attention." Jefferson had retired to his house outside the city. Washington dispatched to him a note showing an irritation never before seen in him, and asking his immediate presence. Jefferson replied in one of equal stiffness, couched in the third person, a mode of address he had never hitherto used towards Washington, assigning "a fever for the past few nights" as the cause of his leaving the city, and promising "that nothing but absolute inability would prevent his being in town to-morrow." Despite this personal friction, the pacific policy advocated by Jefferson during Washington's absence prevailed. The Cabinet decided that the legal questions involved should be referred "to persons learned in the laws;" and the British Minister was, in addition, informed that the vessel in controversy would not depart until the President's determination should be made known.*

Genet's intemperance of language continued. His insolence reached a pitch which made it necessary for the Cabinet to take up the question of dealing with him. They agreed unanimously that the French government should be requested to recall him; but on the question how the communication should be made, there was the usual division of opinion. Jefferson was for "expressing that desire with great delicacy; the others were for peremptory terms." The Cabinet met for three successive days. Every question broached called forth the warmest opposition from the one faction or the other. Much, however, was accomplished in spite of the incessant wrangling. Genet was to be informed that his recall had been asked-a victory for Hamilton; but no appeal was to be made to the people by a publication of the Genet correspondence-a victory for Jefferson. In general, more stringent rules were unanimously adopted for the maintenance of neutrality between the belligerents. Jefferson was instructed to draw up a letter asking the recall of Genet. His rough draft became, without a change, the official communication of the Cabinet. It takes high rank

* The Little Democrat did, however, put to sea two days later, in disregard of the assurance Jefferson claimed to have received from Genet.

among his foreign dispatches, for in it he treated a most delicate subject in a firm and unyielding and yet conciliatory spirit. Ast nad been agreed upon, a copy was sent to Genet himself, and Jefferson accompanied it with an explanatory note of most considerate tone.

This, as far as it concerned Jefferson, closed the Genet incident, with the exception of one further communication. Genet had impudently sent to the President his instructions, implying his desire that they should be laid before Congress. Jefferson returned them, plainly informing him that the communications which were to pass between the Executive and Legislative branches could not be a subject for his interference. This was Jefferson's last official act as Secretary of State.

It had for nearly two years been Jefferson's purpose to retire from public life. At first, he set as the date the end of Washington's first term, but at each suggestion of his purpose to withdraw, Washington had, by pleading considerations of the public good as well as his own personal desires, prevailed upon him to remain. This he had consented with some reluctance to do until the Freneau matter, with the personal bitterness it engendered in the Cabinet, confirmed Jefferson's disinclination to a position which called for daily contest with an aggressive and untiring opponent. Considerations of personal pride, however, arrested his carrying out his purpose. In January, 1793, he wrote his daughter, Mrs. Randolph: "My operations at Monticello had been all made to bear upon the close of this session of Congress; my mind was fixed on it with a fondness which was extreme, the purpose firmly declared to the President when I became assailed from all quarters with a variety of objections. Among these it was urged that my retiring, just when I had been attacked in the public papers, would injure me in the eyes of the public, who would suppose I either withdrew from investigation, or because I had not a tone of mind sufficient to meet slander. These representations have for some weeks past shaken a determination which I thought the whole world could not have shaken." Jefferson's resolution to resign was not again broached, until the unpleasant events connected with the Genet

episode hurried him on to a resignation. July 31st he sent to the President a letter in which a decided tone of bitterness is to be discovered. One passage will suffice: "At the close, therefore, of the ensuing month of September, I shall beg leave to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity, from those which I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me." Jefferson went more fully into his reasons: "I expressed to him [Washington] my excessive repugnance to public life, the particular uneasiness of my situation in this place where the laws of society oblige me always to move exactly in the circles which I know to bear me peculiar hatred, that is to say, the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants closely connected with England, the new created paper fortunes; that thus surrounded, my words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabricated and spread abroad to my injury; that he (Washington) saw, also, that there was such an opposition of views between myself and another part of the administration as to render it peculiarly unpleasing and to destroy the necessary harmony." At the further solicitation of the President, however, Jefferson agreed to continue in office through December.

