Note 51 — THIRD CONGRESS.—FIRST SESSION. (continued 4)

Mr. Jefferson resigned his place of Secretary of State at the end of this session, and was succeeded by Mr. Edmund Randolph, of Virginia. Of the resignation and character of Mr. Jefferson, Marshall thus speaks: "This gentleman withdrew from political station at a moment when he stood particularly high in the esteem of his countrymen. His fixed opposition to the financial schemes which had been proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and approved by the Legislative and Executive Departments of the Government; his ardent and undisguised attachment to the revolutionary party in France; the dispositions which he was declared to possess in regard to Great Britain; and the popularity of his opinions respecting the Constitution of the United States; had devoted to him that immense party whose sentiments were supposed to comport with his on most or all of these interesting subjects. To the opposite party he had, of course, become particularly unacceptable. But the publication of his correspondence with the French minister, Genet, dissipated much of the prejudice which had been excited against him. He had, in that correspondence, maintained, with great ability, the opinions embraced by the Federalists on those points of difference which had arisen between the two Republics, and which, having become universally the subjects of discussion, had in some measure dissipated those topics on which parties had previously divided."