Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXXIV.—­TO GENERAL DEARBORN, March 17, 1815

TO GENERAL DEARBORN.

Monticello, March 17, 1815.

My Dear General, Friend, and Ancient Colleague,

I have received your favor of February the 27th, with very great pleasure, and sincerely reciprocate congratulations on the late events.  Peace was indeed desirable; yet it would not have been as welcome without the successes of New Orleans.  These last have established truths too important not to be valued; that the people of Louisiana are sincerely attached to the Union; that their city can be defended; that the western States make its defence their peculiar concern; that the militia are brave; that their deadly aim countervails the manoeuvring skill of their enemy; that we have officers of natural genius now starting forward from the mass; and that, putting together all our conflicts, we can beat the British, by sea and by land, with equal numbers.  All this being now proved, I am glad of the pacification of Ghent, and shall still be more so, if, by a reasonable arrangement against impressment, they will make it truly a treaty of peace, and not a mere truce, as we must all consider it, until the principle of the war is settled.  Nor, among the incidents of the war, will we forget your services.  After the disasters produced by the treason or the cowardice, or both, of Hull, and the follies of some others, your capture of York and Fort George first turned the tide of success in our favor; and the subsequent campaigns sufficiently wiped away the disgraces of the first.  If it were justifiable to look to your own happiness only, your resolution to retire from all public business could not but be approved.  But you are too young to ask a discharge as yet, and the public counsels too much needing the wisdom of our ablest citizens, to relinquish their claim on you.  And surely none needs your aid more than your own State.  Oh, Massachusetts! how have I lamented the degradation of your apostacy!  Massachusetts, with whom I went with pride in 1776, whose vote was my vote on every public question, and whose principles were then the standard of whatever was free or fearless.  But then she was under the counsels of the two Adamses; while Strong, her present leader, was promoting petitions for submission to British power and British usurpation.  While under her present counsels, she must be contented to be nothing; as having a vote, indeed, to be counted, but not respected.  But should the State once more buckle on her republican harness, we shall receive her again as a sister, and recollect her wanderings among the crimes only of the parricide party, which would have basely sold what their fathers so bravely won from the same enemy.  Let us look forward, then, to the act of repentance, which, by dismissing her venal traitors, shall be the signal of return to the bosom and to the principles of her brethren;