Chapter 12: Personalities
When the session of Congress closed, May 3, the Administration was left to administer a system greatly reduced in proportions. In Jefferson's own words, he had "put the ship on her republican tack," where she was to show by the beauty of her motion the skill of her builders. Nothing remained, with respect to internal politics, but to restore harmony by winning recalcitrant New England, a task which he confidently hoped to accomplish within the course of the year. "If we are permitted," he wrote,[1] in October, 1801, "to go on so gradually in the removals called for by the Republicans, as not to shock or revolt our well-meaning citizens who are coming over to us in a steady stream, we shall completely consolidate the nation in a short time,—excepting always the royalists and priests." So hopeful was he of immediate success, that he wrote to his French correspondent, Dupont de Nemours,[2] in January, 1802: "I am satisfied that within one year from this time, were an election to take place between two candidates, merely Republican and Federal, where no personal opposition existed against either, the Federal candidate would
