Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/321

308 not get the vote of a single elector in the United States." To revolutionize New England, he concentrated Executive influence, and checked party spirit.  He began by placing two Massachusetts men in his Cabinet; before long he appointed as Postmaster-General an active Connecticut politician, Gideon Granger.  The Postmaster-General was not then a member of the Cabinet, but his patronage was not the less important.  Granger and Lincoln carried on a sapper's duty of undermining and weakening the Federalists' defences, while the Republican party refrained from acts that could rouse alarm.

Although in cooler moments Jefferson was less sanguine, he still so far miscalculated the division between himself and New England, that when the spring elections showed less increase than he expected in the Republican vote, he could not explain the cause of his error. "I had hoped," he wrote, in April, 1802, "that the proceedings of this session of Congress would have rallied the great body of citizens at once to one opinion; but the inveteracy of their quondam leaders has been able, by intermingling the grossest lies and misrepresentations, to check the effect in some small degree until they shall be exposed." Nevertheless, he flattered himself that the work was practically done. "In Rhode Island the late election gives us two to one through the whole