This interesting letter also suggests something more than appears on its surface. Evidently Mr. Gallatin meant to intimate, with as much distinctness as was decent, his opinion that it was not Mr. Jefferson who guided or controlled the result of this election, and that altogether too much importance was attached to what Mr. Jefferson did and said. The election belonged to the House of Representatives, where not Mr. Jefferson but Mr. Gallatin was leader of the party and directed the strategy. The allusion to General Samuel Smith's intervention is very significant. Evidently Mr. Gallatin considered General Smith to have been guilty of what was little better than an impertinence in having intruded between the House and Mr. Jefferson with "erroneous and improper" fears of the action of men for whom Mr. Gallatin himself was responsible. This was the first occasion on which the Smiths crossed Gallatin's path, and when he looked back upon it at the end of fifty years it seemed an omen. Mr. Gallatin considered himself to be, and doubtless was, the effective leader in this struggle. He marshalled the forces; he fought the battle; he made the plans, and in making them he did not even consult Mr. Jefferson, but simply obtained his assent to what had already received the assent of his followers in the House. These plans, alluded to in the Muhlenberg letter, are printed in Mr. Gallatin's Writings.[49] They were framed to cover every emergency. If the Federalists, acting on the assumption of a vacancy in the Presidential office, undertook to fill that vacancy by law, the Republicans were to refuse recognition of such a President and to agree on a uniform mode of not obeying the orders of the usurper, and of discriminating between those and the laws which should be suffered to continue in operation. In case only a new election were the object desired, without usurpation of power in the mean while, submission was on the whole preferable to resistance. An assumption of executive power by the Republicans in any mode not recognized by the Constitution was discouraged, and a reliance on the next Congress was preferred in any case short of actual usurpation. The idea of a convention to reorganize the government was not even suggested. The crisis lasted until the 17th February, when the Federalists gave way and Mr. Jefferson's election was quietly effected. With this event Mr. Gallatin's career in Congress closed. GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE. WASHINGTON CITY, 15th January, 1801.