VIII

WHILE the President was absent in the south, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison were making a tour in the north. Proceeding to New York, and up the Hudson to Albany, they visited the principal scenes of Burgoyne's misfortunes, the fields of Stillwater, Saratoga and Bennington, and forts William Henry, George, Ticonde roga, Crown Point, and other places memorable in our revolutionary history. Mr. Jefferson amused himself with his rod and gun, and indulged those tastes for natural history which, if the condition of the country had not made him a politician, would probably have been his main distinction.

DISCONTENT AND SEDITION.

I.

As the period approached when electors of President and Vice President were again to be appointed in the several states, Washington perceived with the deepest regret that it would be necessary for him to allow his name to be used for a second term of four years. Jefferson, Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph, each addressed him letters entreating a continuance of his administration of affairs. The sincere and earnest appeal of Hamilton was unanswerable. This illustrious person, who for the greatness of his abilities and the importance of his public services has the highest place in our history, next to his chief and friend, wrote to him, "The impression is uniform that your declining would be deplorable as the greatest evil that could befall the country at the present juncture, and as critically hazardous to your own reputation-that your continuance will be justified, in the mind of every friend to his country, by the evident necessity for it. It is clear, says every one with whom I have conversed, that the affairs of the national government are not yet firmly established; that its enemies, generally speaking, are as inveterate as ever; that their enmity has been sharpened by its success, and by all the resentments which flow from disappointed predictions and mortified vanity; that a general and strenuous effort is making, in every state, to place the administration of it in the

hands of its enemies, as if they were its safest guardians; that the period of the next House of Representatives is likely to prove the crisis of its permanent character; that if you continue in office, nothing materially mischievous is to be apprehended, while if you quit, much is to be dreaded; that the same motives which induced you to accept originally ought to decide you to continue till matters have assumed a more determined aspect; that it would have been better, as it regards your own character, if you had never consented to come forward, than now to leave the business unfinished and in danger of being undone; that in the event of storms arising, there would be an imputation either of want of foresight or want of firmness; and, in fine, that on public and personal accounts, on patriotic and prudential considerations, the clear path to be pursued by you will be, again to obey the voice of your country, which it is not doubted will be as earnest and as unanimous as ever. On this last point, I have some suspicion that it will be insinuated to you, and perhaps (God forgive me, if I judge hardly,) with design to place before you a motive for declining, that there is danger of a division among the electors, and of less unanimity in their suffrages than heretofore. While your first election was depending, I had no doubt that there would be characters among the electors, who, if they durst follow their inclinations, would vote against you, but that in all probability they would be restrained by an apprehension of public resentment; that nevertheless it was possible a few straggling votes might be found in opposition, from some headstrong and fanatical individuals; that a circumstance of this kind would be in fact, and ought to be estimated by you, as of no importance, since there would be sufficient unanimity to witness the general confidence and attachment towards you. My view of the future accords exactly with what was my view of the past. I believe the same motives will operate to produce the same result. The

dread of public indignation will be likely to restrain the indisposed few. If they can calculate at all, they will naturally reflect that they could not give a severer blow to their cause than by giving a proof of hostility to you. But if a solitary vote or two should appear wanting to perfect unanimity, of what moment can it be? Will not the fewness of the exceptions be a confirmation of the devotion of the community to a character which has so generally united its suffrages, after an administration of four years, at the head of a new government, opposed in its first establishment by a large proportion of its citizens, and obliged to run counter to many prejudices in devising the arduous arrangements requisite to public credit and public order? Will not those who Will not those who may be the authors any such exceptions, manifest more their own perverseness and malevolence than any diminution of the affection and confidence of the nation? I am persuaded that both these questions ought to be answered in the affirmative, and that there is nothing to be looked for, on the score of diversity of sentiment, which ought to weigh for a moment. I trust, sir, and I pray God, that you will determine to make a further sacrifice of your tranquillity and happiness to the public good."

of

Washington's re-election was unanimous, and on the fourth of March, 1793, he took the oath of office in the hall of the senate, in the presence of the members of the cabinet, various public officers, foreign ministers, and such other persons as could be accommodated. In his speech to Congress he expressed the pleasing emotion with which he received this renewed testimony of the approbation of the people. While however it awakened his gratitude for all those instances of affectionate partiality with which he had been honored by his country, it could not prevent an earnest wish for that retirement from which no private consideration could ever have torn him; "but," he continued, "influenced by the belief that my con

duct would be estimated according to its real motives, and that the people would support exertions having nothing personal for their objects, I have obeyed the suffrage which commanded me to resume the executive power, and I humbly implore that Being on whose will the fate of nations depends, to crown with success our mutual endeavors for the general happiness."

II.

PHILIP FRENEAU had been an intimate friend of Mr. Madison while they were classmates in the college of Princeton. We do not know at what time he became acquainted with Mr. Jefferson, but it was probably during the summer after the organization of the government, and he appears from the beginning to have concurred in his political ideas. Freneau was editor of the Daily Advertiser, published in New York, when, on the seventeenth of August, 1791, he was appointed translator of the French language for the state department, and he soon after removed to Philadelphia. The place is said to have been a sinecure, as other clerks in the office were familiar with the French language, which was also spoken and written with fluent elegance by Mr. Jefferson. But Freneau made himself useful to the secretary, if not to the government, by estab lishing in the following October the National Gazette, a journal in which were given the first examples of that partisan abuse which has ever since been the shame of American politics. In it Mr. Jefferson was continually referred to with expressions of fulsome adulation, and the public and private characters of Washington, Hamilton, Knox, Adams, and their associates, were vilified with unfalter ing industry and malignity. The late Reverend Doctor Timothy Dwight wrote to Oliver Wolcott, on this subject, soon after Washington's second inauguration, "The late impertinent attacks on the chief magistrate are viewed with a general and marked indignation.