Th: Jefferson*
LETTER CCLXXXIII..--TO ELBRIDGE GERRY, March 29, 1801
TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.
Washington, March 29, 1801,
My Dear Sir,
Your two letters of January the 5th and February the 24th came safely to
hand, and I thank you for the history of a transaction which will ever
be interesting in our affairs. It has been very precisely as I had
imagined. I thought, on your return, that if you had come forward
boldly, and appealed to the public by a full statement, it would have
had a great effect in your favor personally, and that of the republican
cause then oppressed almost unto death. But I judged from a tact of the
southern pulse. I suspect that of the north was different, and decided
your conduct: and perhaps it has been as well. If the revolution of
sentiment has been later, it has perhaps been not less sure. At length
it has arrived. What with the natural current of opinion which has been
setting over to us for eighteen months, and the immense impetus which
was given it from the 11th to the 17th of February, we may now say that
the United States, from New York southwardly, are as unanimous in the
principles of '76, as they were in '76. The only difference is, that the
leaders who remain behind are more numerous and colder than the apostles
of toryism in '76.
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