d reasonable. On
the 12th of April, when the question to commit was taken, there was a
majority of two against the assumption.

On the 26th the House was discharged, for the present, from proceeding
on so much of the report as related to the assumption. Jefferson, who
had arrived in New York in the midst of what he terms "this bitter and
angry contest," had taken no concern in it; being, as he says, "a
stranger to the ground, a stranger to the actors in it, so long absent
as to have lost all familiarity with the subject, and to be unaware of
its object." We give his own account of an earnest effort made by
Hamilton, who, he says, was "in despair," to resuscitate, through his
influence, his almost hopeless project. "As I was going to the
President's one day, I met him [Hamilton] in the street. He walked me
backwards and forwards before the President's door for half an hour.
He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been
wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the
danger of the _secession_ of their members, and the separation of the
States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to
act in concert; that though this question was not of my department,
yet a common duty should make it a common concern; that the President
was the centre on which all administrative questions ultimately
rested, and that all of us should rally around him, and support, with
joint efforts, measures approved by him.... I proposed to him to dine
with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two, bring
them into conference together, and I thought it impossible that
reasonable men, consulting together, coolly, could fail, by some
mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save
the Union. The discussion took place. I could take no part in it but
an exhortatory one, because I was a stranger to the circumstances
which should govern it. But it was finally agreed, that whatever
importance had been attached to the rejection of this proposition, the
preservation of the Union and of concord among the States, was more
important, and that, therefore, it would be better that the vote of
rejection should be rescinded, to effect which some members should
change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be
peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some concomitant
measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had
before been