THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

VOL. V.

FEBRUARY, 1864—No. II.

CONTENTS

THOMAS JEFFERSON, AS SEEN BY THE LIGHT OF 1863.

Mr. Jefferson, in his lifetime, underwent the extremes of abuse and of adulation. Daily, semi-weekly, or weekly did Fenno, Porcupine Cobbett, Dennie, Coleman, and the other Federal journalists, not content with proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company of the Democratic press, led by Bache, Duane, Cheetham, Freneau, asserted with equal energy that he was the greatest statesman, the profoundest philosopher, the very sun of republicanism, the abstract of all that was glorious in democracy. And if Abraham Bishop, of New Haven, Connecticut, compared him with Christ, a great many New Englanders of more note than Bishop, pronounced him the man of sin, a malignant manifestation of Satan. On one or the other of these two scales he was placed by every man in the United States, according to each citizen's modicum of sense and temper. We say, every man—because in that war of the Democrats against the Federalists, no one sought to escape the service. Every able-tongued man was ready to fight with it, either for Jefferson or against him.

When Jefferson passed away triumphant, toleration set in. His enemies dropped him to turn upon living prey. They came to acquiesce in him, and even to quote him when he served their purpose. But the admiration of his followers did not abate. They canonized him as the apostle of American democracy, and gave his name to the peculiar form of the