In effecting the purchase of Louisiana, Mr. Jefferson has thus been eulogized by James G. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress:"
"Mr. Jefferson made the largest conquest ever peacefully achieved, at a cost so small that the sum expended for the entire territory does not equal the revenue which has since been collected on its soil in a single month, in time of great public peril."
JEFFERSON AND BENEDICT ARNOLD.
Benedict Arnold, with the British troops, had entered the Chesapeake in January, 1781, and sailed up the James River. He captured Richmond, the capital, then a town of less than two thousand people, and destroyed everything upon which he could lay his hands.
Jefferson summoned the militia, who came by thousands to oppose the traitor. Arnold, however, sailed down to Portsmouth and escaped.
Jefferson then urged upon General Muhlenburg the importance of picking out a few of the best men in his command "to seize and bring off the greatest of all traitors."
"I will undertake," he said, "if they are successful in bringing him off alive, that they shall receive five thousand guineas reward among them."
The effort was not made.