 Chapter 14 of Jefferson and His Colleagues by Alan Johnson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 14 Framing an American Policy The decline and fall of the Spanish Empire does not challenge the imagination like the decline and fall of that other empire with which alone it can be compared. Possibly because no given has chronicled its greatness, yet its dissolution affected profoundly the history of three continents. While the Florida's were slipping from the grasp of Spain, the provinces to the south were wrenching themselves loose with protestations which penetrated to European chancelories as well as to American legislative halls. Tuzar, Alexander and Prince Metternich, sponsors for the Holy Alliance and preserves of the Peace of Europe. These declarations of independence contain the same insidious philosophy of revolution which they had pledged themselves everywhere to combat. To simple American minds, the familiar words liberty and independence in the mouths of South American patriots meant what they had to their own grandsires struggling to throw off their shackles of British imperial control. Neither Europe nor America, however, knew the actual conditions in these newborn republics below the equator and both governed their conduct but their prepossessions. To the typically American mind of Henry Clay, now untrammeled by any sense of responsibility for he was a freelance in the House of Representatives, once more, the emancipation of South America was a thrilling and sublime spectacle, the glorious spectacle of 18 millions of people struggling to burst their chains and to be free. In a memorable speech in 1818, he had expressed the firm conviction that there could be but one outcome to this struggle. Independent, the South American states would be equally clear to his mind was their political destiny, whatever their forms of government they would be animated by an American feeling and guided by an American policy. They will obey the laws of the system of the new world of which they will compose a part in contradistinction to that of Europe. To this struggle and to this destiny the United States could not remain indifferent. He would not have the administration depart from its policy of strict and impartial neutrality but he would urge the expediency, nay the justice of recognizing established governments in Spanish America. Such recognition was not a breach of neutrality for it did not imply material aid in the wars of liberation but only the moral sympathy of a great free people for their southern brethren. Contrasted with Clay's glowing enthusiasm, the attitude of the administration directed by the prudent Secretary of State seemed cold, calculating and rigidly conventional. For his part, Adams could see little resemblance between these revolutions in South America and that of 1776. Certainly it had never been disgraced by such acts of buccaneering and power see as were of everyday occurrence in South American waters. The United States had contended for civil rights and then for independence. In South America civil rights had been ignored by all parties. He could discern neither unity of cause nor unity of effort in the confused history of recent struggles in South America and until orderly government was achieved with due regard to fundamental civil rights. He would not have the United States swerve in the slightest degree from the path of strict neutrality. Mr. Clay, he observed in his diary, had mounted his South American great horse to control or overthrow the executive. President Monroe, however, was more impressionable, more responsive to popular opinion and at this moment as the presidential year approached more desirous to placate the opposition. He agreed with Adams that the moment had not come when the United States alone might safely recognize the South American states, but he believed that concerted action by the United States and Great Britain might win recognition without wounding the sensibilities of Spain. The time was surely not far distant when Spain would welcome recognition as a relief from an impoverishing and hopeless war, meanwhile the president coupled professions of neutrality and expressions of sympathy for the revolutionists in every message to Congress. The temporizing policy of the administration aroused Clay to another impassioned plea for those southern brethren whose hearts, despite all rebuffs from the Department of State, still turned toward the United States. We should become the center of a system which would constitute the rallying point of human freedom against the despotism of the old world. Why not proceed to act on our own responsibility and recognize these governments as independent instead of taking the lead of the Holy Alliance in a course which jeopardizes the happiness of unborn millions? He deprecated this deference to foreign powers. If Lord Castlery says, we may recognize, we do, if not, we do not, our institutions now make us free, but how long shall we continue so if we mold our opinions? On those of Europe, let us break these commercial and political fetters, let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician, let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system. The question of recognition was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most in an opportune time. The Florida Treaty had not yet been ratified for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister General Vivas had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The administration had every reason at this moment to wish to avoid further causes of irritation to Spanish pride. It is more than probable indeed that Clay was not unwilling to embarrass the President and his Secretary of State. He still nursed his personal grudge against the President, and he did not disguise his hostility to the treaty. What aroused his resentment was the sacrifice of Texas for Florida. Florida would have fallen to the United States eventually like ripened fruit, he believed, why then yielded an incomparably richer and greater territory for that which was bound to become theirs whenever the American people wished to take it. But what were