Although he denounced the Hartford conferees as the "Marats, the Dantons and the Robespierres of Massachusetts," who wished "to
anarchise us," Jefferson was not worried by them.
Recalling the 1790s, Jefferson compared Massachusetts legislators with Robespierre, whom he thought the British had bribed to undertake mass executions and suppress freedom of speech during the Reign of Terror: "The Marats, the Dantons and Robespierres of Massachusetts are in the same pay, and under the same orders, and making the same efforts to
anarchise us, that their prototypes did there." (57) Although he confessed that not "all who met at Hartford were under the same motives of money," he imputed selfish partisan ambitions to the rest.