2977. FEDERALISTS, Republicans and.—[further continued].
The manœuvres of the year X. Y. Z. carried over from us a great
body of the people, real republicans, and
honest men under virtuous motives. The delusion
lasted a while. At length the poor
arts of tub plots, &c., were repeated till the
designs of the party became suspected. From
that moment those who had left us began to
come back. It was by their return to us that
we gained the victory in November, 1800,
which we should not have gained in November,
1799. But during the suspension of
the public mind, from the 11th to the 17th
of February [last], and the anxiety and
alarm lest there should be no election,
and anarchy ensue, a wonderful effect was
produced on the mass of federalists who had
not before come over. Those who had before
become sensible of their error in the
former change, and only wanted a decent
excuse for coming back, seized that occasion
for doing so. Another body, and a
large one it is, who from timidity of constitution
had gone with those who wished for a
strong executive, were induced by the same
timidity to come over to us rather than risk
anarchy: so that, according to the evidence
we receive from every direction, we may say
that the whole of that portion of the people
which were called federalists, were made to
desire anxiously the very event they had just
before opposed with all their energies, and to
receive the election which was made, as an
object of their earnest wishes, a child of their
own. These people (I always exclude their
leaders) are now aggregated with us. They
look with a certain degree of affection and
confidence to the administration, ready to become
attached to it, if it avoids in the outset
acts which might revolt and throw them off.
To give time for a perfect consolidation seems
prudent.—
To James Monroe. Washington ed. iv, 367.
Ford ed., viii, 9.
(W.
March. 1801)
