conciliation and adherence to sound principle. This I know is
impracticable with the leaders of the late faction, whom I abandon as
incurables, and will never turn an inch out of my way to reconcile
them. But with the main body of the federalists, I believe it very
practicable. You know that the manoeuvres of the year X. Y. Z. carried
over from us a great body of the people, real republicans, and honest
men under virtuous motives. The delusion lasted a while. At length the
poor arts of tub-plots, &c. were repeated till the designs of the party
became suspected. From that moment those who had left us began to
come back. It was by their return to us that we gained the victory in
November, 1800, which we should not have gained in November, 1799. But
during the suspension of the public mind from the 11th to the 17th of
February, and the anxiety and alarm lest there should be no election,
and anarchy ensue, a wonderful effect was produced on the mass of
federalists who had not before come over. Those who had before become
sensible of their error in the former change, and only wanted a decent
excuse for coming back, seized that occasion for doing so. Another body,
and a large one it is, who from timidity of constitution had gone
with those who wished for a strong executive, were induced by the same
timidity to come over to us rather than risk anarchy: so that, according
to the evidence we receive from every direction, we may say that the
whole of that portion of the people which were called federalists, were
made to desire anxiously the very event they had just before opposed
with all their energies, and to receive the election which was made, as
an object of their earnest wishes, a child of their own. These people (I
always exclude their leaders) are now aggregated with us, they look
with a certain degree of affection and confidence to the administration,
ready to become attached to it, if it avoids in the outset acts
which might revolt and throw them off. To give time for a perfect
consolidation seems prudent. I have firmly refused to follow the
counsels of those who have desired the giving offices to some of their
leaders, in order to reconcile. I have given, and will give, only to
republicans, under existing circumstances. But I believe with others,
that deprivations of office, if made on the ground of political
principles alone, would revolt our new converts, and give a body to
leaders who now stand alone. Some, I know, mu