d President John Adams signing the commissions of
these new judgeships to the very stroke of twelve on the night of March
3, and then entering his coach and driving in haste from the city.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

On the organization of parties at the close of the century there
are two works of importance: G. D. Luetscher, _Early Political
Machinery in the United States_ (1903), and M. Ostrogorski,
_Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties_ (2 vols.,
1902. Vol. II deals with parties in the United States).
Prosecutions under the Sedition Act are reported in F. Wharton,
_State Trials of the United States during the Administrations of
Washington and Adams_ (2 vols., 1846). F. T. Hill, _Decisive
Battles of the Law_ (1907), gives an interesting account of the
trial of Callender. Two special studies should be mentioned: E. D.
Warfield, _The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798_ (1887), and F. M.
Anderson, "Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions," in the _American Historical Review_, vol. v. The
spirit of American politics at this time can be best appreciated
by perusing _Porcupine's Works_, the writings of Callender and Tom
Paine, and the letters of Fisher Ames, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas
Jefferson, and Timothy Pickering.

CHAPTER VII

JEFFERSONIAN REFORMS

The society over whose political destiny Thomas Jefferson was to preside
for eight years was for the most part still rural and primitive.
Evidences of a higher culture were wanting outside of communities like
Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. Even in Philadelphia, the literary
as well as the social and political capital, the poet Moore could find
only a sacred few whom "'twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to
leave." American life had not yet created an atmosphere in which poetry,
or even science, could thrive. The scientific curiosity of the younger
generation does not seem to have been whetted in the least by the
startling experiments of Franklin; and the figure of Philip Freneau
stands almost alone, though Connecticut, to be sure, boasted of her
Dwight, her Trumbull, and her Barlow. The "Connecticut wits" are
interesting personalities; but the society which could read, with
anything akin to pleasure, Dwight's _Conquest of Canaan_--an epic in
eleven books with nearly ten thousand lines--was more admirable for its
physical endurance tha