2490. ELECTIONS (Presidential, 1800), A President pro te.—[further continued] .
If the federalists could
have been permitted to pass a law for putting
the government into the hands of an officer,
they would certainly have prevented an election.
But we thought it best to declare openly
and firmly, one and all, that the day such an
act passed, the middle States would arm, and
that no such usurpation, even for a single day,
should be submitted to. This first shook them;
and they were completely alarmed at the resource
for which we declared, to wit, a convention
to reorganize the Government and to
amend it. The very word “convention” gives
them the horrors, as in the present democratical
spirit of America, they fear they should
lose some of the favorite morsels of the Constitution.—
To James Monroe. Washington ed. iv, 354.
Ford ed., vii, 490.
(W.
Feb. 1801)
