“He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service,—­of those too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences in the plantation, so as to make it an absolute waste. He carried off also about thirty slaves.  Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right.”

But we turn to a seeming discrepancy between these thousand earnest declarations of Jefferson the private citizen, and the cold, formal tone of Jefferson the Secretary of State.  In this high office he reclaims slaves from the Spanish power in Florida, and demands compensation for slaves carried off by the British at the evacuation of New York.  For a moment that transition from personal warmth to diplomatic coolness is as the Russian plunge from steam-bath to snow-heap.

Yet, if truth-seekers do not stop to moan, they may easily find a complete explanation.  As private citizen, in a State, dealing with his home Government, Jefferson had the right to move heaven and earth against slavery, and bravely he did it; but, as public servant of the nation, dealing with foreign Governments, his rights and duties were different, and his tone must be different.  As a private person, writing for man as man, Jefferson forgot readily enough all differences of nation.  He wrote as readily and fully of the hideousness of slavery to Meusnier and Warville in France, or to Price and Priestley in England, as to any of his neighbors; but, as public servant of the nation, writing to Hammond or Viar, representatives of foreign powers, he made no apology for our miseries.  England might be ready enough to act the part of Dives, but Jefferson was not the statesman to put America in the attitude of Lazarus,—­begging, and showing sores.

But we have to note yet another change in Jefferson’s modes of work and warfare.

As he wrought and fought in this second period, which, for easy reference, we call the building period, he was forced into new methods.  In the former period we saw him thinking and speaking and working against every effort to found pro-slavery theories or practices.  Eagerness was then the best quality for work, and quickness the best quality for fight.  But now the case was different.  An institution which Jefferson hated had, in spite of his struggles, been firmly founded.  The land was full of the towers of the slave aristocracy.  He saw that his mode of warfare must be changed.  His old way did well in the earlier days, for tower-builders may be driven from their work by a sweeping charge or sudden volley; but towers, when built, must be treated with steady battering and skilful mining.