On December 31st, 1793, therefore, Jefferson finally transmitted his resignation, couched in terms of the warmest cordiality and profoundest respect towards the President. He received in reply a letter which goes far towards refuting the idea that there was at this time an alienation between Washington and Jefferson, or that Jefferson averted an approaching alienation by resigning. No stronger summary of Jefferson's service in the Cabinet can be given than Washington's stately words of commendation and personal regard:

"Dear Sir: Since it has been impossible to prevail upon you to forego any longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, the event, however anxious I am to avert it, must be submitted to. But I cannot suffer you to leave your station without assuring you that the opinion which I have formed of your integrity and talents, and which dictated your original nomination, has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and that both have been

displayed in the discharge of your duty. Let a conviction of my most earnest prayers for your happiness accompany you in your retirement; and while I accept, with the warmest thanks, your solicitude for my welfare, I beg you to believe that I am, dear sir, Yours, etc.,

George Washington."

RETIREMENT.

In January, 1794, Jefferson reached Monticello to enjoy a retirement* which he intended should last many years. He was now in his fifty-first year, and he imagined, to judge from his correspondence, that his constitution was shattered and that he had become an old man. This feeling was merely the reaction following upon his withdrawal from the severe strain of his Cabinet life; but it served to enhance the sincerity of his protestations of contentment with his new environment. As a matter of fact, his bodily strength was that of a much younger man—the result of his temperate and regular habits. A few months found him completely restored to health.

His domestic life had in it much to erase whatever unpleasant recollections he retained from his public service. Four years before his elder daughter, Martha, had become the wife of Thomas Mann Randolph, a distant kinsman, and the young couple with their two children now came to live at Monticello. Mrs. Randolph was a highly accomplished woman, attractive in manners and conversation, endowed with unusual good sense, and devoted to her father. His younger daughter, Maria, now in her seventeenth year, completed the circle. She had for three years lived with her father in Philadelphia. She closely resembled her mother in her beauty and frailness of health, and was distinguished among all of her acquaintances for the unselfishness of her character.

Jefferson's life was now of the quietest description. Though his habit of letter-writing was practically dropped (during the

*See Retirement, page 369.

year 1794 only nine letters are preserved as his correspondence), yet he wrote enough to acquaint us with his daily occupations. To his late colleague and successor in the State department, Edmund Randolph, he wrote the first letter of his retirement. In this he said: "I think it is Montaigne who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. I am sure it is true as to everything political, and shall endeavor to estrange myself to everything of that character. I indulge myself on one political topic only, that is, in declaring to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives to the first and second Congresses and their implicit devotion to the Treasury." To Mr. Adams, the Vice-President, he wrote even more complacently: "The difference of my present and past situation is such as to leave me nothing to regret but that my retirement has been postponed four years too long. The principles on which I calculated the value of life are entirely in favor of my present course. I return to farming with an ardor which has got the better entirely of my love of study. Instead of writing ten or twelve letters a day, which I have been in the habit of doing as a thing of course, I put off answering my letters now, farmerlike, till a rainy day, and then find them sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations."

To Tenche Coxe, an old friend, he wrote in a vein which later furnished his opponents with a theme for much ridicule: "I am still warm whenever I think of those scoundrels [members of Congress who had profited by Hamilton's schemes], though I do it as seldom as I can, preferring infinitely to contemplate the tranquil growth of my lucern and my potatoes. I have so completely withdrawn myself from these spectacles of usurpation and misrule that I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month; and I feel myself infinitely happier for it."

According to his farm book, his estate comprised a total of 10,647 acres, but the greatest area under cultivation at any one time never reached two thousand acres. His slaves numbered one hundred and fifty-four. His domestic animals at the beginning of 1794 were thirty-four horses, five mules, two hun

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