You ask if the usage of hunting in circles has ever been known among any of our tribes of Indians? It has been practised by them all; and is to this day, by those still remote from the settlements of the whites. But their numbers not enabling them, like Genghis Khan's seven hundred thousand, to form themselves into circles of one hundred miles diameter, they make their circle by firing the leaves fallen on the ground, which gradually forcing the animals to a centre, they there slaughter them with arrows, darts, and other missiles. This is called fire hunting, and has been practised in this State within my time, by the white inhabitants. This is the most probable cause of the origin and extension of the vast prairies in the western country, where the grass having been of extraordinary luxuriance, has made a conflagration sufficient to kill even the old as well as the young timber.
I sincerely congratulate you on the successes of our little navy; which must be more gratifying to you than to most men, as having been the early and constant advocate of wooden walls. If I have differed with you on this ground, it was not on the principle, but the time; supposing that we cannot build or maintain a navy, which will not immediately fall into the same gulf which has swallowed not only the minor navies, but even those of the great second-rate powers of the sea. Whenever these can be resuscitated, and brought so near to a balance with England that we can turn the scale, then is my epoch for aiming at a navy. In the meantime, one competent to keep the Barbary States in order, is necessary; these being the only smaller powers disposed to quarrel with us. But I respect too much the weighty opinions of others, to be unyielding on this point, and acquiesce with the prayer "quod felix faustumque sit;" adding ever a sincere one for your health and happiness.
TO COLONEL MONROE
Dear Sir,—I thank you for the communication of the President's Message, which has not yet reached us through the public papers. It is an interesting document, always looked for with anxiety, and the late one is equally able as interesting. I hope Congress will act in conformity with it, in all its parts. The unwarrantable ideas often expressed in the newspapers, and by persons who ought to know better, that I intermeddle in the Executive councils, and the indecent expressions, sometimes, of a hope that Mr. Madison will pursue the principles of my administration, expressions so disrespectful to his known abilities and dispositions, have rendered it improper in me to hazard suggestions to him, on occasions even where ideas might occur to me, that might accidentally escape him. This reserve has been strengthened, too, by a consciousness that my views must be very imperfect, from the want of a correct knowledge of the whole ground.
I lately, however, hazarded to him a suggestion on the defence of the Chesapeake, because, although decided on provisionally with the Secretaries of War and the Navy formerly, yet as it was proposed only in the case of war, which did not actually arise, and not relating to his department, might not then have been communicated to him. Of this fact my memory did not ascertain me. I will now hazard another suggestion to yourself, which indeed grows out of that one: it is, the policy of keeping our frigates together in a body, in some place where they can be defended against a superior naval force, and from whence, nevertheless, they can easily sally forth on the shortest warning. This would oblige the enemy to take stations, or to cruise only in masses equal at least, each of them, to our whole force; and of course they could be acting only in two or three spots at a time, and the whole of our coast, except the two or three portions where they might be present, would be open to exportation and importation. I think all that part of the United States over which the waters of the Chesapeake spread themselves, was blockaded in the early season by a single ship. This would keep our frigates in entire safety, as they would go out only occasionally to oppress a blockading force known to be weaker than themselves, and thus make them a real protection to our whole commerce. And it seems to me that this would be a more essential service, than that of going out by ones, or twos, in search of adventures, which contribute little to the protection of our commerce, and not at all to the defence of our coast, or the shores of our inland waters. A defence of these by militia is most harassing to them. The applications from Maryland, which I have seen in the papers, and those from Virginia, which I suspect, merely because I see such masses of the militia called off from their farms, must be embarrassing to the Executive, not only from a knowledge of the incompetency of such a mode of defence, but from the exhausture of funds which ought to be husbanded for the effectual operations of a long war. I fear, too, it will render the militia discontented, perhaps clamorous for an end of the war on any terms. I am happy to see that it is entirely popular as yet, and that no symptom of flinching from it appears among the people, as far as I can judge from the public papers, or from my own observation, limited to the few counties adjacent to the two branches of James river. I have such confidence that what I suggest has been already maturely discussed in the Cabinet, and that for wise and sufficient reasons the present mode of employing the frigates is the best, that I hesitate about sending this even after having written. Yet in that case it will only have given you the trouble of reading it. You will bury it in your own breast, as non-avenue, and see in it only an unnecessary zeal on my part, and a proof of the unlimited confidence of yours ever and affectionately.
TO JOHN ADAMS
Dear Sir,—I wrote you a letter on the 27th of May, which probably would reach you about the 3d instant, and on the 9th I received yours of the 29th of May. Of Lindsay's Memoirs I had never before heard, and scarcely indeed of himself. It could not, therefore, but be unexpected, that two letters of mine should have anything to do with his life. The name of his editor was new to me, and certainly presents itself for the first time under unfavorable circumstances. Religion, I suppose, is the scope of his book; and that a writer on that subject should usher himself to the world in the very act of the grossest abuse of confidence, by publishing private letters which passed between two friends, with no views to their ever being made public, is an instance of inconsistency as well as of infidelity, of which I would rather be the victim than the author.
By your kind quotation of the dates of my two letters, I have been enabled to turn to them. They had completely vanished from my memory. The last is on the subject of religion, and by its publication will gratify the priesthood with new occasion of repeating their comminations against me. They wish it to be believed that he can have no religion who advocates its freedom. This was not the doctrine of Priestley; and I honored him for the example of liberality he set to his order. The first letter is political. It recalls to our recollection the gloomy transactions of the times, the doctrines they witnessed, and the sensibilities they excited. It was a confidential communication of reflections on these from one friend to another, deposited in his bosom, and never meant to trouble the public mind. Whether the character of the times is justly portrayed or not, posterity will decide. But on one feature of them they can never decide, the sensations excited in free yet firm minds by the terrorism of the day. None can conceive who did not witness them, and they were felt by one party only. This letter exhibits their side of the medal. The federalists, no doubt, have presented the other in their private correspondences as well as open action. If these correspondences should ever be laid open to the public eye, they will probably be found not models of comity towards their adversaries. The readers of my letter should be cautioned not to confine its view to this country alone. England and its alarmists were equally under consideration.