As the time of Jefferson's inauguration approached, rumours of revolutionary action grew into a general alarm lest all the union-making of twelve years should be annihilated and the Federation days be brought back again. Jefferson's well-known antipathy to taxation and a national debt caused a rumour that he planned repudiation of the national obligation, perhaps an agrarian law, and even the distribution of all property. The vested interests were as much alarmed as ever they were in subsequent elections. "We have seen," cried one holder of national certificates and a subscriber to the bank, "the French clergy stripped in a night. One vote of Congress would put our federal debt into the family tomb with the paper money of Revolutionary days." Among the measures supposed to be contemplated by the victorious "mobocrats," as the Federalists called them, were the abolition of the United States Senate, destruction of foreign commerce and public schools, the abolition of internal taxes, the annihilation of the bank, and the Europeanising of the country by French immigrants. "God is punishing the manifold sins of this nation by delivering it over to projectors and philosophists," said a New England clergyman. Governor Strong, of Massachusetts, appointed a day of fasting and prayer, that the first magistrate and other rulers of the nation might rise superior to private interests and the prejudice of party. The lower branch of Congress had gone over to the Jeffersonians, and the upper House would be lost after the next session. No check was possible upon the reformers. Although neither partisans nor people were in such dangers as imagined by the Federalists, the National Government might have been seriously impaired by Jefferson and his followers, if necessity had not been most fortunately on the other side. The contest was very unequal, as well for Jefferson as for his successors who struggled conscientiously but vainly against natural laws. Jefferson was misjudged by those who pronounced him opposed to all union. He was always in favour of a limited union--an impossible union as it proved--with the unexpressed powers retained by the States. "The states," said he, "can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones." In later years he could remember but one instance of control vested in the Federal over the State authorities in a matter purely domestic, and that was the metallic tenders. Nor could he be said to be opposed to the Federalists as a whole, since he never recognised the party, but simply a few of its leaders. The latter were for the moment misleading the people. He expected in time to win all back except "the Coryphæi," or leaders, whom he pronounced incurables. One of the first unpleasant revelations to Jefferson as President was the fact that a sufficient number of the people to constitute a party would persist in remaining under the influence of Hamilton and his fellows in several of the States.