the explanations which Vivas demanded? Weary hour spent in conference with the widely-spanured convinced Adams that the great obstacle to the ratification of the treaty by Spain had been the conviction that the United States was only waiting ratification to recognize the independence of the Spanish colonies. Bitterly did Adams regret the advances which he had made to Great Britain at the instance of the President, and still morbidly did he deplore those paragraphs in the President's messages which had expressed an all-too-ready sympathy with the aims of the insurgents. But regrets availed nothing, and the Secretary of State had to put the best face possible on the policy of the administration. He told Vivas in unmistakable language that the United States could not subscribe to newer engagements as the price of obtaining the ratification of the old. Certainly the United States would not comply with the Spanish demand and pledge itself to form no relations with the pretended governments of the revolted provinces of Spain, as for the royal grants which de Onus had agreed to call null and void if his majesty insisted upon their validity. Perhaps the United States might acquiesce for an equivalent area west of the Sabine River. In some alarm, Vivas made haste to say that the king did not insist upon the confirmation of these grants. In the end he professed himself satisfied with Mr. Adams' explanations. He would send a messenger to report to his majesty and to secure formal authorization to exchange ratifications. Another long period of suspense followed that Spanish Cortez did not advise the king to accept the treaty until October. The Senate did not reaffirm its ratification until the following February, and it was two years to a day after the signing of the treaty that Adams and Vivas exchanged formal ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages of his diary so that posterity might read the conviction that the hand of an overruling providence was visible in this, the most important event of his life. If, as many thought the administration had delayed recognition of the South American republics, in order not to offend Spanish feelings while the Florida Treaty was under consideration, it had now no excuse for further hesitation. Yet it was not until March 8, 1822 that President Monroe announced to Congress his belief that the time had come when those provinces of Spain which had declared their independence and were in the enjoyment of it should be formally recognized. On the 19th of June he received the accredited charge d'affaires of the Republic of Columbia. The problem of recognition was not the only one which the impending dissolution of the Spanish colonial empire left to harass the Secretary of State, just because Spain had such vast territorial pretensions and held so little by actual occupation on the North American continent. There was danger that the shadowy claims would pass into the hands of aggressive powers with the will and resources to aggrandize themselves. One day in January, 1821, while Adams was awaiting the outcome of his conferences with Vivis, Stratford Canning, the British minister was announced at his office. Canning came to protest against what he understood was the decision of the United States to extend its settlements at the mouth of the Columbia River. Adams replied that he knew of no such determination, but he deemed it very probable that the settlements on the Pacific coast would be increased. Canning expressed rather ill-matured surprise at this statement, preconceived that such a policy would be palpable violation of the Convention of 1818. Without replying, Adams rose from his seat to procure a copy of the treaty and then read aloud the parts referring to the joint occupation of the Oregon county, a stormy colloquy followed in which both participants seemed to have lost their tempers. Next day, Canning returned to the attack and Adams challenged the British claim to the mouth of the Columbia. Why exclaim Canning? Do you not know that we have a claim? I do not know, said Adams, what you claim, nor what you do not claim. You claim India, you claim Africa, you claim perhaps said Canning a piece of the moon. No, replied Adams, I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of the moon, but there is not a spot on this habitable globe that I could affirm you do not claim. And there is none which you may not claim with as much color of right as you can have to Columbia River or its mouth. With equal sang-fois, the Secretary of State met threatened aggression from another quarter. In September of this same year, the Tsar issued a eucasty claiming the Pacific coast as far south as the 51st parallel and declaring Bering Sea closed to the commerce of other nations. Adams promptly refused to recognize these pretensions and declared to Baron de Toul, the Russian minister, that we should contest the right of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subject for any new European colonial establishments. Not long after this interview, Adams was notified by Baron de Toul that the Tsar, in conformity with the political principles of the Allies, had determined in no case whatever to receive any agent from the government of the Republic of Columbia or from any other government which owed its existence to the recent events in the New World. Adams' first impulse was to pin a reply that would show the inconsistency between these political principles and the anxious professions of Christian duty which had resounded in the Holy Alliance. But the note which he drafted was, perhaps fortunately, not dispatched until it had been revised by President and Cabinet a month later under a stress of other circumstances. At still another focal point, the interests of the United States ran counter to the covetous desires of European powers. Cuba, the choicest of the provinces of Spain, still remained nominally loyal. But should the hold of Spain upon this pearl of the Antilles relax, every maritime power would swoop down upon it. The immediate danger, however, was not that revolution would hear as elsewhere sever the province from Spain leaving it helpless and incapable