YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Charles Francis Adams
dAn Autobiography

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Charles Francis Adams
1835-1915
An Autobiography

With a MEMORIAL ADDRESS
delivered November ij, 1915, by
Henry Cabot Lodge

BOSTON £sr NEW YORK
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1916

COPYRIGHT, I9J6, BY THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published March iqib

YALE

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Note
In 191 3 Mr. Adams sent to the Massachusetts Historical
Society a sealed package, containing, as he expressed it,
" an autobiographical sketch," to serve as material for a me
moir to be prepared for publication in the Proceedings of the
Society, when the occasion should arise. Full authority
was given to the Editor of the Society to make such use of
this "sketch" as seemed to him proper. Of the contempo
raries of Mr. Adams no one remained qualified, by knowl
edge or sympathy, to prepare a memoir, and the autobio
graphical sketch, on examination, made a search for a
biographer unnecessary. It is full and characteristic of
the writer.
The Memorial Address by Mr. Lodge was delivered in
the First Church in Boston, on the afternoon of Wednesday,
November 17, 1915, at a public meeting of the Society in
commemoration of Mr. Adams. The proceedings were
marked by great simplicity and deep feeling. The invocation
was- made by the Rev. George Angier Gordon, and the bene
diction given by the Rev. Charles Edwards Park. W. C. F.

Contents

I. MEMORIAL ADDRESS. BY HENRY CABOT LODGE ix
II. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS I
I. YOUTH AND EDUCATION 3
II. LAW AND POLITICS 38
III. WASHINGTON, l86l 72
IV. WAR AND ARMY LIFE II4
V. PUBLIC SERVICE AND HISTORY 168
INDEX 219

Memorial Address

No man who reflects, certainly no one who gives rein to his
imagination, can approach even the slightest attempt to tell
the story of a man's life upon earth, whether it be his own or
another's, without feeling that he is doing so in obedience to
one of the overruling impulses, one of the deep-seated in
stincts of humanity. He cannot escape the vision of the suc
cessive generations of men as they pass by in long procession
recounting, each in its turn, the lives and deeds of those who
have gone before.
The form remains; the function never dies.
We fain would learn where the function and the form began
and when they issued from the darkness. There comes no
answer to our questioning. We cannot know, we can only
guess. In those dim, mysterious regions of the past, about which
conjecture alone is possible, we may nevertheless be sure
that, as soon as men secured command of language, the first
use to which they put it, after passing beyond the base needs
of daily communication, was to talk of themselves and of
each other. When Browning's Eurydice cries to Orpheus:
No Past is mine, no Future; Look at me!
we listen to the passionate voice of an old, sophisticated and
complex civilization. Primitive man was the very reverse of
this. He clung to the past and grasped blindly at the future.
A little speck in the vast spaces of time and eternity, his

x Memorial Address
overwhelming spiritual need, the craving hunger of his soul
was to bind himself to those who had gone before and strive
to clutch that which was still to come, so that he might in his
ignorance rescue himself from the loneliness in which he wan
dered, helpless and unaided. Memory and imagination were
his sole resources; so he turned to the singers, the reciters, the
ballad-makers, the minstrels, and the rhapsodists to tell him
of his past, of the heaven-born heroes from whom he liked to
think that he was descended, of the wars, the deeds of arms,
the conflict with forces of nature, of light and darkness, of the
vague traditions and legends which were to him unchanging
and unquestioned truths. This to him was history, and he
sought the future in the prophecies and predictions of his
sibyls and priests and soothsayers, in the signs of the heavens,
in the flight of birds, and among the entrails of animals.
When some great genius, when more than one, perhaps,
like him to whom the Greeks gave the name of Cadmus, dis
covered a method of expressing language by certain arbitrary
signs, men began to carve those signs on stones, paint them
on walls, bake them on bricks, and finally to write them on
papyrus, on skins, on bark, and on parchment. Thus they
recorded events which seemed to them memorable, facts
began to rear their hard, unfeeling heads, and imagination
slowly withdrew from a world in which it had once reigned
supreme. One form of these records was the epitaph, the
attempt to tell upon the tombstone something of the life of
the dead who lay beneath, of the ancestor to whom primitive
man had always clung in the wide wastes of the universe,
which he could not understand, and to whom he had given
his worship. Thus biography began, and, as Carlyle says,
"History is the essence of innumerable biographies." Com-

Memorial Address xi
pared to the untold myriads of human beings who have lived
and died, the number of biographies, of epitaphs, of bare
mention even, in lists or catalogues, is trifling, and yet each
one of the countless and unnoted millions had his trials and
sorrows and joys, his virtues and his crimes, his soul history,
deeply interesting if truly narrated and rightly considered.
But we can only deal with what we have, and from what
we possess must infer the rest, for that alone is permitted
to us. The inference thus drawn is history, which is not a
science, for it can never be exact, which is at best an ap
proximation to truth. From it we can learn greatly, but it
is as barren as a table of statistics unless informed by im
agination and presented with the finest skill of which lit
erature is capable. Moreover, the biographies, the recorded
lives of men, whether brief or copious, whether resting on a
few allusions or filling volumes of minute detail, are not only
the material of history, but are each and all the picture of a
human being, of a human soul, in its short and troublous pil
grimage from the cradle to the grave. If we look upon them
with considerate eyes, there is nothing of equal interest and
importance in the whole range of the great literature of knowl
edge. I have no intention of embarking upon this vast ocean
of inquiry or of attempting to examine the development of
the written lives of men and women. I would merely note
here one fact: that not only from the time when men scrawled
the names of their fellow-men on stones, but from the much
earlier day of the history preserved in the trained memory of
those who recited poetry and ballads, we almost always find
an effort at least to tell the names, if nothing more, of the
father and mother, perhaps of the more remote ancestors, of
the hero whose deeds the minstrel chanted, or even of the un-

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sung dead lying in perpetual calm beneath the carved stone.
The impulse which gave rise to this habit was wholly natural.
The desire to define the man or woman who had gone, for
the benefit of the generations yet unborn, would be quite
sufficient to account for it. Yet one cannot help feeling that
there was a vague idea working in the minds of these remote
people, dim shadows as they are, in the dawn of recorded
history, that ancestry not only defined but explained. At
all events, certain it is that the primeval habit continued,
and also expanded and developed as civilization advanced,
so that by its influence and pressure a great literature came
into being. In all the historical writings of Greece and Rome,
wherever an account is given of any man something almost
always is said of his parents, often of his ancestors. This
was the custom from the days of Herodotus to those of
Plutarch, whose biographies, so sweepingly condemned by
Macaulay, have none the less delighted succeeding genera
tions of readers, who cared naught for the writer's political
principles, but rejoiced in the stories which he told. Thus
has the practice passed on through the centuries until it has
reached the days of the evolutionists, of Darwin and Mendel
and the modern biologists. Now parentage and ancestry are
no longer in biography merely a means of definition, the
creators of the atmosphere and the influences amid which
the hero or heroine of the tale grew to maturity and achieve
ment. They have become scientific necessities, preliminaries
absolutely essential to any just comprehension of the human
being whose life and work arrest our attention and invoke
our consideration. In simpler phrase heredity is now not
only an inseparable but an indispensable part of the task of
the biographer, whether he tells his own story or that of some

