give Washington's administration the benefit of his
deciding vote. It was only by this means that a neutrality act was
carried through the senate, and that the progress was stopped of certain
resolutions which had previously passed in the House of Representatives,
embodying restrictive measures against Great Britain, intended, or at
least calculated, to counterwork the mission to England on which Mr. Jay
had already been sent.

Washington being firmly resolved to retire at the close of his second
presidential term, the question of the successorship now presented
itself. Jefferson was the leader of the opposition, who called
themselves republicans, the name democrat being yet in bad odor, and
though often imposed as a term of reproach, not yet assumed except by a
few of the more ultra-partisans. Hamilton was the leader of the federal
party, as the supporters of Washington's administration had styled
themselves.

Though Hamilton's zeal and energy had made him, even while like
Jefferson in nominal retirement, the leader of his party, he could
hardly be said to hold the place with the Federalists that Jefferson did
with the Republicans. Either Adams or Jay, from their age and long
diplomatic service, were more justly entitled to public honor and were
more conspicuously before the people. Hamilton, though he had always
spoken of Adams as a man of unconquerable intrepidity and incorruptible
integrity, and as such had already twice supported him for
vice-president, would yet have much preferred Jay.

The position of Adams was, however, such as to render his election far
more probable than that of Jay, and to determine on his selection as
candidate of the Federalist party. Jay, by his negotiation of the famous
treaty which bears his name, had for the moment called down upon himself
the hostility of its numerous opponents. Adams stood, moreover, as
vice-president, in the line of promotion, and was more sure of the New
England vote, which was absolutely indispensible to the success of
either.

As one of the candidates was taken from the North, it seemed best to
select the other from the South, and the selection of Thomas Pickney, of
South Carolina, was the result of this decision. Indeed, there were
some, Hamilton among the number, who secretly wished that Pickney might
receive the larger vote of the two, and so be chosen president over
Adams' head. This result was almost sure to happen,--from the likelihood
of Pickney's rec