The summer of delirium at Philadelphia culminated in the panic and desolation of the yellow fever, and every member of the government fled from the city, Jefferson being the last to depart.
When, in the next year, the correspondence between Genet and Jefferson, and between the English minister and Jefferson, was published, the Secretary was seen to have conducted it on his part with so much ability, discretion, and tact, and with so true a sense of what was due to each nation concerned, that he may be said to have retired to his farm in a blaze of glory.
IX
THE TWO PARTIES
When Jefferson at last found himself at Monticello, having resigned his office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows: “I think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... No circumstances, my dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”
When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied: “The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question [pg 99]is forever closed with me.” Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated would be chosen to the second office.
There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility; it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments; it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at Washington. “Mr. Jefferson often told me,” remarks Mr. Bacon, “that the office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”
Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and, as he doubt[pg 100]less expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.