Memorial Address xiii
other man, whether the life so written fills volumes or is but
the merest outline and suggestion. We no longer smile at
Dr. Holmes's remark that a man's education should begin
one hundred and fifty years before his birth, for the saying
involves a great scientific truth which Dr. Holmes foresaw,
as he did much else for which he did not receive due credit,
in the wide regions of thought and speculation.
In Charles Francis Adams, second of the name, whose life
and character, whose manifold activities and public services
we seek fittingly to commemorate to-day, the hereditary ele
ment of biography is marked and conspicuous in an unequalled
degree. I say "unequalled," which is a perilous word, for a
universal affirmative, if not as impossible as a universal nega
tive, is almost as dangerous. Yet I think the word is justi
fied. It would be difficult to find in history another case of
four successive generations of intellectual distinction and the
highest public service equal to that shown by the Adams
family during the past century and a half. In some of the
long royal dynasties instances of great ability are no doubt
found, but they are as a rule isolated and the high position
itself is inherited, not won. Among the Plantagenets even,
the dynasty more productive of remarkable men than any
other of modern times at least, the highest ability came at
intervals and the union of ability and character only at very
protracted intervals. The house of Orange-Nassau in Wil
liam the Silent, his two sons and later his great-grandson,
William III, presents a very famous case of inherited abil
ity; but there again the great opportunity and the high
position were a birthright.
There have also been many instances of long descent where
the same family has held through centuries the same titles

xiv Memorial Address
and estates, but this means little because the titles and
estates usually sustain their possessors instead of the pos
sessors upholding and adding glory to the honors and prop
erty won by the hard-handed, hard-headed founder of the
line. No doubt from these distinguished families, both in
England and on the Continent, have sprung some great
men as well as many men of strong abilities ; but the men
of mark have been sporadic and not in close succession dur
ing four generations. Frequently there has been only too
much justification for Pope's oft quoted lines :
What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Very rarely does one find a case like that of the family of La
Tremoille in France, where a strain of vigorous ability com
bined with energy, force, and character runs in varying de
grees through several generations; but the Tremoilles never
touched the summit in either political or military life and the
favoring opportunity was a birthright. We have, of course,
the famous instance of the elder and the younger Pitt who
both reached the zenith of power, but then came the end, as
it did in the less conspicuous case of Lord Burleigh and the
Earl of Salisbury, after whom the line waited two hundred
and fifty years before it again shone forth in the high places.
But in our American family, with no adventitious aid of
titles or estates, without the lucky chance which Lord Thur
low described as "the accident of an accident," the first two
of the line by their own ability, their own energy and force,
their own strong, fine characters, rose to the highest pinnacle
of public service and public distinction. Each, in the words
of the son, fulfilled his aspiration that he might be permitted
"By the people's unbought grace to rule his native land."

Memorial Address xv
To the third, to the grandson, was given the opportunity
in the darkest hour of his country's trial to perform the great
est service rendered by any civilian except Lincoln himself,
with whom none other can be compared. He took the
"Master of human destinies " by the hand and gave the great
service in full measure. To follow even in the most meagre
outline the careers or to endeavor to describe in the most
superficial way the characters and achievements of John
Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Charles Francis Adams,
would be to review the civil and diplomatic history of the
Thirteen Colonies and of the United States during more
than a hundred years. I shall not attempt to do this, for
time and space forbid, and my sole purpose is to speak of one
of the fourth generation who were born heirs to this family
history. It was a great inheritance, and unless we realize something
of what it meant in all its aspects, we cannot justly appreci
ate him in whose honor we gather here to-day. It was an
inheritance of which the possessors, unless false to all that is
best in human nature, could not fail to be proud, one which
any man might justly envy and desire; so pervading in its
influences that a biographer of any one of the fourth genera
tion might well make his theme a study in heredity. Yet at
the same time it must not be forgotten that this remarkable
heritage brought to those who received it burdens as well as
honor. The famous ancestor, still more immediate ancestors
of the highest distinction in successive generations bring to
their descendants with an unrelenting insistence, from which
the average man is free, Carlyle's question, "What then have
you done?" The effort, not unfamiliar, by which a man of
independent spirit strives to show that he has merits of his

xvi Memorial Address
own, stands on his own feet and refuses to be simply "the son
of his father," is a severe one. How much more severe the or
deal when a man is forced to demonstrate that he is not only
something more and other than the "son of his father," but
also more and other than the "grandson of his grandfather,"
and the "great-grandson of his great-grandfather." If the
possessor of such a heritage is a man of strong nature and vig
orous mind, the determination to assert himself, to do work
which the world will recognize as his own, to prove that he is
an independent, individual entity and not simply a descend
ant, becomes a dominant factor in his whole growth and
development. Moreover, the fact of such continued success
and celebrity in one family for over a century implies neces
sarily a stock of unusual robustness, physical, mental, and
moral, as well as strong qualities of mind and character which
become more emphasized by each transmission and which
pass into and govern, almost like the hand of fate, those who
inherit them. In the Education of Henry Adams weight is
given to the introduction of another strain from beyond the
New England borders by the marriage of John Quincy
Adams. But, to the dispassionate observer, the Southern
blood thus brought in seems to have had a sentimental rather
than a real effect. The Mendelian law of the dominant and
recessive qualities would appear to apply. The dominant
qualities reassert themselves; the recessive, although still
existent and with the possibility of reappearance, fade away,
especially after only a single crossing, to a dimness which in
human beings is a practical effacement. This one infusion
from without could not overcome or even affect materially
the qualities and tendencies of a strong Puritan stock carried
in three generations to the highest power by unusual abilities

Memorial Address xvii
and exceptional force of character. The heirs of the qualities
thus fostered and developed could not escape them, they were
life companions and controlling influences. They brought
their own exceeding great reward, but by the doctrine of
compensation they also brought their penalties. As an exam
ple the independence of thought in John Adams developed in
John Quincy Adams both mental solitude and minute intro
spection which passed on to his descendants with no waning
force. The peril involved in excessive introspection is obvi
ous, for, Thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
That the third and fourth generations not only avoided
this danger, but conquered the tendency which so strongly
gripped them, is abundant witness of their mental and moral
strength as well as of their vigorous intellectual honesty.
To such an inheritance Charles Francis Adams, second of
the name, son of Charles Francis and Abigail Brooks Adams,
was born on May 27, 1835, in a house on Hancock Avenue,
then and now, although upon the brink of change, a nar
row lane for foot passengers only which runs by the State
House grounds from Beacon to Mount Vernon Street. In
Boston and Quincy his boyhood was passed, and he had
as a birthright all that was best in the community into
which he was born. An unprejudiced outsider would justly
have said that in home, parentage, and associations he
was exceptionally fortunate, and this judgment, broadly
speaking, would be true. But human nature both in boy

xviii Memorial Address
and man is so constituted that the good things of life are
taken as a matter of course, while the spots on the sun or
the flies in the ointment loom large. With some tempera
ments the things disliked are pushed aside and the pleas
ant aspects prevail both at the time and in memory. With
other temperaments the exact reverse occurs. In the case of
Charles Francis Adams, as with many other boys similarly
situated between the years 1835 and 1865, Boston was inex
tricably associated with winter, short days, cold, snow, and
schools, while the summer home, in his case Quincy, meant
the long days, warmth, sunlight, out-of-door life, and a pleas
ing absence of lessons/ Boston, therefore, he earnestly dis
liked and Quincy he regarded with distinct although not
exaggerated approval. Upon him, again as with other boys
of like condition, the lingering forms of Puritanism, the seri
ous Sundays, burdened with much church-going and ample
Biblical instruction, weighed heavily. Most boys took this
ancestral bequest as the work of a malignant fate, tried with
a strict economy of truth to evade it so far as possible, and
bore what they could not escape with the odd philosophy
characteristic of boys when they meet the inevitable. Charles
Francis Adams, however, was not an average boy, and he not
only hated the Boston winters and the solemn dreary Sun
days, but actively resented them, and found no philosophy,
odd or otherwise, which would save him from kicking against
the pricks. The spirit of the reformer was strong within him
even in those earliest days although he was no doubt uncon
scious of its influence. In the brief autobiography which he
bequeathed to the Historical Society, he not only vents his
feelings in regard to these conditions of boyhood, which were
common to the time, but he' also dwells upon two additional

