A nation neutral in speech and neutral in thought, willing to intervene only to help the victims of the war or as an arbiter between the belligerents, such was at that time the ideal of Jefferson as it was to be for several years the ideal of Woodrow Wilson, and to a large degree the permanent ideal of the United States during their whole history.
CHAPTER III
"SELF-PRESERVATION IS PARAMOUNT TO ALL LAW"
When, on the fourth of March, 1805, Jefferson began his second term, he had a right to review with some complacency the achievements of his first administration. To foreign affairs he scarcely granted a short paragraph, but he pointed out with great details the suppression of unnecessary offices, the reduction of taxes, the fact that the Federal Government was almost entirely supported by duties levied on importations, so that "it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?" The Louisiana Purchase had increased enormously the potential riches of the country and removed a very dangerous source of conflict. The right bank of the Mississippi was to be settled by "our own brethren and children" and not by "strangers of another family."
Of great interest was the long passage given to Indian affairs. Jefferson's sympathy for the red men dated from the early days of his youth, when he had seen the chiefs stop at the house of his father on their way to Williamsburg. He had handsomely stood in defense of them in the "Notes on Virginia." Now he was regarding them with the commiseration their history began to inspire:
Endowed with the faculties and the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population directed itself on these shores, without power to divert, or habits to contend against, they have been overwhelmed by the current, or driven before it.
This was certainly a very regrettable situation, but the idea of questioning the right of an overflowing population to occupy scarcely populated territories did not for a moment enter Jefferson's mind. To deny such a right would have been not only detrimental to the very existence of the United States, but also a denial of the "right" of "our Saxons ancestors" to settle in England. Furthermore, the President was confronted with a certain set of facts and not with a theory. The territory of which the Indians had so long enjoyed undisturbed possession was growing narrower every day. With the recent acquisition of Louisiana, it was to be foreseen that they would not be able to roam freely much longer in the vast territories extending west of the Mississippi. They were now "reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter's state." The only thing they could do was to submit to new economic conditions, to settle down and become farmers, and it was the duty of the government "to encourage them to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain their place in existence, and to prepare them in time for that state of society, which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of mind and morals."