Perhaps the sectional tendency
of the vote should be considered as indicative of the loss of the
Southern States to the Administration and prophetic of the support
which individualism was to receive from that section. Not a Senator
north of the Mason and Dixon line opposed the measure, and only one
from south of the line supported it. Of the Southern members in the
House, nine voted for and thirty against sending away dangerous aliens.
In the Northern section the vote stood thirty-seven to ten in favour
of the punitive action.
Jefferson, presiding over the Senate while these measures, so obnoxious
to him, were being passed, deprived of even the pleasure of casting
an occasional deciding vote by the overwhelming Federal majority,
quietly bided his time until this madness should die out. "War, land
tax and stamp tax," said he, "are sedatives which must calm its ardour."
To his mind, the people were still essentially republican; they retained
unadulterated the principles of '75; they needed only reflection and
information to bring themselves and their affairs to rights.
"A little patience," he wrote to a correspondent in Virginia, who
mentioned the possibility of separating that State and North Carolina
from the tyrannical majority, "and we shall see the reign of the witches
pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true
sight, restoring their government to its true principles.
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