Memorial Address xix
grievances, one of which was, I think, exceptional, while the
other was largely shared by his contemporaries, who for the
most part did not regard it as a misfortune or indeed with
any hostile feeling. The first of these grievances concerned
outdoor sports and exercises. He learned to swim, but this
he says was the only athletic accomplishment he had oppor
tunity to acquire. He unquestionably learned to skate, al
though he puts it down as one of the things he missed, to
gether with boxing, fencing, and riding, in which boys ten or
fifteen years younger were certainly instructed and which
they all enjoyed. Nor did he have apparently in the usual
ample measure the games and sports common to boys of
that time or a little later. His brother, in the Education of
Henry Adams, says that there were no trout streams on the
Cape. This shows that the youth of the family did not wan
der far afield as sportsmen, for there are trout streams in
that region even now, some carefully preserved; and in the
"forties" of the nineteenth century they were more numer
ous and full of fish. I printed not long ago a letter from
Webster to my grandfather, who was also an expert in
the gentle art, describing a day's trout fishing in Plymouth
County and giving the weight of his spoils which he sent to
his correspondent. There was no lack, then, of trout streams,
nor of deep-sea fishing, and there was an abundance of shoot
ing along the coast, for the shore birds, now departed, were in
those days plentiful. The boys of my time had all the shoot
ing and fishing they could reasonably desire, but it is clear
that the atmosphere in which Charles Adams found himself
was not favorable to sports and outdoor life, a situation no
doubt to be regretted in the case of any vigorous boy. Charles
Adams felt it as a grave misfortune and in his autobiography

xx Memorial Address
attributes this mischance to his father. There were many
boys of those days who managed to get their fill of sports
and exercise without any especial paternal sympathy, so that
the failure in this phase of boy life cannot in this case be
charged wholly to the shortcomings of the head of the house.
At the same time it is clear that the elder Charles Francis
was not one who would stimulate or actively encourage in
his sons the athletic side of life or the love of outdoor sports.
His own childhood had been passed in Europe during his fa
ther's long diplomatic service. He had never suffered from or
enjoyed in the usual measure the education or habits of the
ordinary boy. His education, varied as it had been, was un
doubtedly better than that of most American boys, but by
the very circumstances of his life abroad he lost much in the
way of boyish associations, sports, and mischief. He was not
likely, therefore, to appreciate the value of these things to his
sons. Charles Adams in his autobiography quotes from his
father's diary where the writer speaks of a morning, passed
with his boys fishing for smelts, as a day wasted, and the son
makes the very reasonable comment that no time was less
wasted than that. But Charles Adams made too little allow
ance for the difference of temperament. In his father the
Puritan strain was very strong, the New England conscience
which insists that unattractiveness is a powerful evidence of
duty was extremely vigorous. The traditions of race and fam
ily were with him commanding. To the country, to public af
fairs, to the care of his family and estate, to work of all sorts,
with pen and voice, but always to work, he felt that all his
energy and all his time should be devoted. As independent
in thought, as determined and fearless in warfare against a
public wrong like slavery as any who ever bore the name, in

Memorial Address xxi
the lesser matters, in literature, in science, in manners and
modes of life and standards of conduct, the elder Charles
Francis Adams was conservative. He was not wholly free
from the influences and thought of the eighteenth century
which were still potent during the first thirty years of the
nineteenth. That particular frame of mind seems a hundred
years later not without charm, but the charm does not appear
to have been felt by Mr. Adams's son who came into the
world just as the eighteenth century really passed away with
the coming of the railroad and the departure of the stage
coach. The son Charles says of himself as a boy that he was not
original, but that he was individual. He was by no means
destitute of originality, but he was certainly individual,
and his normal, instinctive attitude was one of questioning
and even of revolt against anything existent, established, and
accepted. Here he differed from his father, as I have just
said, in temperament, and because of this difference he did
not make sufficient allowance.
In the Education of Henry Adams the writer thus describes
and estimates his father:
Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise, —
absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness, — the faculty
of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone, —
a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor
avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferior
ity, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even
under great pressure. This unusual poise of judgment and tem
per, ripened by age, became the more striking to his son Henry
as he learned to measure the mental faculties themselves, which
were in no way exceptional either for depth or range. Charles
Francis Adams's memory was hardly above the average; his

xxii Memorial Address
mind was not bold like his grandfather's or restless like his
father's, or imaginative or oratorical, — still less mathematical;
but it worked with singular perfection, admirable self-restraint,
and instinctive mastery of form. Within its range it was a
model. Upon one young man who had the privilege of knowing
Mr. Adams after his return from Europe, and to whom he
was very kind and considerate, he made precisely the im
pression so admirably given in the sentences just quoted.
That impression was deepened by all the young man learned,
as he grew older, from the letters and history of the time. On
only one point would he now disagree. It is his opinion that
Mr. Adams's mental faculties were unusual in depth and
range when applied to any subject with which it was his duty
to deal as a public man and he thinks that this is abundantly
proved by his work as Minister to England and on the Ge
neva Tribunal. But such qualities and such a temperament,
however much he loved and admired his father, did not ap
peal to Charles Francis the younger so strongly as they did to,
others. There was too much calmness and reserve, too much
acceptance of the existent and the traditional, too little "di
vine discontent," too little of the spirit of general revolt, to
be wholly sympathetic. Hence the criticism, not without
foundation, of the lack of sports, games, and outdoor life in
his boyhood, and also upon another point with much less
reason. This last dissatisfaction was with the failure of
his father to send him to a boarding-school. He felt, quite
rightly, that association and attrition with other boys were
the best part of education and, not so rightly by any means,
that he could not and did not get them at the Public Latin
School of Boston whither he was sent with his elder brother

