The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2 - Online Library of ...

Online Library of Liberty: The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2
the federal party may use this opportunity to provide for friends and adherents is, I
think, probable, and if they were my enemies I should not condemn them for it.
Whether I should do the same thing myself is another question; I believe that I should
not. They are about to experience a heavy gale of adverse wind. Can they be blamed
for casting many anchors to hold their ship through the storm?”
“Our new President makes his inaugural speech to-day [March 4th]—too long by half,
and so he will find it himself before he is three years older.”
“Visit the President [March 6th]; very friendly. In the evening the Vice-President
calls, and takes tea. We have news from Europe which communicate the victories of
the French and the armistice of the 25th of December, 1800; also the declaration of
Bonaparte stating the Rhine as the eastern boundary of France and the Adige as the
western boundary of the Austrian dominions; the guarantee of the Swiss and Dutch
Republics. The Cisalpine not being mentioned, I presume that the King of Sardinia is
to be restored to his dominions. I conclude, also, that this peace has been previously
settled between him and the Courts of Berlin and Petersburg. I am confirmed by
General Dayton in the idea I took up from the conversation at the President’s, that our
monarch and his heir apparent will not be well together.”
“Pack up and leave Washington to-day [March 8th]. We find the road most execrable,
and in consequence get stalled and set fast in the mud. We are about ten hours coming
twenty-four miles to Annapolis, and our baggage-wagon repeatedly sticks fast. The
people through the country are, in general, democrats, and the store-keepers, we
observe, have sign-boards to say that they deal only for cash. These boards were, we
are told, put up on the first day of this year. The merchants could no longer go on
giving credit. This accounts for the democratic principle better than the boasted
efforts of influential men. We hear of cock-fighting. The whole country is full of fox
hounds, and all the churches have the windows broken.”
“Reach Philadelphia [March 14th]; the roads very bad. Go to the jail, and dine with
my poor friend Robert Morris. Accounts from the Federal City seem to show that our
new President is making some improper appointments.”
Arrived at Morrisania, Morris put aside the “métier de sénateur” and betook himself
to the pruning-hook and the business of the farm, laid out a garden, actively
superintended the men working on his house, and entertained numerous guests. “I am
so much fatigued every day with work,” he says, “as to take no particular note of what
passes.” The difficulties of house-keeping were great, and he wrote to his friend M.
Leray at Paris that if he could send him “a chasseur who understood fishing he would
be useful to me, and a cook is a physical necessity. No good domestics can be had
here, not even women. None of those imported can, I think, be depended on unless
they be somewhat advanced in years.”
No public affairs especially attracted Morris’s attention until the autumn of 1801,
when the news came that the First Consul had ratified the amended treaty.
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