The first mention of the coming presidential election occurs in a letter to Monroe of July 10, 1796. The treaty had finally passed, but the party of the monocrats was shaken to its very foundation, "Mr. Jay and his advocates are treaty-foundered." The result was not doubtful. Even if a monocrat were elected, he would be overborne by the republican sense of his constituents. "If a republican, he will, of course, give fair play to that sense and lead things into the channel of harmony between the governors and the governed. In the meantime, patience!" He mentions that in order to operate a division and to split the Virginia vote, _they_ had unsuccessfully endeavored to run Patrick Henry for vice president and would probably fall back on Pinckney, "in which they regard his southern position rather than his principles." But curiously enough the presidential nominees or preferences are not even mentioned. Could Monroe really believe that _Hamlet_ was going to be played without Hamlet, and that the election of a vice president was the only thing that mattered? This omission was far more significant than any expressed preference. If Jefferson mentioned no candidates, it was simply because he already knew at that date that his faithful lieutenants in Congress were thinking of him as the only logical candidate, the only one who had not participated actively in the last three years' fierce debates in Congress, the only one who had not officially and openly taken a definite position, and consequently would be entirely free to make whatever concessions were necessary to reëstablish harmony in the divided camps of the voters. The result of the election was certainly in doubt; but at a time when foreign affairs were the dominant question, when in spite of the Jay treaty England was multiplying almost unbearable insults, when the nation was deeply humiliated, and even the Federalists resented the terms of the treaty, there were only two men of the first rank in America who had maintained the prestige of the United States before foreign nations and had shown themselves to be able negotiators: the man who with Franklin had put his signature to the Treaty of Peace, and the man who had concluded treaties of commerce with the nations of Europe; Adams and Jefferson.