Memorial Address xxiii
and the rest of his contemporaries. It is not quite easy to
understand why he felt so strongly upon this point. The
boarding-schools of that day were by no means what they
have since become, and, judging from my own experience
and that of my contemporaries, there was an ample associ
ation and attrition with other boys both in the public and
private Latin schools of Boston, if one chose to avail one's
self of them, as most boys did. If a boy did not find in these
schools the valuable education to be gained by contact with
his fellows, the difficulty, so far as my observation went, was
in the boy, not in the opportunity which seemed to be in all
ways sufficient to those who took advantage of it.
Charles Adams was in like manner dissatisfied with the
instruction given in the Boston Latin School. At that period
we had the old-fashioned classical curriculum, Latin, Greek,
mathematics, a little classical history and geography, and
exercises in declamation. The methods of teaching were
largely mechanical: learning by rote the Latin and Greek
grammars, which were reviewed every year, writing Latin
exercises, memorizing the Greek and Latin prosodies in order
to read and to recite Latin and Greek verse, and in those days
to make a false quantity in Latin was little short of a crime.
It was not the best method of learning languages, which
should be acquired as we acquire our own tongue by practice
and ear and then syntax and prosody can follow. But there
was nevertheless a real mental discipline in it and boys came
out of school with a considerable knowledge of Greek and
Latin. Since then the field of studies has been greatly ex
tended and the methods of teaching in some directions no
doubt improved, but the net result seems to be that boys now
know less about more subjects than they did in the middle of

xxiv Memorial Address
the nineteenth century and it is not apparent that they are
any better fitted to use, control, and apply their minds,
which is after all the real purpose of education. But the nar
row range of studies and the faulty methods of instruction
were a sore trial to Charles Adams and made him in later
years an effective and most valuable educational reformer.
At the moment they filled him with disgust and drove him
to revolt, so that at the end of three years in the Public Latin
School he persuaded his father to let him study with a tutor
and thus prepared he entered the class of 1856 at Harvard
in the sophomore year. To have thus omitted the freshman
year seemed to Charles Adams long afterwards to have been
a serious mistake, as it undoubtedly was. Yet his career in
college was a success and his college life a happy one in con
trast to that of his much disliked and contemned school
days, although the methods of teaching then in vogue at
Cambridge were not ideal, and were certainly not suited to
Charles Adams. He was well on the way to being a good
Greek scholar, to the possession of the language, so that
through life it would always have been a pleasure and re
source. Like others in similar cases, discouraged by the mode
of instruction, he let it go and again like others never ceased
to regret his loss. But there was large compensation in other
directions. He made friends and his friends were the best
men of a time when there were in Harvard many good men
destined to future effectiveness and success. Thus at last
he came into contact with his kind in the way he had always
desired, and he felt, rightly no doubt, that it did him a world
of good. He became a member of the college societies and
took therein an active part, for his literary capacity was even
then easily recognized by his fellows. He did not seek rank

Memorial Address xxv
in scholarship and failed to rise above the middle of the class
list. This, however, was of no great consequence, for he read
much and widely, his mind expanded and intellectual growth
and development began. There is no greater satisfaction
than this sensation of growth and advance in mental power
and Charles Adams realized and appreciated it. Most im
portant of all, what he modestly calls his " aptitude," what
others would term a natural gift and marked talent, now
found an opening and showed itself forthwith. He began to
write. It was an inherited gift. He himself says that his
chief boyish recollection of his grandfather was that he was
always writing. So the inborn tendency to think and then to
seek expression for the thoughts broke forth at Harvard and
found easy opportunity in the societies, in the college maga
zines, and presently in the newspapers. This it was, more
than anything else, which made his college career a success
and caused him to look back upon it with less severity of
criticism than that awarded to the preceding years. There
was much, no doubt, that was wrong in existing conditions,
in modes of instruction and the like; there were, as he thought,
many mistakes and lost opportunities, due entirely to him
self, the statistics of which he kept with great care, and yet
the general effect of the Harvard years was not only satis
factory but happy. To the onlooker it seems as if there were
every reason why it should have been so. When a man at the
age of twenty has found something worth doing, which he
likes to do and can do well, as was the case with Charles
Adams's writing, he may be deemed to be fortunate in no
common degree. I believe Charles Adams realized the satis
faction and happiness he had found in writing, but I do not
think that he regarded himself as particularly fortunate

xxvi Memorial Address

therein. The proverb is something musty, but one cannot
but recall the familiar Latin line, "O fortunatos nimium,
sua si bona norint."
Graduating in 1856, Charles Adams, deciding to be a law
yer, as the obvious thing to do, did not go to the Law School,
which later he thought was a mistake, but entered as a stu
dent the office of Dana & Parker, which was certainly a very
wise choice. That he learned much law there is not apparent,
but he was brought into close and daily contact with two
very unusual men, which was in itself an education. Richard
H. Dana, Jr., whose biography Charles Adams wrote many
years later, was a man of the finest character and an idealist
as well. His Two Years Before the Mast, so aptly called by
Mr. Adams "The Odyssey of the Pacific Coast," gave Mr.
Dana a permanent place in our literature. He was also one
of the leaders of the bar, distinguished alike in the law of
admiralty and as an international lawyer. Above all, he had
devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause and to the defense
of the fugitive slave, with a courage and disinterested zeal
which did him the utmost honor. His partner, Mr. Francis E.
Parker, did not take the position either in literature or public
life which would give him a place in history, but he was none
the less a remarkable man. An eminent lawyer, he was also
in the best way both cultivated and accomplished, a lover of
art and of literature, with a keen and penetrating wit, delight
ful as a friend and companion, familiar with men and cities
and a wise judge of both. Charles Adams fully appreciated
and valued the two partners, and only a few days before his
death I talked with him about Mr. Parker and his opinion
of him fully coincided with that which I have just expressed.
From close association with such men he no doubt profited

Memorial Address xxvii
largely, but if we may trust his own account he did not learn
much of the law and he gave a good deal of time to the pleas
ures of society, all very natural to his age and opportunities.
"Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine." Who would
have age and experience speak otherwise to generous
youth? One would be a churl, indeed, to refuse to give
the kindly permission. None the less, within two years our
Laertes managed to pass the formal, easy examinations of
those days and was admitted to the bar by Chief Justice
Bigelow. Thus duly certified professionally he took an office, first
with his brother John and then by himself, and sat him down
to wait for clients. This is a dreary, trying business at best
and was peculiarly so to Charles Adams, not merely from
temperament but because neither then nor later did he have
any real liking for the law. To become a lawyer was an obvi
ous thing to do, but the obvious was in this case wholly un
suitable. If clients did not come, however, events did. The
storm of civil war was gathering, as we can see now, the po
litical atmosphere was heavily charged and dark clouds were
beginning to drift across the sky. Mr. Charles Francis
Adams the elder was elected to Congress, the Boston home,
was closed, and Charles Adams the younger found his way
to Washington to see his family. Politics and public ques
tions were to him with his inheritances a second nature.
Here there was no innate repulsion as with the law. They
attracted him and absorbed his thoughts, and the extracts
from his diary describing men and events in Washington are
deeply interesting. No one realized what was coming, no one
gauged the future correctly. It is all so natural and yet so
tragic to see through the eyes of the young diarist the men of

xxviii Memorial Address

that day stumbling forward in the darkness to conclusions of
which they had no conception.
Then came i860 and the fateful election of that year.
Charles Adams had the good fortune to accompany his father
and Mr. Seward in the latter's wide-reaching campaign tour
in behalf of the Republican candidates. He saw the West for
the first time, a very different West from that of to-day,
which he also lived to see and which he helped to develop and
build up. The scenes of that journey, the travels by land and
water, the popular meetings and the public men he met, all
pass vividly before us in the pages of his diary. Then it was
that he saw Lincoln, who came to greet Seward, for the first
time. Here again was education, not to be found in law
books or offices, most valuable to the keen and eager mind of
the young observer. The teachings of those days remained
with him through life. In the Boston intervals the dull wait
ing for clients went on, relieved only by the "aptitude"
which reasserted itself, found public expression in the news
papers, and finally in an Atlantic article upon " King Cotton "
which had a marked success. The lurid campaign of i860
ended. The Republicans won. The Union began to drop to
pieces. The winter of 1860-61 dragged slowly by. Charles
Adams watched closely the rapid march of events, striving
hard to judge them as they passed and to guess the future
which no one could fathom, which indeed men recoiled from
anticipating. Seward and his father, utterly declining to be
lieve in war, in which it is now easy to see that they were
wrong, were laboring by every means of delay, by the con
sideration of impossible compromises and hopeless arrange
ments, to hold the Government together until the 4th of
March, and in this effort they were absolutely right, no

