Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/448

1803. a minister extraordinary to go immediately to Paris and Madrid to settle this matter. This measure being a visible one, and the person named peculiarly popular with the western country, crushed at once and put an end to all further attempts on the Legislature. From that moment all has been quiet." The quiet was broken again, soon after this letter was written, by a sharp attack in the Senate.  Ross of Pennsylvania, White of Delaware, and Gouverneur Morris of New York, assailed the Administration for the feebleness of its measures.  In private, Jefferson did not deny that his measures were pacific, and that he had no great confidence in Monroe's success; he counted rather on Bonaparte's taking possession of New Orleans and remaining some years on the Mississippi.


 * "I did not expect he would yield until a war took place between France and England; and my hope was to palliate and endure, if Messrs. Ross, Morris, etc., did not force a premature rupture, until that event. I believed the event not very distant, but acknowledge it came on sooner than I had expected."

"To palliate and endure" was therefore the object of Jefferson's diplomacy for the moment. Whether the Western States could be persuaded to endure or to palliate the presence of a French army at New Orleans was doubtful; but Jefferson's success in controlling them proved his personal authority and political skill. Meanwhile the interest and activity of