Although the general histories contain much that is important for an understanding of the administrations of Jefferson, the authority _par excellence_ is Henry Adams, _History of the United States of America_ (9 vols., 1889-91). Chapters I-VI of the first volume contain an excellent description of American society about 1800; but for the details of social and economic life the reader will turn to McMaster. A briefer account of the Jeffersonian regime may be found in Channing, _The Jeffersonian System, 1801-1811_ (in _The American Nation_, vol. 12, 1906). Henry Adams has also contributed two biographies to this period: _Life of Albert Gallatin_ (1878), and _John Randolph_(1882). The Federalist point of view is admirably presented in S. E. Morison, _The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis_ (2 vols., 1913). The larger biographies of Jefferson are: H. S. Randall, _Life of Thomas Jefferson_ (3 vols., 1858), commonly referred to as the standard biography, though exceedingly partisan; G. Tucker, _Life of Thomas Jefferson_ (2 vols., 1837); and James Parton, _Life of Thomas Jefferson_(1874). CHAPTER VIII THE PURCHASE OF THE PROVINCE OF LOUISIANA Not a war cloud was in the sky when Jefferson took the oath of office. The European calm, to be sure, proved to be only a lull in the tempest of war which was to rage fifteen years longer; but no man could have cast the horoscope of Europe in that age of storm and stress. The times seemed auspicious for the Republican program of retrenchment and economy. Jefferson was so sanguine of continued peace that he would have been glad to lay up all seven of the frigates which then constituted the navy in the eastern branch of the Potomac, where "they would be under the immediate eye of the department, and would require but one set of plunderers to take care of them." Peace was his passion, he frankly avowed. He would have been glad to banish all the paraphernalia of war. Yet within three months the United States was at war with an insignificant Mediterranean power and menaced by France from an unexpected quarter.