Memorial Address xxix
i- matter what their view of the future might have been. At
last the day so longed for came, and Charles Adams saw
Lincoln peacefully inaugurated. He, like all Republicans
and Union men, breathed a sigh of relief. They thought, or
tried to think, that the worst was over. The worst, of course,
was yet to come, but the first great danger had none the less
been passed. The Government at last was in loyal hands.
In the hands, too, of the greatest man of his time, although
this fact the men of that day did not and could not know.
Mr. Adams and his family returned to Boston. Every one
was hoping for the best, now that the change of administra
tion had been safely accomplished. There came a few weeks
of anxiety, of hope, of fear, and then the storm broke. Sum
ter fell and the war began.
The immediate impulse of Charles Adams was to throw
everything aside and go at once to the defense of the country.
Amid the universal unreadiness for war, in which the mass of
Americans could not believe until it was actually upon them,
Charles Adams was better prepared than most of those about
him. He was a member of the Fourth Battalion of the Massa
chusetts Militia. On the 24th of April (1861) his battalion
was ordered to garrison duty at Fort Independence. There
he had five weeks of real service and learned much, more
perhaps than he realized. But he could not on the com
pletion of this duty make up his mind simply and directly,
as so many of his friends did, to do that which above all
things he desired and which in reality he was certain to do
in the end. The strong inheritance of introspection asserted
itself and for five months he struggled with himself. It was
all so needless and yet for him so inevitable. His patriotism,
his courage, his high spirit, all drove him forward irresistibly.

xxx Memorial Address
The cold fits, the arguments in which he never believed,
would come, would recur again and again, although each
time more weakly. But the glow of the right and natural
impulse burned ever stronger as the weeks passed, and at last
one clear October afternoon as he was riding the decision
came. "Why should I not go?" he said to himself. The
negative vanished in the brilliant lights and gleaming colors
of that autumn evening. He applied for a captaincy in
the First Massachusetts Cavalry. On the 19th of Decem
ber his name went in for a commission as First Lieutenant
and on December 28, 1861, he left Boston with his regi
ment. So far as the men who made up that regiment were con
cerned, no better ever went to war. But to Charles Adams it
was an unlucky choice. He was unfortunate in his superior
officers, not merely in the two in chief command, but espe
cially in the one to whom he was immediately subordinate.
No man ever went to the front with a clearer determination
to do his full duty to the best of his ability than Charles
Adams and no man ever kept better to his purpose. Yet he
was treated at the outset in a way which would have driven
many a man of good quality to desperation, to insubordina
tion, to resignation, perhaps to ruin. The wrong and injus
tice of it all were very bitter, very hard to bear. There were
recurring hours then and later when it seemed to him that
he had lacked manliness in submitting to what he bore and in
not breaking through everything, even leaving the service,
that he might preserve his self-respect. But he overcame the
temptation which was at once so natural and so strong, and
there is in his whole career no more convincing proof to be
found of the fineness and strength of his character and of the

Memorial Address xxxi
really noble conception of duty which throughout his life
underlay all his acts and thoughts.
The regiment went first to South Carolina and then to Vir
ginia. In the autumn of 1862 he was promoted to Captain;
he was rid of the worst torment from his immediate superior
and light began to break. He saw constant service and was in
many actions, always and simply brave, cool, and efficient.
He was at Antietam and Chief of Squadron in the Gettys
burg campaign, then separated from his regiment on special
duty at headquarters, and during the subsequent advance
upon Richmond. In the autumn of 1864 he was transferred
to the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, a colored regiment, as
Lieutenant-Colonel, joining his new command at Point Look
out, Maryland. For some time he had been suffering from
illness caused by hardship and malaria and now became so
much worse that in November he was ordered home. He
grew better, rejoined his regiment once more, grew much
worse, and was again ordered back to Boston. As the winter
drew to a close Colonel Russell resigned and the command
of the regiment was given to Adams. At the same time came
the offer of a place on General Humphreys' staff as Inspector-
General. He esteemed Humphreys very highly and an impor
tant staff appointment was what he had longed for above all
else. Nevertheless he refused the staff appointment from a
sense of duty and obligation and took command of the regi
ment. He always felt that this was a grave mistake and bit
terly regretted it. His decision certainly deprived him of
being present at the close of the war in the happiest manner
and in the way which above all others he desired. Yet as one
calmly considers his action fifty years later, while the mistake
from his point of view may be admitted, the thought of the

xxxii Memorial Address

self-sacrifice to the sense of duty rouses an admiration which
overshadows every other consideration.
He secured the mounting of his regiment, took it to the
front, and had the supreme satisfaction of riding at its head
into burning Richmond the day after the abandonment of
the city by Lee. A few weeks later he broke down again, this
time completely, was obliged to leave the regiment and
return to Boston reduced to a skeleton, a mere wreck from
fever, exposure, and hardship endured for four years. He
received the brevet of Brigadier-General, and in June, 1865,
was mustered out of the service. He had served his country
well in the field. He had been a good soldier, courageous and
self-sacrificing, active and earnest in the -performance of
every duty. It was a wonderful experience, educating, ex
panding, strengthening, and as he grew older he seemed to
value it more and more. The memory never grew dim, the
teachings of that terrible struggle of the nation for life never
faded. His service in the war was to him a precious posses
sion and such in truth it was to all who had fought through
the four years as he had done.
While absent on sick-leave during the winter of 1864-65,
he became engaged to Miss Ogden, the second daughter of
Edward Ogden, of New York, then living in Newport. There
he passed the summer of 1865 and there he was married in
November. Immediately after the wedding he went with his
wife to Europe. His father was still Minister to England and
he was able to rejoin his family in London. He travelled also
on the Continent, and the journey restored his shattered
strength. His opportunities in England were of course excep
tional, but Charles Adams felt, as he was apt to feel, that he
did not make the most of them either there or elsewhere.

