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
doctrine they professed. For many years the utterances of the master
were conclusive to the common men of the party--better far than the
arguments of any living leader. Of late we have heard less of him. The