of self-support. But that France, after invading Spain and restoring the monarchy, would also intervene in the affairs of her provinces. The transfer of Cuba to France by the Grateful King was a possibility which haunted the dreams of George Canning at Westminster as well as of John Quincy Adams at Washington. The British Foreign Minister attempted to secure a pledge from France that she would not acquire any Spanish-American territory either by conquest or by treaty while the Secretary of State instructed the American minister to Spain not to conceal from the Spanish government. The repugnance of the United States to the transfer of the island of Cuba by Spain to any other power. Canning was equally fearful lest the United States should occupy Cuba and he would have welcomed assurances that it had no designs upon the island. Had he known precisely the attitude of Adams, he would have been still more uneasy for Adams. Adams was perfectly sure that Cuba belonged by the laws of political as well as of physical gravitation to the North American continent, though he was not for the present ready to assist the operation of political and physical laws. Events were inevitably detaching Great Britain from the Consulate of Europe and putting her in opposition to the policy of intervention both because of what it meant in Spain and what it might mean when applied to the New World. Knowing that the United States shared these latter apprehensions, George Canning conceived that the two countries might join in a declaration against any project by any European power force subjugating the colonies of South America either on behalf or in the name of Spain. He ventured to ask Richard Rush, the American minister at London, what his government would say to such a proposal. For his part, he was quite willing to state publicly that he believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain to be hopeless, that recognition of their independence was only a question of proper time and circumstance that Great Britain did not aim at the possession of any of them, though she could not be indifferent to their transfer to any other power. If, said Canning, these opinions and feelings are, as I firmly believe them to be, common to your government with ours, why should we hesitate mutually to confide them to each other and to declare them in the face of the world? Why, indeed, to Rush, there occurred one good and sufficient answer which, however he could not make. He doubted the disinterestedness of Great Britain. He could only reply that he would not feel justified in assuming the responsibility for a joint declaration unless Great Britain would first unequivocally recognize the South American republics, and when Canning balked at the suggestion he could only repeat in an as conciliatory manner as possible his reluctance to enter into any engagement. Not once only, but three times Canning repeated his overtures, even urging Rush to write home for powers and instructions. The dispatches of Rush seemed so important to President Monroe that he sent copies of them to Jefferson and Madison with a query which revealed to his own attitude whether the moment had not arrived when the United States might safely depart from its traditional policy and meet the proposal of the British government. If there was one principle which ran consistently through the D.B.S. foreign policy of Jefferson and Madison, it was that of political isolation from Europe, our first and fundamental maxim, Jefferson wrote in reply, Harking back to the old formula should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, our second never to suffer Europe to inter-metal with cis-Atlantic affairs. He then continued in this wise, most of all could disturb us in this pursuit. She now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it by exceeding to her proposition we detach her from the band of despots bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government and emancipate a continent at one stroke which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty. I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion that it will prevent instead of provoking war, with Great Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations by the interference of anyone in the internal affairs of another. So, fleticiously begun by Bonaparte and now continued by the equally lawless alliance calling itself holy. Madison argued the case with more reserve but arrived at the same conclusion. There ought not to be any backwardness, therefore, I think, in meeting her, England, in the way she has proposed. The dispatches of Rush produced a very different effect, however, upon the Secretary of State whose temperament fed upon suspicion and who now found plenty of food for thought both in what Rush said and in what he did not say. Obviously, Canning was seeking a definite compact with the United States against the designs of the Allies, not out of any altruistic motive but for selfish ends. Great Britain, Rush had written bluntly, had as little sympathy with popular rights as it had on the field of Lexington. It was bent on preventing France from making conquests, not on making South America free. Just so, Adams reasoned, Canning desires to secure from the United States a public pledge ostensibly against the forcible interference of the Holy Alliance between Spain and South America. But really or especially against the acquisition to the United States themselves of any part of the Spanish American possessions. By joining with Great Britain, we would give her a substantial and perhaps inconvenient pledge against ourselves and really obtain nothing in return. He believed that it would be more candid and more dignified to decline Canning's overtures and to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France. For his party did not wish the United States to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man of war. Thus Adams argued in the sessions of the cabinet quite ignorant of their correspondence which had passed between the President and his mentors. Confident of his ability to handle the situation, he asked no more congenial task than to draft