England: "I am glad of it; for I would not have my son go as far as Mr. Jay, and affirm the friendly disposition of that country to this. I know better. I know their jealousy, envy, hatred, and revenge, covered under pretended contempt." Jefferson's slumbering energies were electrified; he wrote fiery letters, and by his conversational eloquence moved all who approached him. A new presidential election came on. John Adams was the Federal candiate; Thomas Jefferson the Republican. It does not appear that Mr. Jefferson was at all solicitous of being elected. Indeed, he wrote to Mr. Madison, “There is nothing I so anxiously hope as that my name may come out either second or third; as the last would leave me at home the whole of the year, and the other two-thirds of it." Alluding to the possibility that "the representatives may be divided," he makes the remarkable declaration, of the sincerity of which no one who knows the man can doubt, "This is a difficulty from which the Constitution has provided no issue. It is both my duty and inclination, therefore, to relieve the embarrassment, should it happen; and, in that case I pray you, and authorize you fully, to solicit on my behalf that Mr. Adams may be preferred. He has always been my senior from the commencement of our public life; and, the expression of the public will being equal, this circumstance ought to give him the preference."

As the result of the election, Mr. Adams became President, and Mr. Jefferson, Vice-President. This rendered it necessary for him to leave Monticello for a few months each year to attend the sessions of Congress. His numerous letters to his children show how weary he had become of party strife, with what reluctance he left his home, with what joy he returned to it.

In June, 1800, Congress moved from Philadelphia to Washington. The new seat of government, literally hewn out of the wilderness, was a dreary place. Though for twelve years workmen had been employed in that lonely, uninhabited, out-of-the-way spot, in putting up the public buildings, there was nothing as yet finished; and vast piles of stone and brick and mortar were scattered at great distances from each other, with swamps or sand-banks intervening.

Mrs. John Adams, who had seen the residences of royalty in Europe,— Buckingham Palace, Versailles, and the Tuileries,-gives an amusing account of their entrance upon the splendors of the "White House." White House." In trying to find Washington from Baltimore, they got lost in the woods. After driving for some time, bewildered in forest paths, they chanced to come upon a black man, whom they hired to guide them through the forest. "The house," she writes, "is upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to attend, and keep the apartments in proper order. The fires we are obliged to keep, to secure us from daily agues, are another very cheering comfort; but, surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to cut and cart it?"

The four years of Mr. Jefferson's Vice-Presidency passed joylessly away, while the storm of partisan strife between Federalist and Republican was ever growing hotter. General Hamilton, who was a great power in those days, became as much alienated from Mr. Adams as from Jefferson. There was a split in the Federal party. A new presidential election came on. Mr. Jefferson was chosen President; and Aaron Burr, Vice-President.

THE PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT.

The news of the election of Jefferson was received in most parts of the Union with the liveliest demonstrations of joy. He was the leader of the successful and rapidly increasing party. His friends were found in every city and village in our land. They had been taught to believe that the triumph of the opposite party would be the triumph of aristocratic privilege and of civil and religious despotism. On the other hand, many of the Federalists turned pale when the tidings reached them that Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States. Both the pulpit and the press had taught them that he was the incarnation of all evil,—an infidel, an atheist, a scoffer at all things sacred; a leveler, a revolutionist, an advocate of mob government.

Jefferson was exceedingly simple in his tastes, having a morbid dislike of all that court etiquette which had disgusted him so much in Europe. Washington rode to the halls of Congress in state, drawn by six cream-colored horses. Jefferson, on the morning of his inauguration, rode on horseback to the Capitol in a dress of plain cloth, without guard or servant, dismounted without assistance, and fastened the bridle of his horse to the fence. It may be that Mr. Jefferson had allowed his mind to become so thoroughly imbued with the conviction that our government was drifting towards monarchy and aristocracy, that he felt bound to set the example of extreme democratic simplicity.

The political principles of the Jeffersonian party now swept the country, and Mr. Jefferson swayed an influence which was never exceeded by Washington himself. Louisiana, under which name was then included the whole territory west of the Mississippi to the Pacific, was purchased of France, under his administration, in the year 1803, for fifteen millions of dollars.

He was now smitten by another domestic grief. In the year 1804 his beautiful daughter Maria, whom he so tenderly loved, sank into the grave, leaving her babe behind her. His eldest daughter, Martha, speaking of her father's suffering under this terrible grief, says,

"I found him with the Bible in his hands. He who has been so often and so harshly accused of unbelief,-he, in his hour of intense affliction, sought and found consolation in the sacred volume. The comforter was there for his true heart and devout spirit, even though his faith might not be what the world calls orthodox,"

SECOND TERM AS PRESIDENT.

125

Another presidential election came in 1804. Mr. Jefferson was reëlected President with wonderful unanimity; and George Clinton, Vice-President. Jefferson was sixty-two years of age, when, on the 4th of March, 1805, he entered upon his second term of office. Our relations with England were daily becoming more complicated, from the British demand of the right to stop any of our ships, whether belonging to either the commercial or naval marine, and to take from them any sailors whom they felt disposed to claim as British subjects. The course England pursued rendered it certain that war could not be avoided. Mr. Jefferson humanely did everything in his power to prevent the Indians from

taking any part in it whatever. The British, on the contrary, were endeavoring to rouse them to deluge the frontiers in blood. Strange as it may now seem, the measures of government to redress these wrongs were virulently opposed. But notwithstanding the strength and influence of the opposition to Mr. Jefferson's administration, he was sustained by the general voice of the nation.

In the year 1808 Mr. Jefferson closed his second term of office, and James Madison succeeded him as President of the United States. In the following terms the retiring President expresses to a friend his feelings upon surrendering the cares of office :

"Within a few days I retire to my family, my books, and farms; and, having gained the harbor myself, I shall look on my friends, still buffeting the storm, with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power. Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight; but the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation."

HOME LIFE AND HOSPITALITY.

Jefferson's subsequent life at Monticello was very similar to that of Washington at Mount Vernon. His mornings he devoted to his numerous correspondence; from breakfast to dinner he was in the shops and over the farms; from dinner to dark he devoted to recreation and friends; from dark to early bedtime he read. He was particularly interested in young men, advising them as to their course of reading. Several came and took up their residence in the neighboring town of Charlottesville, that they might avail themselves of his library, which was ever open for their use.

Toward the latter part of his life, from a series of misfortunes, Mr. Jefferson became deeply involved in debt, so that it was necessary for him to 11 a large portion of his estate. He was always profuse in his hospitality. Whole families came in their coaches with their horses,-fathers and mothers, boys and girls, babies and nurses,—and remained three or even six months. One family of six persons came from Europe, and made a visit of ten months. After a short tour they returned, and remained six months longer. Every day brought its contingent of guests. Such hospitality would speedily consume a larger fortune than Mr. Jefferson possessed. His daughter, Mrs. Randolph, was the presiding lady of this immense establishment. The domestic service required thirty-seven house servants. Mrs. Randolph, upon being asked what was the greatest number of guests she had ever entertained any one night, replied, "she believed fifty.”

In the winter Mr. Jefferson had some little repose from the crowd of visitors. He then enjoyed, in the highest possible degree, all that is endearing in domestic life. It is impossible to describe the love with which he was cherished by his grandchildren. One of them writes, in a letter overflowing with the gushing of a loving heart, "My Bible came from him, my Shakespeare, my first writing-table, my first handsome writing-desk, my first Leghorn hat, my first silk dress what, in short, of all my treasures did not come from him? My sisters, according to their wants and tastes, were equally thought of, equally provided for. Our grandfather seemed to read our hearts, to see our individual