BOOK FOUR
Monocrats and Republicans
CHAPTER I
THE QUARREL WITH HAMILTON
For more than two years Jefferson had repeatedly expressed the wish to be allowed to return to his native country, at least for a short visit. When he finally received official notification that his request had been granted, he departed from Paris rather abruptly and even without taking leave of his best friends. "Adieus are painful," he wrote to Madame de Corny, "therefore I left Paris without bidding one to you."[234] This is a naïve and quite significant confession of the difficulty he experienced in maintaining his puritanical restraint and impassibility at that time. He went with his two daughters from Le Havre to Cowes, and waited there till October 14 for favorable winds. After a rapid crossing on the Montgomery they sighted the "Capes" on November 13, and barely escaped being shipwrecked in the bay. Although damaged by fire and stripped of part of her rigging, the ship was able to reach Norfolk, and Jefferson promptly set out for Richmond and Monticello, stopping however on the way at Eppington with the Eppes. It was there that he received two letters from President Washington, one dated October 13, the other November 30, asking him to accept the post of Secretary of State in the newly formed cabinet. The President's letters were most flattering and indicated that he had been "determined, as well by motives of private regard, as a conviction of public propriety" to nominate him for the office.