replies to Barron Tull and to Canning and instructions to the ministers at London, St. Petersburg and Paris. But he impressed upon Monroe the necessity of making all these communications part of a combined system of policy and adapted to each other. Not so easily, however, was the President detached from the influence of the two Virginia oracles. He took sharp exception to the letter which Adams drafted in reply to Barron Tull saying that he desired to refrain from any expressions which would irritate the czar and thus turned what was to be an emphatic declaration of principles into what Adams called the Tamest of State papers. The secretaries drafted instructions to Russia had also to run the gauntlet of amendment by the President and his cabinet, but it emerged substantially unaltered in content and purpose. Adams professed to find common ground with Great Britain while pointing out with much subtlety that if she believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain was really hopeless, she was under moral obligation to recognize them as independent states and to favor only such an adjustment between them and the mother country as was consistent with the effective independence. The United States was in perfect accord with the principles laid out by Mr. Canning. It desired none of the Spanish possessions for itself, but it could not see within difference any portion of them transferred to any other power. Nor could the United States see within difference any attempt by one or more powers of Europe to restore those new states to the ground of Spain or to deprive them in any manner whatever of the freedom and independence which they have acquired. But for accomplishing the purposes which the two governments had in common, and here the masterful Secretary of State had his own way, it was advisable that they should act separately, each making such representations to the continental allies as circumstances dictated. Further communications from Barron Tool gave Adams the opportunity, which he had once lost, of enunciating the principles underlying American policy. In a masterly paper dated November 27, 1823, he adverted to the Declaration of the Allied Monarchs that they would never compound with revolution but would forcibly interpose to guarantee the tranquility of civilized states. In such declarations, the President wrote Adams wishes to perceive sentiments, the application of which is limited and intended in their results to be limited to the affairs of Europe. The United States of America and their government could not see within difference the forceful interposition of any European power other than Spain, either to restore the dominion of Spain over her emancipated colonies in America or to establish monarchical governments in those countries or to transfer any of the possessions heretofore are yet subject to Spain in the American hemisphere to any other European power. But so little have the President, even yet grasped the wide sweep of the policy which his Secretary of State was framing, that when he read to the Cabinet a first draft of his annual message, he expressed his pointed disapprobation of the invasion of Spain by France and urged an acknowledgement of Greece as an independent nation. This declaration was, as Adams remarked, a call to arms against all Europe. And once again he urged the President to refrain from any utterance which might be construed as a pretext for retaliation by the Allies. If they meant to provoke a quarrel with the United States, the administration must meet it and not invite it. If they intend not to interpose by force, we shall have as much as we can to do to prevent them, said he, without going to bid them defiance in the heart of Europe. The ground I wish to take and continue is that of earnest remonstrance against the interference of the European powers by force with South America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to that. In the end, Adams had his way and the President revised the paragraphs dealing with foreign affairs so as to make them conform to Adams' desires. No one who reads the message which President Monroe sent to Congress on December 2, 1823 can fail to observe that the paragraphs which have an enduring significance as declarations of policy are anticipated in the masterly state papers of the Secretary of State. Alluding to the differences with Russia in the Pacific Northwest, the President repeated the principle which Adams had stated to bear in tool. The occasion has been judged proper for asserting as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved at the American continents by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, or henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers, and the vital principle of abstention from European affairs and of adherence to a distinctly American system for which Adams had contended so stubbornly found memorable expression in the following paragraph. In the words of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do it is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the Allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments and to the defense of our own which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens and under which we have enjoyed an example of felicity this whole nation is devoted. We owe it therefore to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies and dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere but with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it and whose independence we have on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. Later generations have read strange meanings into Monroe's message and have elevated into a doctrine those declarations of policy which had only an immediate application with the interpretations and applications of a later day this book has nothing to do suffice it to say that President Monroe and his advisors accomplished their purposes and the evidence that they were successful is contained in a letter which Richard Rush wrote to the Secretary of State on December 27 1823. But the most decisive blow to all despite interference with the new states is that which