Memorial Address xxxiii
The condition of his health no doubt interfered, but it seems
probable that he made more of his opportunities at that time
than he was ever willing to admit and it is certain that he saw
and learned much.
In September, 1866, he returned to Boston and it is not
surprising that the prospect which he faced seemed at first
unpromising as well as uninviting. He came back to a world
and to conditions greatly changed from those which he had
left five years before. From a high military command, from
a position of responsibility and importance, he now returned
to the obscurity of civil life, to his abandoned profession for
which he had no love, and with no definite place, no settled
and necessary work ready to absorb his time and satisfy or
occupy his energies. He went back to his office and then,
facing with clear courage and good sense the indifferent world
about him, he set to work to establish himself, to make his
place and to find and do something worth doing.
He made a wise if quick choice by turning to the railroad
system, to use his own words, " as the most developing force
and largest field of the day." He started with an article upon
"Railroads" in the North American Review. Clients did not
come to his office, but articles upon railroads flowed out into
the magazines and reviews. Gradually the steady work be
gan to tell, although it was not apparent as the days went by.
Slowly but surely he was awakening his public to the vast
importance of the railroad system growing and spreading
rankly over a continent without either regulation or control.
He made it apparent that this necessary servant upon which
the development of the country depended was becoming a
dangerous master. He demonstrated the need of action in the
public interest. He became an authority upon his subject.

xxxiv Memorial Address
The patient labor told. The " aptitude " in writmg had found
a field and brought in its harvest. In 1869 he delivered
a Fourth of July address before the Grand Army Post at
Quincy, which attracted much attention. In the same month
the law establishing a railroad commission in Massachusetts,
which he had been largely instrumental in passing, went into
effect and he was appointed one of the commissioners. On
the first day of that same July, so memorable to him, ap
peared his article entitled "A Chapter of Erie," which had
a widespread and deep political and economic effect at the
moment and without which the history of that time could not
now be properly written or thoroughly understood. There
had been a " railroad commission " in Rhode Island and " rail
road commissioners" in New Hampshire since 1844 and sta
tistical returns of railroads in Massachusetts since 1836, but
nothing had yet been accomplished in the direction of regu
lation or control. The Massachusetts Railroad Commission
of 1869 was the first effective commission and was the foun
dation of the system of railroad commissions with large
powers which spread to all the States and culminated in the
Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States. This
beginning of the great system of Government regulation of
railroads in the interest of the public was the work of Charles
Adams. The idea, the theory, the principles, were all his, and
the first practical demonstration, for he served ten years as
railroad commissioner, was his also. It is not going too far
to say that no single man produced by his own unaided
thought and effort so great an effect upon our economic
development, with all its attendant political manifestations,
so far as it was involved in transportation by rail, as did
Charles Adams when he brought about the establishment of

Memorial Address xxxv
the Massachusetts Railroad Commission and through the
practical work of the Commission, as well as by his writings,
educated the public to a belief in Government regulation
and supervision of the vast system of railroads which was
growing up in the United States.
The " Chapter of Erie " was the crowning stroke in the work
which he had been doing by his writings for nearly three
years. It is difficult now even to imagine such a situation as
is depicted in this remarkable article. Physical violence, cor
ruption of legislatures, corruption of courts, stock-gambling,
robbery of the public and the stockholders, set off against a
background of vulgar display and coarse vice, all these foul
things were there, not concealed but flaunted openly and fla
grantly, with a cynical disregard of public morals and public
opinion. The people had looked on, disgusted and helpless.
They saw the various villainies as they passed one by one, but
they neither understood nor appreciated what it all meant
until the isolated events were knit together into a single con
nected story powerfully and skilfully told by Charles Adams.
Then they knew what had happened, then they realized the
danger which threatened them, then and there the revolt
against railroad domination began. The foresight displayed
in these articles is as remarkable as the grasp of facts and
principles. But even their author could not foresee how far
the movement, so beneficial, so necessary in itself, and as he
conceived it, would travel in the next fifty years. From being
a peril and a corrupting force in politics, the railroads have
now become the helpless subjects of Government commis
sions and too often their victims. The general result has been
of the utmost value politically and in a less degree economi
cally. Many evils have been cured, many wrongs redressed,

xxxvi Memorial Address
much good has been accomplished, while serious harm has
also been done by the crude and violent methods pursued in
certain instances. The unfortunate stockholders have suf
fered under both systems. As in all revolutions — and the
movement begun by Charles Adams in 1867 was nothing less
— the achievement of great good, the reform of grave abuses
brings with it suffering to guilty and innocent alike and the
final expiation is often vicarious. Two meaner and more in
jurious tyrants than Louis XIV and Louis XV it would be
difficult to find. They both had exceptionally long reigns and
died quietly in their beds. For their sins Louis XVT, harm
less, dull, and kindly, went to the guillotine. Those who
rightly feel that the treatment of our railroads by law, by
Congress, by legislatures and commissions, is often harsh
and unjust will do well to read the Chapters of Erie and con
sider the doings of Gould and Fisk. They may not find there
an abstract justification of all the mistakes and extreme
measures of the present day directed against the railroads,
but they will certainly discover an ample explanation of how
those measures came to pass.
Just at this time, when he was bringing the labors of nearly
three years to practical fruition by the establishment of the
Massachusetts Railroad Commission, Charles Adams left
Boston and made his home in the ancestral town of Quincy.
He had been absorbed in a great state and national question,
the transportation system of the United States, and he con
tinued that work for many years to come. But he now added
to it the affairs of the town in which he lived, affairs as purely
local as one could conceive, but which he contrived, before
he was done with them, to carry in their influence not only
outside the bounds of the township, but far beyond the bor
ders of Massachusetts.

Memorial Address xxxvii
With his elder brother, John Quincy Adams, who was not
only a man of marked ability, but an accomplished speaker
and personally very popular, he entered upon the field of
town affairs. The general condition of the town was not
good and there was ample opportunity for reforms in various
directions. Many were effected, and for twenty years the
two brothers not only led but largely managed the town.
The methods of doing business in town meeting were wholly
reformed and became a model. The debt was extinguished
and the tax rate kept at a moderate figure by wise, economi
cal, and effective expenditure. During these twenty years
Charles Adams was a member of the school committee, a
trustee of the public library, a park commissioner, and a
commissioner of the sinking fund. He was constantly active
in town work and never defeated when a candidate for office.
The best-known part of that work was the reform of the
methods of teaching and administration in the public schools
which he started and carried through. The result became
famous as the "Quincy System," which was studied and in
vestigated by teachers and educators everywhere. It was
largely followed and imitated and in this way had a wide
influence upon education in the United States. Hardly less
important, although less generally known, was the result of
his work as trustee of the public library and as park commis
sioner. With entire justice he says in his autobiography that
the public library given by Thomas Crane and the Merry-
mount Park which he himself gave to the town are permanent
memorials of his work in the affairs of Quincy. No man could
ask for better records of disinterested and unpaid public
service than these. He also left a full account of his labors
in Quincy in the last of his Three Episodes of Massachusetts

xxxviii Memorial Address
History. And yet perhaps his best monument, quite impal
pable and incorporeal, is the demonstration which he and his
brother gave of the fine results which can be obtained by
men of energy, ability, and public spirit working through the
direct democracy of the town meeting, properly applied to
suitable purposes, when the same energy, ability, and hon
esty exerted through the forms of city government so com
monly end in failure and so rarely achieve more than a
partial and often merely evanescent success.
During these years of life in Quincy the work as railroad
commissioner went on steadily and Mr. Adams's reports,
including that which he prepared as special commissioner on
the Troy and Greenfield road, were all important contribu
tions toward the solution of the general transportation prob
lem. The most interesting and far-reaching of these reports
was that of 1877, as courageous as it was able, which dealt
with the grave questions raised by the prolonged strike of
the engineers on the Boston & Maine Railroad. Mr. Adams
advocated investigation and publicity as against compulsory
arbitration, and it is interesting to note that the very able
Roosevelt Commission, called into being by the great coal
strike more than twenty years later, adopted and enforced
his views. In publicity and investigation, as the best method
of dealing with the most serious troubles of this character,
Charles Adams never lost faith.
The work on the Massachusetts Railroad Commission,
together with his writings, inevitably led to wider fields. In
1878 he became chairman of the Government Directors of
the Union Pacific and after going over the lines drew the
report. In 1879 he resigned from the Massachusetts Com
mission and became chairman of the Board of Arbitration

