The discussion over Assumption was going on very virulently.

It happened that one day Jefferson met Hamilton, and this is his account of what followed: As I was going to the President's one day, I met him [Hamilton] in the street.

He walked me backwards and forwards before the President's door for half an hour.

He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the States.

He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert; that though this question was not of my department, yet a common duty should make it a common concern; that the President was the centre on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and that all of us should rally around him and support, with joint efforts, measures approved by him; and that the question having been lost by a small majority only, it was probable that an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of my friends, might effect a change in the vote, and the machine of government now suspended, might be again set into motion.