The Federalists were reduced to showing that Jefferson's political success had not chastened his style; for the Message contained a number of sentences that exaggerated his peculiar faults of expression:—
- "The war which was lighted up in Europe a little before our last meeting has not yet extended its flames to other nations, nor been marked by the calamities which sometimes stain the footsteps of war."
The Federalists reasonably objected to the figure of a war which not only extended flames but also made footsteps and marked them by calamities which stained. Jefferson went on to say that he had bought from the Delaware Indians the country between the Wabash and the Ohio:—
- "This acquisition is important not only for its extent and fertility, but as fronting three hundred miles on the Ohio, and near half that on the Wabash. The produce of the settled country descending those rivers will no longer pass in view of the Indian frontier but in a small portion, and with the cession heretofore made by the Kaskaskias nearly consolidates our possessions north of the Ohio in a very respectable breadth from Lake Erie to the Mississippi."
Produce passing in view of a frontier in a portion and consolidating possessions in a breadth did not suit fastidious Federalists; nor were they satisfied with the President's closing exhortation, requesting the Legislature to inquire "whether laws are provided in all cases where they are wanting." They enjoyed their jests at Jefferson's literary style; but with the
