ssessed dangerously aristocratic tendencies
which threatened to overthrow the most cherished of the new democratic
ideals; and Senator Maclay, who was also inimical to the president,
presumed on one occasion to go to a New Year's reception at the
government house "in top boots and my worst clothes." "Anti-republican
and dangerous precedents" were the epithets applied by Mr. Adams to the
"birthnight ball" offered by the people of Philadelphia to General
Washington, and declined as a personal compliment by the president of
the United States,--the distinction may seem somewhat fine but was thus
made at the time,--and so the social warfare went on. That the adherents
of the more primitive methods were doomed to defeat it needed no
extraordinary powers of vaticination to discern; but, though there was
much talk of "the precedent of court manners at the Capital," no one
seems to have understood the very evident fact that the centralization
of society necessarily effected by the location of the government was
sure to bring about the court atmosphere.

While Washington governed from Philadelphia, that city was as much a
social centre as Paris or London, though of lesser sphere of influence.

The seat of government was moved, in the autumn of 1800, to the
newly-risen town of Washington; and society for a while found itself
compelled to face difficulties innumerable in its struggle for European
customs as its established methods. Not only was there much hardship,
incidental to the newness of the capital, to be undergone, but the
inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, in the spring of 1801 as the third
president, brought about some retrogression in the onward march of the
social system. Jefferson affected a love for the extremes of "democratic
simplicity," and he carried this to the verge of boorishness in some
respects, giving mortal offence at times to foreign diplomats and native
statesmen by his disregard for the amenities of courtly custom. Himself
a polished gentleman, as a politician, Jefferson was something of the
demagogue in such matters as social customs when these seemed of
national import, and he was determined that the White House should in no
way resemble the court of any European monarch, believing that thus he
best pleased the people of the United States. So the first aspect of the
White House was that of ruggedness, since its occupation by the testy
John Adams and his family was of duration too short to be noted; and