it has received in the president's message at the opening of Congress. It was looked for here with extraordinary interest at this juncture and I've heard that the British packet which left New York the beginning of this month was instructed to wait for it and bring it over with all speed. On his publicity in London the credit of all the Spanish-American securities immediately rose and the question of the final and complete safety of the new states from all European coercion is now considered as at rest. End of chapter 14 chapter 15 of Jefferson and his colleagues by Alan Johnson this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 15 the end of an era. It was in the midst of the diplomatic contest for the Florida's that James Monroe was for the second time elected to the presidency with singularly little display of partisanship. This time all the electoral votes but one were cast for him of all the presidents only George Washington has received a unanimous vote. And to Monroe therefore belongs the distinction of standing second to the father of his country in the vote of electors. The single vote which Monroe failed to get fell to his secretary of state John Quincy Adams. It is a circumstance of some interest that the father of the secretary old John Adams so far forgot his federalist antecedents that he served as Republican elector in Massachusetts and cast his vote for James Monroe. Never since parties emerged in the second administration of Washington had such extraordinary unanimity prevailed across this scene of political harmony. However, the Missouri controversy cast the specter like shadow of slavery for the moment and often in after years it seemed inevitable that parties would spring into new vigor following sectional lines. All patriots were genuinely alarmed. This momentous question wrote Jefferson like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only not a final sentence. What Jefferson termed a reprieve was the settlement of the Missouri question by the compromise of 1820. Do the demands of the South that Missouri should be admitted into the union as a slave state with the Constitution of her choice. The North yielded on condition that the rest of the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes should be forever free. Since forth slaveholders might enter Missouri and the rest of the old province of Louisiana below her southern boundary line. But beyond this line into the greater Northwest, they might not take their human chattels. To this act of settlement, President Monroe gave his assent for he believed that further controversy would shake the union to its very foundations. In his re-criminations and re-criminations of North and South ringing in his ears, Jefferson had little faith in the permanency of such a settlement. A geographical line said he, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men will never be obliterated. And every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. And Madison, usually optimistic about the future of his beloved country, indulged only the gloomiest forebodings about slavery. Both the ex-presidents took what comfort they could in projects of emancipation and deportation. Jefferson would have had slaveholders yield up slaves born after a certain date to the guardianship of the state, which would then provide for their removal to Santo Domingo at a proper age. Madison took heart at the prospect opened up by the colonization society, which he trusted would eventually end this dreadful calamity of human slavery. Fortunately for their peace of mind, neither lived to see these frail hopes dashed to pieces. Signs were not wanting that statesmen of the Virginia School were not to be leaders in the new era, which was dawning. On several occasions, both Madison and Monroe had shown themselves out of touch with the newer currents of national life. Their point of view was that of the epic, which began with the French Revolution and ended with the overthrow of Napoleon and the pacification of Europe. Inevitably, foreign affairs had absorbed their best thought to maintain national independence against foreign aggression had been their constant purpose. Whether the menace came from Napoleon's designs upon Louisiana or from British disregard of neutral rights or from Spanish helplessness on the frontiers of her empire. But now with political and commercial independence assured a new direction was imparted to national endeavor. America made a Vota Fossa and turned to the setting sun. During the second quarter of the 19th century, every ounce of national vitality went into the conquest and settlement of the Mississippi Valley. Once more at peace with the world, Americans set themselves to the solution of the problems which grew out of this vast migration from the Atlantic seaboard to the interior. These were problems of territorial organization, of distribution of public lands, of inund trade of highways and waterways, of revenue and appropriation problems that focused in the offices of the secretaries of the Treasury and of war. And lurking behind all was the specter of slavery and sectionalism. Two impatient home seekers who crossed the Alleghenies had never occurred to question the competence of the federal government and to meet all their wants. That the government at Washington should construct and maintain highways and prove and facilitate the navigation of inland waterways seemed a most reasonable expectation. What else was government for? But these proposed activities did not seem so obviously legitimate to presidents of the Virginia dynasty. Not so readily could they waive constitutional scruples. Madison felt impelled to veto a bill for constructing and canals and improving waterways because he could find nowhere in the Constitution any specific authority for the federal government to embark on a policy of internal improvements. His last message to Congress set forth his objections in detail and was designed to be his farewell address. He would rally his party once more around the good old Jeffersonian doctrines. Monroe felt similar doubts when he was presented with a bill to authorize the collection of tolls on the New