Gallatin remonstrated in vain against this allusion to New England habits;[3] the President could not resist the temptation to strike once more his old enemies. Gallatin, whose sense of humor was keener than that of Jefferson, must have been amused by the travesty of New England under the war-paint and blankets of the Choctaws and Kickapoos; but Jefferson was never more serious than in believing that the people of Massachusetts and Connecticut were held in darkness by a few interested “medicine-men,” and that he could, without committing himself in direct warfare, insult the clergy, lawyers, and keen-witted squirarchy of New England, thus held up “by inference” to the world as the equivalent to so many savages. The rest of the Inaugural was chiefly devoted to the press and its licentiousness. Jefferson expressed himself strongly in regard to the slanders he had received, and even hinted that he would be glad to see the State laws of libel applied to punish the offenders; but he pointed out that slander had no political success, and that it might safely he disregarded as a political weapon. He urged “doubting brethren” to give up their fears and prejudices, and to join with the mass of their fellow-citizens. “In the mean time let us cherish them with patient affection; let us do them justice, and more than justice, in all competitions of interest.” Finally, as though to silence the New-England pulpit, he closed with a few words which the clergy might perhaps think misplaced in the mouth of so earnest a deist,--an invocation of “that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old,” to the “country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life, ... and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications.” The Second Inaugural strode far beyond the first in the path of democracy, away from the landmarks of Virginia republicanism, betraying what Jefferson’s friends and enemies alike thought a craving for popularity. If this instinct sometimes led him to forget principles he had once asserted, and which he would some day again declare vital, the quality was so amiable as to cover many shortcomings; but its influence on national growth could not be disputed. Jefferson cherished but one last desire,--to reach the end of his next term without disaster. He frankly expressed this feeling in a letter written to General Heath soon after the autumn election of 1804, which gave him the electoral vote of Massachusetts:--