John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. XI 
of the electoral college of this state, who chose Mr. Monroe 
President, and that he was member of the Convention for revising 
the State Constitution, which he contributed so much to form; in 
which body he was requested to preside, but declined. The 
Convention expressed their sense of his character and services 
by a series of resolutions, representing, in emphatic and affection- 
ate terms, his claims to the grateful veneration of his countrymen. 
From this time his books, his farm, his domestic engagements, 
with hospitable attentions to visitors, a large correspondence, 
occasional writing for the public, his attendance at the meetings 
of your Academy, and of the institution for agriculture and 
natural history, and his animated interest in passing events, fur- 
nished ample resources for his mind and his hours. 
He was blessed with health and the use of his powers till a 
few months before his death. At length the frame, which had 
been for some time tottering, was to fall. After aseason of much 
weakness and a recent more rapid failure, in the perfect exercise 
of his mind and affections, his thoughts and words answering to 
those of his life, on the hallowed anniversary that commemorated 
the most signal and decisive event of his patriotic career, he 
sunk into the arms of death. 
I must recall your attention, respected auditors, to the notices 
which I have begun of his co-patriot. After the eventful year of 
1776 in Congress, Mr. Jefferson was two years employed with 
Messrs. Wythe and Pendleton upon the Virginian code of laws, 
and next held the office of Governor in an anxious and trying 
period. He then went again to the legislature, where the law 
prohibiting the slave trade, that abolishing entails and the princi- 
ple of primogeniture, and the bill for establishing religious free- 
dom, were carried through under his auspices. 
