He
remembered assisting to raise a liberty-pole in the Presidency of John
Adams; and he was one of Mr. Jefferson's most uncompromising adherents
at a time when men of substance were seldom found in the ranks of the
Democrats. As long as he lived, he held the name of Thomas Jefferson
in veneration.
We have now to contemplate this cold, close, ungainly, ungracious man
in a new character. We are to see that a man may seem indifferent to
the woes of individuals, but perform sublime acts of devotion to a
community. We are to observe that there are men of sterling but
peculiar metal, who only shine when the furnace of general affliction
is hottest. In 1793, the malignant yellow-fever desolated
Philadelphia. The consternation of the people cannot be conceived by
readers of the present day, because we cannot conceive of the
ignorance which then prevailed respecting the laws of contagion,
because we have lost in some degree the habit of panic, and because no
kind of horror can be as novel to us as the yellow-fever was to the
people of Philadelphia in 1793. One half of the population fled.
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