Memorial Address xxxix
of the Trunk Lines. In 1882 he was chosen a director of the
Union Pacific, and two years later was elected president of
the company. This was a most responsible position and as
burdensome and trying as it was important. The company
was involved with the Government, the worst of all possible
handicaps; it was unpopular in the territory it served and in
very bad financial condition. During the first five years of
his presidency Mr. Adams did much for the road. He put
the finances in order, improved alike the service and credit
of the road, and paid off the floating debt. But he could not
bring the relations with the Government to a settlement and
that was the most serious obstacle to complete success. He
had proved himself efficient and capable and if he had gone
out at the end of five years all would have been well for him.
But, as he himself says, he made the serious mistake of re
maining a year and a half longer, struggling in vain for the
Government settlement which always fled as he approached
it. During those fateful eighteen months the clouds in the
business world which culminated in the great panic of 1893,
were gathering darkly upon the horizon. At that time Charles
Adams was deeply involved in other and extensive enter
prises of his own, and as conditions constantly grew worse
both the road and its president suffered from them. At last,
in 1890, he wrenched himself free, not without large personal
sacrifice, and his twenty years of railroad work came to an
end, leaving with him at the time a bitter sense of failure.
But the failure, if it was such, was in reality confined to the
last year and a half in the Union Pacific, when the general
financial situation, continually growing worse, brought ruin
to many men and many enterprises. The eighteen preceding
years were a success in the largest sense, because during those

xl Memorial Address
years he did a work toward the solution of the vast railroad
question, informing and educating public opinion, which
stands out conspicuous in the history of the time and which
was one of his best and most enduring achievements.
Yet the work in Quincy, the labors as railroad commis
sioner, then as a member of the Arbitration Board, as direc
tor and president of the Union Pacific, together with large
business affairs in which he was privately engaged, although
they would seem beyond the strength of any one man, by no
means comprised all the public service rendered at that period
and later by Charles Adams. In 1872 he went at the head of
a commission authorized by the Massachusetts Legislature
to visit the Vienna Exposition and drew the report of the
commissioners. In 1892 he was appointed chairman of the
preliminary and advisory commission to prepare a plan of
parks and public reservations for Boston and its vicinity.
The result was a scheme for 'a park system probably un
equalled in extent and in far-sighted conception by any great
city of modern times. Greatly to the surprise of Mr. Adams
the report was accepted and he was made chairman of the
commission created to carry the plans into effect. He served
until 1895, and then, feeling that his work in this direction
was completed, he resigned. The preservation of the Blue
Hills and of the Middlesex Fells by including them in reser
vations was largely due to his efforts, and he justly felt that
he had accomplished much in saving those regions of re
markable natural beauty not only for the public of his own
day, but for the generations yet unborn. Those, who in the
long days to come will find enjoyment and happiness in the
regions thus preserved from the ravages of the spoiler, may
not know to whose hand they owe the precious gift, but none

Memorial Address xii
the less the hills and woods and lakes thus saved are a great
and lasting memorial to the man whose disinterested and
far-seeing labors made them a permanent possession of the
people of Massachusetts.
In 1897 Charles Adams was appointed chairman of a
Massachusetts commission to investigate the relations be
tween street railways and municipalities. For this purpose
he visited Europe to inquire into the different systems in
operation there and in Great Britain, and on his return he
drew the report upon which general legislation was based
and enacted. In 1903 he served as chairman of a special
commission to apportion the cost of maintenance of the
parks and reservations among the several cities and towns
included in the system.
During this entire period he was also active in another and
very different field. In 1882 he was chosen an overseer of
Harvard College and served there four terms of six years
each with an interval of one year in 1895. His deep interest
as an educational reformer, so strikingly shown in the schools
of Quincy, he now turned to the methods and modes of teach
ing in the great university. In 1883 he delivered the Phi
Beta Kappa address entitled "A College Fetish," which was
directed against the classics, and not only attracted much
attention, but excited abundant criticism and discussion
which Charles Adams always enjoyed. From that time for
ward, for nearly a quarter of a century, he was most active
in all the affairs of Harvard, concluding his many years of
service by an elaborate report on the English Department
which was followed by important changes in the English
courses of the university.
As one comes to the end of this long list of activities in

xiii Memorial Address
public service and with public results, supplemented by busi
ness interests enough in themselves to absorb the entire men
tal and physical strength of a man of more than average vigor
of mind and body, one pauses in surprise at the force, energy,
and capacity for work which made it all possible, and yet
even this was not everything. Through all there ran the
"aptitude" for expression in writing, and not content with
the articles in magazines and newspapers or the elaborate
reports dealing with the educational, economic, and railroad
reforms upon which he was engaged, the "aptitude" reached
out and turned to the inviting fields of history and biography,
subjects for which Charles Adams, quite unknown to himself
at first, possessed another strong gift which was his both by
nature and inheritance. In 1874 he was asked to deliver an
historical address at the celebration of the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the town of Wey
mouth, next neighbor to Quincy. He knew but little of
Weymouth ; nothing of its history. After a brief hesitation he
accepted and delivered the address on the 4th of July, 1874.
His work as an historian had begun. The Weymouth address
was followed by his election as a member of the Massachu
setts Historical Society, lightly accepted at the moment, but
which was destined to mean so much to him in a future then
long distant. The Weymouth address, however, did much
more than this. It led him insensibly into the pleasant
paths of historical study and investigation. He came, per
haps without realizing it, well equipped for the new pursuit.
From the earliest beginnings in the days of the college and
the law office he wrote easily and well. He seems never to
have passed through the severe struggle necessary to most
men when learning to express themselves in writmg with

Memorial Address xliii
force and lucidity. Yet the old saying that easy writing
makes hard reading does not apply in his case. All that
Charles Adams wrote is eminently readable. He had no faith
in the elaborate, no patience with what was dry or obscure.
He was strongly of Martial's opinion :
Non scribit, cujus carmina nemo legit.
One might agree or disagree with his opinions, but no one
found difficulty in either reading or understanding what he
wrote. Rarely rhetorical, his style was always clear and
effective. The humor of a situation when he described it
did not escape him if it was anywhere present, nor did he
ever fail to see the pathos or the tragedy when either existed
or the remote results of the events of history or of the deeds
of men. He had also another quality in a high degree of
excellence which is very essential to the historian. This was
the power of developing and weaving together a closely con
nected and interesting narrative from a mass of complicated
and disorderly facts and of intricate, widely scattered details.
In the Chapters of Erie, which were the first of his writings
to attain to book form, in a volume of essays by himself and
his brother Henry, this power is made very manifest. The
literary quality in this respect is as admirable as the sub
stance of the attack upon the infamies of the Erie Railroad
management. From a wilderness of details, from masses of
testimony, judicial orders, and newspaper reports, he drew
forth a clear, succinct, coherent, easily understood, and also
keenly interesting story. The ability to do this implies not
only patient and untiring industry, but skill and proficiency
in the difficult arts of selection, compression, and omission.
To the work of the historian Charles Adams brought this

