8425. THIRD TERM, Age and.—
I owe
you much thankfulness for the favorable opinion
you entertain of my services, and the assurance
expressed that they would again be
acceptable in the Executive chair. But I was
sincere in stating age as one of the reasons
of my retirement from office, beginning then
to be conscious of its effects, and now much
more sensible of them. Senile inertness is
not what is to save our country; the conduct
of a war requires the vigor and enterprise of
younger heads. All such undertakings, therefore,
are out of the question with me, and I
say so with the greater satisfaction when I
contemplate the person to whom the Executive
powers were handed over.—
To Thomas C. Flournoy. Washington ed. vi, 82.
(M.
Oct. 1812)
