fices, but he refused, on the
principle that a competent and honest office holder should not be
removed because of his political opinions. When he, therefore, made a
removal, it was as a rule, for other and sufficient reasons.

But he did not hesitate to show his dislike of the ceremony that
prevailed around him. He stopped the weekly levee at the White House,
and the system of precedence in force at the present time; also the
appointment of fast and thanksgiving days. He dressed with severe
simplicity and would not permit any attention to be paid him as
president which would be refused him as a private citizen. In some
respects, it must be conceded that this remarkable man carried his views
to an extreme point.

The story, however, that he rode his horse alone to the capitol,
and, tying him to the fence, entered the building, unattended, lacks
confirmation.

Jefferson was re-elected in 1804, by a vote of 162 to 14 for Pinckney,
who carried only two States out of the seventeen.

The administrations of Jefferson were marked not only by many important
national events, but were accompanied by great changes in the people
themselves. Before and for some years after the Revolution, the majority
were content to leave the task of thinking, speaking and acting to
the representatives, first of the crown and then to their influential
neighbors. The property qualification abridged the right to vote, but
the active, hustling nature of the Americans now began to assert itself.
The universal custom of wearing wigs and queues was given up and men cut
their own hair short and insisted that every free man should have the
right to vote.

Jefferson was the founder and head of the new order of things, and
of the republican party, soon to take the name of democratic, which
controlled all the country with the exception of New England.

Our commerce increased enormously, for the leading nations of Europe
were warring with one another; money came in fast and most of the
national debt was paid.

Louisiana with an area exceeding all the rest of the United States, was
bought from France in 1803, for $15,000,000, and from the territory
were afterward carved the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa,
Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory
and most of the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming.

The upper Missouri River and the Columbia River country to the Pacific
Ocean were explored in