west. The new President and Vice-president were sworn into office March 4, 1805. They had behind them a strong majority in each House of Congress, and henceforth the Federalist party was only a minority, able and powerful, but destined to death.

Under the new administration the controlling effect of European strife was more and more felt in American affairs. Napoleon's "Decrees" and the British "Orders in Council" were equally disastrous to the commerce of the United States; and both nations claimed the right to take seamen out of United States vessels. "England," said Jefferson, "seems to have become a den of pirates and France a den of thieves." There was trouble with Spain also, backed by France, about the eastern boundaries of Louisiana. There was renewed demand for a navy, but the President would only consent to the building of certain little gun-boats, much laughed at then and ever since. They were to cost less than ten thousand dollars apiece, were to be kept on land under cover, and to be launched whenever they were needed, like the boats of our life-saving service; with these the fleets which had fought under Nelson were to be resisted. Yet a merely commercial retaliation was favored by Jefferson; and an act was passed to punish England by the prohibition of certain English goods. A treaty with that nation was made, but was rejected by the President, and all tended to increase the bitterness of feeling between the two nations. In June, 1807, the British frigate Leopard took four seamen by force from the United States frigate Chesapeake. "Never since the battle of Lexington," said Jefferson, "have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present."

Then came that great political convulsion, the Embargo Act (December 22, 1807), prohibiting all commerce with all foreign countries, and thus instantly crushing all foreign trade which the two great European contestants had left. It kindled all the fires of hostility between the Federalists and Republicans -who had now fairly accepted the name of Democrats, a name borrowed from France, and fairly forced on them by their opponents. The act brought ruin to so many households that it might well be at least doubted whether it brought good to any. The very children of New England rose up against it, in the person of Bryant, who, when a boy of thirteen, wrote in opposition to it his first elaborate lay. It was believed by the Federalists to be aimed expressly at the eastern States, yet John Quincy Adams, Senator from Massachusetts, supported it, and then resigned, his course being disapproved by his legislature. He it was, however, who informed the President at last that the embargo could be endured no longer, and got it modified, in 1809, so as to apply only to England and France. Jefferson consented reluctantly even to this degree of pressure, but he wrote, looking back upon the affair in 1816, "I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New England township"; and he always urged thenceforward that the town system organized the voice of the people in a way with which no unwieldy county organization, such as prevailed at the South, could compete. Yet all but the commercial States sustained the embargo, and the Federalist party was left a broken and hopeless minority. Jefferson remained strong in popularity. His second term had secured a triumphant end to the long contest with

Tripoli, whose insolent claims were checked by the successes of Decatur and by a treaty (1805). An act had also been passed forever prohibiting the African slave-trade after January 1, 1808. Jefferson was urged to become for a third time a candidate for the Presidency, but wisely declined in favor of his friend Madison. In the election of 1808, James Madison, of Virginia, had 122 votes, C. C. Pinckney 47, and George Clinton 6, Mr. Madison being therefore elected; while on the vote for Vice-president George Clinton had a smaller majority. The third Chief Magistrate of the United States thus retired to private life after a career which has influenced American institutions to this day more profoundly than that of any other President unless it be Jackson.

Jefferson was a man full of thoughts and of studious purposes; trustful of the people, distrustful of the few; a generous friend, but a vehement and unscrupulous foe; not so much deliberately false as without a clear sense of truth; courageous for peace, but shrinking and vacillating in view of war; ignorant of his own limitations; as self-confident in financial and commercial matters, of which he knew little, as in respect to the principles of republican government, about which he showed more foresight than any man. of his time. He may have underrated the dangers to which the nation might be exposed from ignorance and vice, but he never yielded, on the other hand, to the cowardice of culture; he never relaxed his faith in the permanence of popular government or in the high destiny of man.

Meanwhile John Adams, on his farm in Quincy, had been superintending his haymakers with something as near to peace of mind as a deposed President

can be expected to attain. He was not a person of eminent humility, nor is it usually agreeable to a public man when his correspondents cease to be counted by the thousand and his letters shrink to two a week. His high-minded wife, more cordially accepting the situation, wrote with sincere satisfaction of skimming milk in her dairy at five o'clock in the morning. Each had perhaps something to say, when Jefferson was mentioned, about "Cæsar with a Senate at his heels," but it did not prevent the old friendship with Cæsar from reviving in later life. Jefferson had written to Washington long before, that even Adams's "apostasy to hereditary monarchy and nobility" had not alienated them; Adams saw in Jefferson, as time went on, the friend and even political adviser of his own son. Old antagonisms faded; old associations grew stronger; and the two aged men floated on, like two ships becalmed at nightfall that drift together into port and cast anchor side by side.

XV

THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE

EFFERSON'S period of office lasted technically for eight years, but it is not wholly incorrect to estimate, as Parton suggests, that it endured for nearly a quarter of a century. Madison's and Monroe's administrations were but the continuation of it. The fourth and fifth Presidents had, indeed, so much in common that it was about an even chance which should take the Presidency first. Both had long been friends of Jefferson; both had something to do with reconciling him to the Federal States Constitution, which he had at first opposed. He himself would have rather preferred Monroe for his immediate successor, but the legislature of Virginia pronounced in favor of Madison, who, like the two others, was a native of that then powerful State. It really made little difference which preceded. Josiah Quincy, in a famous speech, designated them simply as James the First and James the Second. The two were alike Jeffersonian; their administrations moved professedly in the line indicated by their predecessor, and the success of his policy must be tested in a degree by that of theirs. Both inherited something of his unpopularity with the Federalists, but Madison partially lived it down, and Monroe saw nearly the extinction of it. The Jeffersonian policy may,