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The presidency descended, by an overwhelming majority, to one of Jefferson's stanch friends and supporters, for whom he had paved the way James Madison, also a Virginian, who had been his secretary of state for eight years, and who was himself to serve two terms, during which the influence of the "Sage of Monticello" was paramount.
By her loving touch and tenderness he was lured back from death and reason's night into the world of life and light. With tottering steps, led by the child who had to think for both, he was taken out on the veranda of beautiful Monticello. He looked out on stretching miles of dark-blue hills and waving woods and winding river.
Calhoun came of equally humble birth and inherited his individualistic principles. His father had been a country member of the Virginia Convention and had opposed the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Much of Calhoun's bias toward democracy was derived, as he confessed, from an early conversation with the sage of Monticello.
Buy for yourself some book that shall mean much to you all your life. Mr. Smith, give him Plutarch's Lives Ossian, too. He's rich enough to buy Ossian. As for law-books, my lad, if you will come to Monticello, I will lend you what you need. I like your spirit." He looked at his watch. "I have to dine at the Eagle with the Governor and Mr. Randolph. When do you return to Albemarle?"
Captain Ben was a son of an old Virginia family who in better days had owned Monticello. Lee's Lieutenants lined a living room shelf. Noblesse oblige came with mother's milk. You are born privileged; you have an obligation. He had a company garden when he was serving in the Philippines men who got out of line did time weeding and afterwards ate fresh vegetables.
"Virginia has scarcely seen him since then," she said. "You know that I was her room-mate at Monticello last year, and I think I should have discovered it." "Did she speak of him?" demanded Miss Russell. "Only when the subject was mentioned. I heard her repeat once what Judge Whipple told her father of him; that he had a fine legal mind.
"I have no ambition to govern men," he wrote to Edward Rutledge. He was far happier talking about Greek and Anglo-Saxon with Daniel Webster before the fire-place of Monticello than he ever was in the presidential chair. His correspondence was enormous. His writings fill twenty volumes.
They also visited Monticello, the famous colonial mansion which the great Jefferson had built, and in which he had lived and planned for the republic. They trod there with light steps, feeling that his spirit was still present. Virginia was the greatest of the border states, but it seemed to Dick that here he was in the very heart of the South.
I know the business, and keep watch. And now that Jinny's coming home from Monticello, I feel that I can pay more attention to her kind of take her mother's place," said the Colonel, putting on his felt hat and tipping his chair. "Lige, I want that girl to have every advantage. She ought to go to Europe and see the world. That trip East last summer did her a heap of good.
There seemed no chance of peace from any conciliatory action on the part of Great Britain. The sole chance hung on the new President's inheritance of Jefferson's strong leaning in that direction. But Madison was by no means for peace at any price; and indeed Jefferson himself, from his retreat at Monticello, hailed the war, when it ultimately came, as unmistakably just.
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