his own time. Note one marked example.

In 1801, Jefferson was elected to the Presidency on the thirty-sixth
ballot. Thirty-five times Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina voted
against him. The following year Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina, feeling an
itching to specify to Congress his interests in Buncombe and his relations
to the universe, palavered in the usual style, but let out one truth, for
which, as truth-searchers, we thank him. He said,--

"Permit me to state, that, beside the objections common to my
friend from Delaware and myself, there was a strong one which I
felt with peculiar force. It resulted from a firm belief that the
gentleman in question [Jefferson] _held opinions respecting a
certain description of property in my State which, should they
obtain generally, would endanger it_."[4]

[4] Benton's _Abridgment_, Vol. II. p. 636.

We come now to Jefferson's Presidency. In this there was no great chance
to deal an effective blow at slavery; but some have grown bitter over a
story that he favored the schemes to break the slavery-limitation in Ohio.
Such writers have not stopped to consider that it is more probable that a
few Southern members, eager to drum in recruits, falsely claimed the favor
of the President, than that Jefferson broke the slavery-limitation which
he himself planned. Then, too, came the petitions of the abolition
societies against slavery in Louisiana; and Hildreth blames Jefferson for
his slowness to assist; but ought we not here to take some account of the
difficulties of the situation? Ought not some weight to be given to
Jefferson's declaration to Kerchival, that in his administration his
"efforts in relation to peace, slavery, and religious freedom were all in
accordance with Quakerism"?

We pass now to the third great period, in which, as thinker and writer, he
did so much to brace the Republic.

First of all, in this period we see him revising the translation and
arranging the publication of De Tracy's "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des
Lois." He takes endless pains to make its hold firm on America; engages
his old companion in abolitionism, St. George Tucker, to circulate it;
makes it a text-book in the University of Virginia; tells his friend
Cabell to read it, for it is "the best book on government in the world."
Now this "best book on government" is killing to every form of tyranny or
slavery; its arguments pierce all their fallacies and crush al