Washington had issued a proclamation of neutrality on April 22; but in spite of this Genêt assumed the right to fit out privateers, and to sell prizes in American ports, and even to grant commissions to American citizens to prey upon British commerce. Jefferson saw that this would never do. "I fear," he wrote to Madison, "that fair neutrality will prove a disagreeable pill to our friends, though necessary to keep us out of the calamities of war." All through June and July Jefferson was trying to conciliate and restrain Genêt; but his intemperate language, his turbulent conduct, his insolent pretensions, his disrespect for law and authority, made it necessary in August to apply for his dismissal. "Never in my opinion," wrote Jefferson to Madison on July 8, "was so calamitous an appointment made as that of the present Minister of France here." Genêt, he says, was 'hot headed, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful, and even indecent towards the president.' In the middle of August he wrote to Gouverneur Morris, American Minister in France, to demand Genêt's recall. The request was granted. But instead of returning to a French prison Genêt fell in love with Cornelia, daughter of George Clinton, the republican governor of the State of New York, and lived happily ever afterwards, a worthy citizen devoted to agriculture and science. At the end of July Jefferson had again begged the President for leave to retire. Again he gave way to pressure; but this time a final date was fixed, and the President reluctantly agreed to dispense with his services at the end of the year, saying: "like a man going to the gallows I am willing to put it off as long as I can." The popular effervescence in Philadelphia began to die down towards the end of the summer, and in August an outbreak of yellow fever in the city caused a general exodus. In the first week of September the Cabinet made haste to depart to their homes. By that time American neutrality in the war had been firmly established. Jefferson, braving the epidemic which had attacked Hamilton- stayed to clear his letter files. On the 17th of September he started home, and after stopping on the 22d at Mount Vernon to see Washington, arrived at Monticello on the 25th. The Cabinet was summoned to Germantown on November 1. By that time the yellow fever had abated, and Congress met again at Philadelphia on December 2. On the 21st Washington, who throughout the year had pretty consistently followed Jefferson's advice against Hamilton and Knox on one important occasion against Hamilton, Knox, and Randolph combined made a last effort to induce Jefferson to stay. But this time his Secretary of State was inexorable, and on December 31 he wrote his letter of resignation, concluding: "I carry into my retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue gratefully to remember it." The President's reply (January 1, 1794) ran as follows: "I yesterday received with sincere regret your resignation of the office of Secretary of State. 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 had formed of your integrity and talents, and which dictated your original nomination, has been confirmed by the fullest experience; and that both have been eminently 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, etc." On January 5 Jefferson set out from Philadelphia for Monticello, feeling like a prisoner released from a dungeon. In his Life of Washington John Marshall relaxes for a moment from an almost uniform bias against Jefferson to tell his readers that "this gentleman withdrew from political station at a moment when he stood particularly high in the esteem of his own countrymen." A few weeks afterwards Congress published Jefferson's correspondence with Genêt and Hammond. Its tone delighted patriotic men of both parties, and if it did not satisfy extremists, yet the publication - as Marshall puts it considerably lessened for a time the hostilities of his enemies without diminishing the attachment of his friends. Thus our tired gladiator left the arena with enhanced reputation, after many harassing conflicts from which neither credit nor glory could have been anticipated. BOOK V PRINCIPLES AND PARTIES CHAPTER I F IN RETIREMENT Frugibus alternis, non consule, computat annos; By crops not consuls he the year computes; CLAUDIAN'S OLD FARMER OF VERONA ROM January 16, 1794, when he reached Monticello to regain - as he fondly hoped and intended for the remainder of his life the freedom of a private citizen, Jefferson's rural felicity lasted nearly three years. At the end of 1796 he was elected Vice President of the United States and took office on March 4, 1797. He had not yet completed his fiftieth year, but his health of mind and body had suffered from worry and overwork. Sick of the drudgeries of office and of contention with Hamilton, he seems to have mistaken weariness and fatigue for a permanent debility. At any rate he was in earnest about retiring from active politics. His affairs badly needed personal attention, and he found more congenial occupation on his estate, in his garden, library, and workshops than in the office of Secretary of State. His beautiful daughter Maria was 16; Martha, the elder, was already mother of a son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. In their society and that of many friends the Squire of Monticello took great delight. There is no foundation except malice for the oft-repeated assertion that withdrawal from office was merely a cunning move in the political game with an eye to the leadership of the republican party and the Presidency. It would of course be a poor compliment to Jefferson to confound retirement with a stolid indifference to public affairs. But that it was his deliberate intention not to intermeddle with politics, and that he pursued it until the pressure of friends and the logic of events forced him back into the fray is incontestible. In the latest and largest collection of his published correspondence we find but nine short letters for 1794 and the same number for 1795. And even in these few political allusions are scanty, and there is no sign whatever of a gladiator's craving to return to the arena. "I return to farming," he wrote, April 25, 1794, "with an ardour which I scarcely knew in my youth, and 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 in course, I put off answering my letters now, farmer-like, till a rainy day." To Edmund Randolph, his successor in office, he quoted Montaigne's saying that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head; adding that he allows himself only one political topic, the corrupt subservience of a section of Congressmen to the Treasury. Not that Monticello could cease to be a resort of politicians even when its master turned farmer. Though he discontinued his Philadelphia newspapers, Madison, Giles, and other political friends kept him posted in the news from the seat of government. He had left behind him a masterly report on Foreign Commerce, a sort of political |