use of "British sympathies" as a bludgeon against critics of Adams. When Adams returned to Quincy in the spring, Cabot made no effort to visit him. While Hamilton openly supported Pinckney for President over Adams, Cabot felt such a course was impossible and instead supported an equal electoral vote for Adams and Pinckney, to be resolved by the House of Representatives and urged Hamilton not to attack Adams openly. Hamilton disregarded these pleas, publishing his attack on Adams. Though they remained friends, Cabot strongly admonished Hamilton for damaging Federalists' chances in the election. Jeffersonian era (1801–1811) After Adams's loss in the 1800 election, Cabot withdrew from politics. He played no part in Hamilton's plot to elect Aaron Burr over Thomas Jefferson in the 1801 contingent election, though he still passively opposed Jefferson's administration. Though he supported the appointments of James Madison and Albert Gallatin to Jefferson's cabinet, Cabot saw the 1800 election as the total defeat of the Federalist Party, and his mantra became, "Things must grow worse before they are better." Cabot tended to his Brookline farm for a time, but grew tired of the work and leased his estate to a tenant. He remained President of the U.S. Bank of Boston, and occasionally entertained friends who were in Boston on business. The deaths of his son Edward in 1803 and his friend Alexander Hamilton in 1804 put Cabot in a period of mourning, both for his personal loss and the loss of any conceivable future for the Hamiltonians. Cabot sold some lands to provide for Hamilton's family. Cabot opposed Jefferson's acquisition of the Louisiana Territory and his removals of Federalist appointees and judges, but resisted Timothy Pickering's calls for dissolution of the Union. Tensions with England In 1805, Cabot made his only public pronouncement during the Jefferson administration. He reluctantly led a committee of Boston merchants opposed to British policy of seizing American ships in commerce with France. After the Battle of Trafalgar and Napoleon's declaration of the Continental System, Cabot privately adopted a stance of definite alliance with the British in opposition to Napoleonic France. After the 1807 Chesapeake–Leopard affair, Cabot urged forgiveness and acceptance of the British terms of reparation. Jefferson's response, instead, was the Embargo Act of 1807. Cabot, like most Federalists and most of New England, opposed Jefferson's embargo against Britain, which he believed was designed to draw the United States into a war