ad
dreamed so fondly, but he never expressed a _hope_, because he never
felt it; and when, in the summer and autumn of 1792, the Revolution in
France assumed a bloody and ferocious character, and the noble goal
toward which his friend the marquis had so enthusiastically pressed was
utterly lost sight of in the midst of the lurid smoke of a
self-constituted tyranny, as bad in feature and act as the foulest on
history's records, he was disgusted, and with the conservative party,
then fortunately holding the reins of executive and legislative power,
he resolved that the government of the United States should stand aloof
from all entanglements with European politics.

The doctrines of Jefferson and his party, having sympathy with the
French Revolution and enmity to Great Britain among its prime elements,
was rapidly gaining ground in the United States, because the avowed
principles of that party were in accordance with the proclivities of the
great mass of the people, who were moved by passion rather than by
reason. Yet that very people, although aware of the sentiments of
Washington and his supporters in the government, re-elected him by
unanimous voice, thereby showing their great love for, and unbounded
confidence in, the man of men. John Adams, who was again a candidate for
the vice-presidency, was opposed by Governor George Clinton of New York,
and was elected by not a large majority. He received in the electoral
college seventy votes, and Clinton fifty. The Kentucky electors voted
for Jefferson for the same office, and one vote was cast by a South
Carolina delegate for Aaron Burr.

We have just hinted at the progress of violence in France in the autumn
of 1792. Let us take a nearer view for a moment; for such scrutiny is
necessary to the elucidation of political events in the United States a
few months later.

Gouverneur Morris, who, as we have seen, was sent on a semi-official
embassy to England, was appointed full minister at the French court,
after Jefferson's retirement from that post. Mr. Morris was a
federalist, and his appointment was not pleasant to Mr. Jefferson and
his political friends. With Morris's commission, the president wrote a
friendly, and at the same time admonitory, letter to the new minister.
He frankly enumerated all the objections that had been made to his
appointment, and intimated that he thought the charge of his being a
favorite with the aristocracy in France, and anti-republican in his