Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-03-24
Five Minutes A Day
With Our PrtSlaentS
nv JAMES MORGAN.
A Man AfOOt
BY JAMES MORGAN

gladiators to face each other in tho
arena Of American politics, makes our
recent campaigns seem like sunshow-
ers. Hamiltonians scorned to eat ana
drink, and sometimes even to pray,
with the Je%ffersonians. To give Il
| daughter in marriage with one of them
was almost abhorred as miScegenauon'
Nothing else so stirs the angry pas
sions as a conflict of classes or or sec
tions. This was both and doubly bit
ter. An almost solid South united
with the Northern masses in a COM
mon dread of q strong government and
in a common hostility to the old rui-
ing caste in the Middle States and
NEW England. The new parties called
| themselves Federalists and Republl-
| cans, but they denounced each other
| as Monocrats and Democrats, although
! jefferson himself never accepted that
! latter term of o~pprobrium.
II the first battle, when those parties
] fought for the chair of Washington In
| 1895, the result was so close that Jet-
'ferson came within two electoral votes
| OF winning the Presidency against
| Adams. In the second battle. which
was waged in 1900, he beat Adams,
but an absurd provision OF u Con-
stitution, which was soon after amend
ed. nearly lost him the fruits of his
victory.
Under that old plan each elector
| voted for two men, h higher man
becoming President n the second
nan receiving the Vice-Presidency as
a consolation prize. Although the. Re-
publicans wished to elect Jefferson to
the chief place and Aaron Burr to the
second, they failed to do either, be-
cause both men received the same
number of votes. h threw the
choice of President into the House,
| where the Federalists In q blind rage
struggled to elect Burr to the Presi-
dency, not because they loved that
| INSCRIPTIONS Tammany politician
| more, but because they hated him
less. For a week the House voted, and
thirty-flve ballots had to be taken be-
fore this most exciting deadlock was
broken.
Contrary to the familiar story of his
hitching his horse to the Capitol fence,
| Jefferson walked to his inauguration
and afterward walked back to his
boarding house, which was only a few
hundred yards away. This man. afoot.
ldreamer and theorist, quietly ushered
In hat day q more dasting revolution
than a man on horseback could have
wrought with q sword and q Whit OF
grapeshot. AS a cannon rebounds, so
q violent revolution begets a violent
| reaction. A peaceable revolution Is
less likely to ge backward, and govern
ment by an aristocracy was buried, not
again to raise its head in America.
Believing that revolutions should be
gin at home Jefferson revolutioniZed
the White House by casting aside the
, ceremonials which had been adopted
In a feeble imitation of kingly courts.
Opening the doors to all, without re-
gard to social classi1catlons and with
out order of precedence, his rule was
| IA reet ~, Apct gartyOd ~ Ilafnrnl1nnl
that the President, as he said, should
cease to be a parsonage, he stopped
the custom of celebrating a Presidents
birthday, never made q public tour
did his own marketing and vent and
came like any other citizen. Although
no successor has thrown a British
Minister into a fit Of indignation by re-
ceiving him in slippered feet. Jeffer-
sonian simplicity rather more thar
Neutrality-suspicious. courtliness remains
the standard of Presidential conduct.
It was the strange fortune of this
most thoroughgotng pacifst to find
himself at the helm in the midst of q
world at war. When the globe was
bristling with bayonets until 1t looked
like a p~orcupine, he calmly announced
that peace was his passion, and started
out by cutting down his little army
ione-half and by talking of hauling up
his seven warships.
His only interest in the Napoleonic
struggle was to keep out of 1t. Pal
late and endure" he counseled his
countrymen, land put money in thy
lpurse." Sometimes he made a conf
cal motion toward his empty scabbard
and again he tried to make the martial
DULLES of Europe be good by an act
Of Congress. But his nonimportatior
and embargo laws only bit off the
nose to spite the face.
Nevertheless while the military pow
ers were fighting over little islands
and provinces and d~renching Europe
with their blood, this most unmilitarJ
president, without firing a shot, gath
cred in far richer spoils than thu
l~victors in twenty-five a of war
fare divided among themselves at thu
Congress of Vienna. AS Jefferson
election was a bloodless revolution
his purchase of the immense empire
of Louisiana, which doubled the ter
ritory of the United States, was {
bloodless- conquest, the greatest peace
able annexation the world ever saw
Having made 1t, the flag was no NOR
than hoisted on h farther bank o
the Mississippi than he dispatches
Lewis and Clark and Captain Pix
boldly to p out the u~nexplored river
and mountains of the new soil, 81
honestly won, and from which so man,
free States were to spring.