A letter written to Edmund Randolph hints at other considerations which "that one being removed, might prevent my acceptance." The family record shows that Mrs. Jefferson was then expecting a child who was born on November, 1781, and died in April of the following year. Jefferson himself was far from being well and had not yet recovered from his accident; but there is little doubt that he would have gladly seized the opportunity to fulfill one of his earliest dreams and to visit Europe, had he been free to go. However this may be, it was on this occasion that he reiterated once more, but not for the last time, his wish to return entirely and definitively to private life: Were it possible for me to determine again to enter into public business there is no appointment whatever which would have been so agreeable to me. But I have taken my final leave of everything of that nature. I have retired to my farm, my family and books from which I think nothing will evermore separate me. A desire to leave public office with a reputation not more blotted than it deserved will oblige me to emerge at the next session of our assembly & perhaps to accept of a seat in it, but as I go with a single object, I shall withdraw when that has been accomplished.[82] I must confess that Jefferson's determination can scarcely be understood or excused. He was not yet forty and, for a man of that age, his achievements were unusual and many, but he had by no means outlived his usefulness or fulfilled the tasks he had mapped out for himself. Even supposing he had done enough for the United States and did not feel any ambition to return to Congress, there was much to be done in Virginia. For one thing the war was not over and the situation of his native State, his "country", as he still called it, was as precarious as ever. Even supposing the war to be of short duration and destined to end in victory, the work of reconstruction loomed considerable upon the horizon. Not only had plantations been burned, houses destroyed, cattle killed off, Negroes decimated in many places, but the financial resources of Virginia were nil, the currency depreciated and valueless. Above all, republican institutions were far from secure, Jefferson was not at all satisfied with the Constitution as adopted, there remained many bills on the Revised Laws to be presented, defended, and approved. The laws adopted so far might have laid the foundations of true republican government, but the task was still enormous. Was Jefferson irritated and despondent at the ingratitude of his fellow citizens who had not rejected at once the charges made by Nicholas? Was he so alarmed by the health of his wife that he did not feel that he could leave her even for a few days? Was he not rather a victim of overwork and overexertion? He had been severely shaken by his accident and seems to have suffered at the time a sort of nervous breakdown, for on October