The alien and sedition laws are working hard. I fancy that some of the State Legislatures will take strong ground on this occasion. For my own part, I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind, to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress, declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life. That these things are in contemplation, I have no doubt; nor can I be confident of their failure, after the dupery of which our countrymen have proved themselves susceptible."

The following extract from a letter to John Taylor, of Virginia, June 1, 1798, contains Mr. Jefferson's views on the foolishness of seeking benefits or redress of wrongs by disunion, while it exhibits his usual amount of partisan feeling :

"Mr. New showed me your letter on the subject of the patent, which gave me an opportunity of observing what you said as to

the effect, with you, of public proceedings, and that it was not unwise now to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and North Carolina, with a view to their separate existence. It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and subsistence. Their natural friends, the three other Eastern States, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole. This is not new, it is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an ascendancy, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage. But our present situation is not a natural one. The republicans (Democrats) through every part of the Union, say that it was the irresistible influence and popularity of General Washington, played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-republican hands, or turned the republicans chosen by the people into antirepublicans. He delivered it over to his successor in this state, and very untoward events since, improved with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impressions we see. But still I repeat it, this is not the natural state. Time alone would bring round an order of things more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents. But are there no events impending which will do it within a few months? The crisis with England, the public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading principles of our Constitution, the prospect of a war, in which we shall stand alone, land tax, stamp tax, increase of public debt, etc.

"Be this as it may, in every free and deliberative society there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if, on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no Federal Government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England States alone cut off, will our nature be changed? Are we not men still to the south of that, and with all the