Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/212

1804. will be contented that others should be as free as himself, and acquiesce when his opinion is fairly overruled, will attain his object in the end."

If Jefferson and his Virginia friends in 1798, when their own opinions were overruled, had expressed the idea of acquiescence as strongly, the nation might perhaps have been saved the necessity of proving later the truth of his words; but Jefferson could afford to treat with contempt the coalition between Burr and Pickering, because, as he wisely said, it had no cohesive force to hold it together, no common principle on which to rest. When Burr's defeat in April and Hamilton's death in July dissolved the unnatural connection, Jefferson let the secret die; he wanted no scandal. He stood a little in awe of the extreme Federalists, whom he called incurables, and was unwilling to exasperate them without an object.

The Administration had every reason to rejoice that Burr's factious influence in the State of New York was at an end; for other causes of anxiety gave the President more personal annoyance. The strength of the Republican party lay in the alliance between Virginia and Pennsylvania. So long as these two central States, with their forty members of Congress, remained harmonious, nothing could shake Jefferson's power; but any discord which threatened his control of Pennsylvania caused him anxiety. Hardly had Burr's schism been checked in New York by a succession of measures as energetic as De Witt Clinton could persuade Jefferson to adopt, when a