rican society about
1800; but for the details of social and economic life the reader
will turn to McMaster. A briefer account of the Jeffersonian
regime may be found in Channing, _The Jeffersonian System,
1801-1811_ (in _The American Nation_, vol. 12, 1906). Henry Adams
has also contributed two biographies to this period: _Life of
Albert Gallatin_ (1878), and _John Randolph_(1882). The Federalist
point of view is admirably presented in S. E. Morison, _The Life
and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis_ (2 vols., 1913). The larger
biographies of Jefferson are: H. S. Randall, _Life of Thomas
Jefferson_ (3 vols., 1858), commonly referred to as the standard
biography, though exceedingly partisan; G. Tucker, _Life of Thomas
Jefferson_ (2 vols., 1837); and James Parton, _Life of Thomas
Jefferson_(1874).

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURCHASE OF THE PROVINCE OF LOUISIANA

Not a war cloud was in the sky when Jefferson took the oath of office.
The European calm, to be sure, proved to be only a lull in the tempest
of war which was to rage fifteen years longer; but no man could have
cast the horoscope of Europe in that age of storm and stress. The times
seemed auspicious for the Republican program of retrenchment and
economy. Jefferson was so sanguine of continued peace that he would have
been glad to lay up all seven of the frigates which then constituted the
navy in the eastern branch of the Potomac, where "they would be under
the immediate eye of the department, and would require but one set of
plunderers to take care of them." Peace was his passion, he frankly
avowed. He would have been glad to banish all the paraphernalia of war.
Yet within three months the United States was at war with an
insignificant Mediterranean power and menaced by France from an
unexpected quarter.

Early in the spring of 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, one of the Barbary
powers which for years had preyed upon the commerce of the
Mediterranean, declared war upon the United States by cutting down the
flagstaff at the residence of the American consul. European states had
purchased immunity for their commerce by paying tribute to these
rapacious pirates; and the United States had followed the custom. The
Pasha of Tripoli, however, was dissatisfied with the American tribute, a
paltry eighty-three thousand dollars, and demanded more. The other
Barbary powers threatened to make common cause with him. Ant