All through this summer Mr. Jefferson was much occupied with the rebuilding of his house, which he hoped to finish before the winter set in; but just as the walls were nearly ready to be roofed in, a stiff freeze arrested, in November, all work on it for the winter.
General Washington having declared his determination to retire from public life at the expiration of his second term, new candidates had to be run for the Presidential chair. The Federalists chose John Adams as their candidate; while the Republicans, having no thought of running as theirs any man but Jefferson, placed his name at the head of their ticket. How little interest Jefferson took in the elections, so far as his own success was concerned, may be inferred from the fact that he did not leave home during the whole campaign, and in that time wrote only one political letter.
As the constitution then stood, the candidate who received the highest number of votes was elected President, and the one who received the next highest--whether he was run for President or Vice-president--was elected to fill the latter office. The elections were over, but the result still unknown, when Jefferson wrote, on December 17th, to Mr. Madison, as follows:
Your favor of the 5th came to hand last night. The first wish of my heart was that you should have been proposed for the administration of the Government. On your declining it, I wish any body rather than myself; and there is nothing I so anxiously hope, as that my name may come out either second or third. These would be indifferent to me; as the last would leave me at home the whole year, and the other two-thirds of it.
After the result of the elections was no longer doubtful, and it was known that Adams had been chosen as President and Jefferson Vice-president, the latter wrote the following feeling and handsome letter to the former:
Dear Sir--The public and the public papers have been much occupied lately in placing us in a point of opposition to each other. I trust with confidence that less of it has been felt by ourselves personally. In the retired canton where I am, I learn little of what is passing; pamphlets I see never; papers but a few, and the fewer the happier. Our latest intelligence from Philadelphia at present is of the 16th inst. But though at that date your election to the first magistracy seems not to have been known as a fact, yet with me it has never been doubted. I knew it impossible you should lose a vote north of the Delaware, and even if that of Pennsylvania should be against you in the mass, yet that you would get enough south of that to place your succession out of danger. I have never one single moment expected a different issue; and though I know I shall not be believed, yet it is not the less true that I have never wished it. My neighbors, as my compurgators, could aver that fact, because they see my occupations and my attachment to them....