On the last day of July, Jefferson, still longing for the quiet of home-life, wrote to the President, tendering his resignation. After stating his reasons for so doing, he says:
To George Washington.
At the close, therefore, of the ensuing month of September, I shall beg leave to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity from those which I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me. I have thought it my duty to mention the matter thus early, that there may be time for the arrival of a successor from any part of the Union from which you may think proper to call one. That you may find one more able to lighten the burthen of your labors, I most sincerely wish; for no man living more sincerely wishes that your administration could be rendered as pleasant to yourself as it is useful and necessary to our country, nor feels for you a more rational or cordial attachment and respect than, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.
Early in August the President visited Jefferson at his house in the country, and urged that he would allow him to defer the acceptance of his resignation until the 1st of January. This Jefferson finally, though reluctantly, agreed to do. The following extract from a letter written by him to Madison in June will show how irksome public life was to him:
To James Madison.
If the public, then, has no claim on me, and my friends nothing to justify, the decision will rest on my own feelings alone. There has been a time when these were very different from what they are now; when, perhaps, the esteem of the world was of higher value in my eye than every thing in it. But age, experience, and reflection, preserving to that only its due value, have set a higher on tranquillity. The motion of my blood no longer keeps time with the tumult of the world. It leads me to seek for happiness in the lap and love of my family, in the society of my neighbors and my books, in the wholesome occupations of my farms and my affairs, in an interest or affection in every bud that opens, in every breath that blows around me, in an entire freedom of rest, of motion, of thought—owing account to myself alone of my hours and actions. What must be the principle of that calculation which would balance against these the circumstances of my present existence—worn down with labors from morning to night, and day to day; knowing them as fruitless to others as they are vexatious to myself, committed singly in desperate and eternal contest against a host who are systematically undermining the public liberty and prosperity, even the rare hours of relaxation sacrificed to the society of persons in the same intentions, of whose hatred I am conscious, even in those moments of conviviality when the heart wishes most to open itself to the effusions of friendship and confidence; cut off from my family and friends, my affairs abandoned to chaos and derangement; in short, giving every thing I love in exchange for every thing I hate, and all this without a single gratification in possession or prospect, in present enjoyment or future wish. Indeed, my dear friend, duty being out of the question, inclination cuts off all argument, and so never let there be more between you and me on this subject.
To Mr. Morris he wrote, on September the 11th:
An infectious and mortal fever is broke out in this place. The deaths under it, the week before last, were about forty; the last week about fifty; this week they will probably be about two hundred, and it is increasing. Every one is getting out of the city who can. Colonel Hamilton is ill of the fever, but is on the recovery. The President, according to an arrangement of some time ago, set out for Mount Vernon on yesterday. The Secretary of War is setting out on a visit to Massachusetts. I shall go in a few days to Virginia. When we shall reassemble again may, perhaps, depend on the course of this malady, and on that may depend the date of my next letter.
I shall now carry the reader back to the beginning of this year (1793), and give extracts from Jefferson's letters to his daughter, Mrs. Randolph, giving them in their chronological order: