Monticello, July 4th, 1800.
My dear Maria—We have heard not a word of you since the moment you left us. I hope you had a safe and pleasant journey. The rains which began to fall here the next day gave me uneasiness lest they should have overtaken you also. Dr. and Mrs. Bache have been with us till the day before yesterday. Mrs. Monroe is now in our neighborhood, to continue during the sickly months. Our forte-piano arrived a day or two after you left us. It has been exposed to a great deal of rain, but being well covered was only much untuned. I have given it a poor tuning. It is the delight of the family, and all pronounce what your choice will be. Your sister does not hesitate to prefer it to any harpsichord she ever saw except her own; and it is easy to see it is only the celestini which retains that preference. It is as easily tuned as a spinette and will not need it half as often. Our harvest has been a very fine one. I finish to-day. It is the heaviest crop of wheat I ever had.
A murder in our neighborhood is the theme of its present conversation. George Carter shot Birch, of Charlottesville, in his own door and on very slight provocation. He died in a few minutes. The examining court meets to-morrow.
As your harvest must be over as soon as ours, we hope to see Mr. Eppes and yourself. All are well here except Ellen, who is rather drooping than sick; and all are impatient to see you—no one so much as he whose happiness is wrapped up in yours. My affections to Mr. Eppes and tenderest love to yourself. Hasten to us. Adieu.
TH. JEFFERSON.
During the political campaign of the summer of 1800, Jefferson was denounced by many divines—who thought it their duty to preach politics instead of Christian charity—as an atheist and a French infidel. These attacks were made upon him by half the clergy of New England, and by a few in other Northern States; in the former section, however, they were most virulent. The common people of the country were told that should he be elected their Bibles would be taken from them. In New York the Reverend Doctor John M. Mason published a pamphlet attacking Jefferson, which was entitled, "The voice of Warning to Christians on the ensuing Election." In New England sermons preached against Jefferson were printed and scattered through the land; among them one in which a parallel is drawn between him and the wicked Rehoboam. In another his integrity was impeached. This last drew from Jefferson the following notice, in a letter written to Uriah McGregory, of Connecticut, on the 13th of August, 1800:
To Mr. McGregory.
From the moment that a portion of my fellow-citizens looked towards me with a view to one of their highest offices, the floodgates of calumny have been opened upon me; not where I am personally known, where their slanders would be instantly judged and suppressed, from a general sense of their falsehood; but in the remote parts of the Union, where the means of detection are not at hand, and the trouble of an inquiry is greater than would suit the hearers to undertake. I know that I might have filled the courts of the United States with actions for these slanders, and have ruined, perhaps, many persons who are not innocent. But this would be no equivalent to the loss of character. I leave them, therefore, to the reproof of their own consciences. If these do not condemn them, there will yet come a day when the false witness will meet a Judge who has not slept over his slanders.
If the reverend Cotton Mather Smith, of Shena, believed this as firmly as I do, he would surely never have affirmed that I had obtained my property by fraud and robbery; that in one instance I had defrauded and robbed a widow and fatherless children of an estate, to which I was executor, of ten thousand pounds sterling, by keeping the property, and paying them in money at the nominal rate, when it was worth no more than forty for one; and that all this could be proved. Every tittle of it is fable—there not having existed a single circumstance of my life to which any part of it can hang. I never was executor but in two instances, both of which having taken place about the beginning of the Revolution, which withdrew me immediately from all private pursuits, I never meddled in either executorship. In one of the cases only were there a widow and children. She was my sister. She retained and managed the estate in her own hands, and no part of it was ever in mine. In the other I was a co-partner, and only received, on a division, the equal portion allotted me. To neither of these executorships, therefore, could Mr. Smith refer.
Again, my property is all patrimonial, except about seven or eight hundred pounds' worth of lands, purchased by myself and paid for, not to widows and orphans, but to the very gentlemen from whom I purchased. If Mr. Smith, therefore, thinks the precepts of the Gospel intended for those who preach them as well as for others, he will doubtless some day feel the duties of repentance, and of acknowledgment in such forms as to correct the wrong he has done. Perhaps he will have to wait till the passions of the moment have passed away. All this is left to his own conscience.
These, Sir, are facts well known to every person in this quarter, which I have committed to paper for your own satisfaction, and that of those to whom you may choose to mention them. I only pray that my letter may not go out of your own hands, lest it should get into the newspapers, a bear-garden scene into which I have made it a point to enter on no provocation.
Jefferson went to Washington the last of November, the length and tedium of the journey to the new capital being nothing in comparison to what it had been to the old.
[CHAPTER XV.]
Results of Presidential Election.—Letter to his Daughter.—Balloting for President.—Letter to his Daughter.—Is inaugurated.—Returns to Monticello.—Letters to his Daughter.—Goes back to Washington.—Inaugurates the Custom of sending a written Message to Congress.—Abolishes Levees.—Letter to Story.—To Dickinson.—Letter from Mrs. Cosway.—Family Letters.—Makes a short Visit to Monticello.
The result of the Presidential Election of 1800 was the success of the Republican candidates—both Jefferson and Burr receiving the same number (73) of electoral votes. The chance of any two candidates receiving a tie vote was a circumstance which had not been provided for, and though all knew that Jefferson had been run to fill the office of President, and Burr that of Vice-president, the tie vote gave the latter a chance—which the Federalists urged him to seize, and which he did not neglect—to be made President.