I have determined--he wrote to Washington--to take no active part in this or anything else, which may lead to altercation, or disturb that quiet & tranquillity of mind to which I consign the remaining portion of my life. I have been thrown back by events on a stage where I had never more thought to appear. It is but for a time, however, & as a day laborer, free to withdraw, or be withdrawn at will.[101]
He seized with eagerness the opportunity of visiting older civilizations and enjoying a change of scenes. Having hastily cancelled his order for printing a few copies of the "Notes on Virginia", he at once made preparations for his departure.
The new plenipotentiary decided to take with him his older daughter Martha, then in Philadelphia at Mrs. Hopkinson's, and to leave the two younger ones with their maternal aunt, Mrs. Eppes, in Virginia. William Short, his "_élève_" and friend, accompanied him as private secretary and Colonel David Humphreys as secretary of the legation.[102] From Philadelphia he went to Boston, visiting Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the principal towns on his way, in order to acquire "what knowledge he could of their commerce and other circumstances." He sailed from Boston on the _Ceres_, Captain Sainte-Barbe, bound to Cowes.
Jefferson was then forty-one years old. He knew life and men and had no illusions; he had experienced happiness and sorrow; he had had moments of exaltation, of hot patriotic fever; he had occupied the front of the stage in several circumstances never to be forgotten; he had aroused enmities and made devoted and faithful friends, among them Monroe, Madison, and Short whom he was taking along with him. But neither his disappointments nor his sorrows had made him a misanthrope. Not an orator, he liked to talk, and he could not live without society. The tall spare man in black was no longer able to feel his heart moved by the early emotions of his youth. Next to Washington, who remained in America, and to Doctor Franklin, a debonair patriarch, he was the most famous national figure of America. None was better qualified by his former life and studies to represent America and to speak for his country. Whatever sectionalism he may have had in him had disappeared in these last two years of Congress, when he had striven so strenuously to make the Union an actual fact and to consolidate the loose Federal fabric, for only there could men "See the affairs of the Confederacy from a high ground; they learn the importance of the Union & befriend federal measures when they return. Those who never come here, see our affairs insulated, pursue a system of jealousy and self interest, and distract the Union as much as they can."