Cumberland Road. In a veto message of prodigious length he too harked back to the original Republican principle of strict construction of the Constitution. The leadership which the Virginians thus refused to take fell soon to men of more resolute character who would not let the dead hand of legalism stand between them and their hearts desires. It is one of the ironies of American history that the settlement of the Mississippi Valley and of the Gulf Plains brought acute pecuniary distress to the three great Virginians who had bent all their energies to acquire these vast domains. The lure of Virgin soil drew men and women in ever increasing numbers from the seaboard states. Farms that at once suffice were cast recklessly on the market to bring what they would while their owners staked their claims on new soil at a dollar and a quarter an acre. Depreciation of land values necessarily followed in states like Virginia and the three ex-presidents soon found themselves land poor. In common with other planters they had invested their surplus capital in land only to find themselves unable to market their crops in the trying days of the embargo and non-intercourse acts. They had suffered heavy losses from the British blockade during the war and they had not fully recovered from these reverses when the general fall of prices came in 1819. Believing that they were facing only a temporary condition they met their difficulties by financial expedience which in the end could only add to their burdens. A general reluctance to change their manner of life into practice and intensive agriculture with diversified crops contributed no doubt to the general depression of planters in the old dominion. Jefferson at Monticello, Madison at Montpelier and to a lesser extent Monroe at Oak Hill maintained their old establishments and still dispensed a lavish southern hospitality which indeed they could hardly avoid. A former president is forever condemned to be a public character. All kept open house for their friends and none could bring himself to close his doors to strangers even when curiosity was the sole motive for intrusion. So early it must have tried the soul of Mrs. Randolph to find accommodations at Monticello for fifty uninvited and unexpected guests. Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith who has left lively descriptions of life at Montpelier was once one of twenty-three guests. When a friend commented on the circumstance that no less than nine strange horses were feeding in the stables at Montpelier Madison remarked somewhat grimly that he was delighted with the society of the owners but could not confess to the same enthusiasm at the presence of their horses. Both Jefferson and Madison were victims of the indiscretion of others. Madison was obliged to pay the debts of a son of Mrs. Madison by her first marriage and became so financially embarrassed that he was forced to ask President Biddle of the Bank of the United States for a long loan of six thousand dollars only to suffer the humiliation of a refusal. He had then to part with some of his lands at a great sacrifice but he retained Montpelier and continued to reside there though in reduced circumstances until his death in 1836. At about the same time Jefferson received what he called his Gouda Grasse. He had endorsed a note of twenty thousand dollars for Governor Wilson C. Nicholas and upon his becoming insolvent was held to the full amount of the note. His only assets were his lands which would bring only a fifth of their former price to sell on these ruinous terms was to impoverish himself and his family. His distress was pathetic. In desperation he applied to the legislature for permission to sell his property by lottery but he was spared this last humiliation by the timely aid of friends who started popular subscriptions to relieve his distress. Monroe was less fortunate for he was obliged to sell Oak Hill and to leave over Virginia forever. He died in New York City on the fourth of July 1831. The latter years of Jefferson's life were cheered by the renewal of his old friendship with John Adams now in retirement at Quincy full of pleasant reminiscence are the letters which pass between them and full too of allusions to the passing show. Neither had lost all interest in politics but both viewed events with the quiet contemplation of old men. Jefferson was absorbed to the end in his last great hobby the university that was slowly taking bodily form four miles away across the valley from Monticello. When bodily infirmities would not permit him to ride so far he would watch the workman through a telescope mounted on one of the terraces crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and laborious. He wrote to Adams but while writing to you I lose the sense of these things in the recollection of ancient times when youth and health made happiness out of everything. I forget for a while the horny winter of age when we can think of nothing but how to keep ourselves warm and how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all at once against the stadium Vita. However I am fortunately mounted on a hobby which indeed I should have better managed some 30 or 40 years ago but who's easy amble is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenary writer. This is the establishment of a university. Alluding to certain published letters which revived old controversies he begged his old friend not to allow his peace of mind to be shaken. It would be strange indeed if at our years we were to go back in age to hunt up imaginary or forgotten facts to disturb the repose of affection so sweetening to the evening of our lives. As the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approach Jefferson and Adams were besought to take part in the celebration which was to be held in Philadelphia. The infirmities of age rested too heavily upon them to permit their journey so far but they consecrated the day anew with their lives. At noon on the 4th of July 1826 while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest with the name of his old friend upon his lips. End of Chapter 15. End of Jefferson and His Colleagues by Alan Johnson