xliv Memorial Address

ability, and the thoroughness of research and the mastery of
details were as conspicuous as the easy and vivacious man
ner in which the results of his labors were finally stated upon
the printed page. Following the lead of the Weymouth
address, he extricated from the confused and too often
broken records of the seventeenth century, the story of the
earliest English settlements of Massachusetts Bay, which
was first printed privately in 1883 as Episodes in New Eng
land History, and later, in 1892, in two volumes entitled
Three Episodes of Massachusetts History. There is much in
the records of those times which seems petty if carelessly
regarded. The figures on the scene are for the most part
obscure men, moving dimly on the edge of a vast, untrodden
wilderness. Yet when looked at, as Charles Adams looked
at them, with a discerning gaze, it is apparent that adven
ture and romance were both present and, when they are, the
names and importance of the heroes are of secondary conse
quence, for romance and adventure do not depend upon the
worldly position of the actors in making their appeal to hu
man imagination and human interest. Isolated and alone
these early wanderers to the New England coast might well
have had no other charm than this, but as it happened they
were also founders of a State, beginners of great things, fac
tors in world events, and their connection with the larger
history of their own time and of the future was brought out
by Charles Adams in a way which makes the deeper meanings
of these Pilgrims and adventurers clear and emphatic to all
who read their story as he told it.
This work went with Charles Adams through all the period
of railroad and business activity and was a resource and com
fort in the disappointments and trials which came with the

Memorial Address xiv

successes in practical affairs. During the last months of his
presidency of the Union Pacific, when all the many anxieties
of the road and of his own business interests were culminat
ing, he none the less managed in some way, not easily com
prehensible, to write the biography of his old friend Richard
H. Dana, in whose office he had studied law. Just as he left
the railroad and regained once more the freedom from the
care and responsibility which the presidency of the road had
brought upon him, the book was published. There is nothing
in its pages to suggest the wearing conditions under which it
was composed, an indication of a rare capacity for self-ab
straction and for applying the mind to the subject which the
will commands. It is a wholly admirable piece of work, vivid,
interesting, one of the very best of American biographies.
It merits more than the credit of an important contribution
to our history; it is also an addition to our literature.
From this time forward the "aptitude," finding its truest
field in history, gave to Charles Adams his principal interest
and his chief occupation, one which was entirely congenial.
There were five hard years to be passed through while he
dealt with the burdens which the railroad and his own affairs,
involved in the great business depression between 1893 and
1897, brought upon him. He gave up Boston and Quincy
and established himself upon a large estate at Lincoln.
There his time at last became his own and he turned to his
tory and historical studies, where, in the midst of other and
very different labors, he had already done so much.
During the twenty-five years which followed his retire
ment from the presidency of the Union Pacific, he published,
in addition to many noticeable and much noticed addresses,
historical and otherwise, The Life of R. H. Dana and The

xlvi Memorial Address
Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, already mentioned;
Massachusetts; Its Historians and History, in 1893 ; a memoir,
all too brief, of his father, in 1900; a volume of Studies: Mili
tary and Diplomatic, in 191 1, and in 1913, in book form, the
lectures delivered at Oxford and later at Johns Hopkins Uni
versity entitled Transatlantic Historical Solidarity. This last
volume represented part of the study he was making with his
usual thoroughness and industry of the diplomatic history
of our Civil War. He had gathered an immense mass of orig
inal material for this purpose and was constantly accumu
lating more, upon which he was occupied at the time of his
death. In addition to all this original production, with its wide
historical research, he found time to edit for the Prince So
ciety in 1883, during the railroad period, Thomas Morton's
New English Canaan, in 1894 tne Winthrop-Weld tract on
Antinomianism in New England, and later gave much assist
ance in the preparation of the Historical Society's monu
mental edition of Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation,
which appeared in 1912. This edition of Bradford, suggested
by Mr. Adams in 1898, was but one of many things that he did
for the Society which filled a large place in his life for twenty
years. He was chosen a vice-president in 1890 when he left
the Union Pacific, and in 1895 he was elected president to
succeed Dr. Ellis. He came to his new duties, as he had come
to all the positions he had ever filled, with an abundance of
fresh ideas and in the spirit of the reformer. He not only
worked for and helped the Society in every possible way, he
not only brought to it and expended in its service unbounded
energy and enthusiasm, but he enlarged its field, increased
its usefubess, and made it more of a power in history, litera-

Memorial Address xlvii
ture, and in the community, than it had ever been before.
The bane of all learned societies, historical, antiquarian, or
scientific, is the tendency to see only the trees and not the
forest, the houses and not the city. They are too apt to forget
that one fact is gossip and that two related facts are history.
All persons of healthy minds love gossip, whether oral or
written, if it is clever, humorous, and suggestive. That is an
attribute of human nature and is due to the fact that good
gossip has the quality of the story, the touch of romance, the
appeal to the imagination. But it is a perilous mistake to
suppose that all gossip, good or bad, dull or amusing, that all
facts, simply as facts, are of value. The result of this error
when indulged in is the heaping up of unread pages of facts
of no value at the time of their existence or at any subsequent
period. Mere age does not give a fact importance. Some
thing more is needed, and the tenderness which we all feel
for that which the centuries have spared should not blind us
to its intrinsic worth or worthlessness, which is the only real
question to be determined. Diamonds and pearls are no
doubt to be found now and then on the rubbish-heaps of the
past, but the mounds are none the less rubbish as they were
from the beginning, and their final resting-place should be
not the printed, gently preserving page, but the fire or the
dust-bin, even if a precious stone, happily rescued, should
have once glittered among them.
With this vice of collecting valueless facts purely because
they were old, and then encumbering not only shelves but
the limited time of finite humanity with endless volumes of
printed paper, Charles Adams was very familiar and equally
unsympathetic. This in itself made him peculiarly fit for the
president's place in an historical society. But he did much

xlviii Memorial Address
more. He carried the work of the Society out of the Colonial
Period, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where it
had been too much and too long confined, and brought the
nineteenth century, and especially the period of the Civil
War, within the scope of its communications, investigations,
and monthly consideration. Not content with this extension
he led the Society into still wider fields of history by his own
addresses and essays, which ranged from the battle of Salamis
to the current events of the day and which greatly enlivened
and adorned the volumes of the Proceedings. His generous
gifts to the Society were never lacking, but the greatest gift
of all was his own untiring energy and enthusiasm; the way
in which he asserted, developed, and maintained the position
of the Society as an influence and power in literature and his
torical research.
The removal from Quincy to Lincoln proved in all ways
fortunate. He genuinely enjoyed the country life and the new
occupations which his estate afforded. He became a bene
factor, too, of his new town as he had been in the old home
of his family. Journeys to Europe were interspersed as the
years went by, and in 1905 he purchased a house in Washing
ton and thenceforth passed his winters there. That change,
too, was a fortunate and a happy one. He liked Washington.
The varied society, the people from all parts of the United
States and from foreign lands whom he met, interested and
amused him. The climate was more genial than that of
Massachusetts and there were few days when he could not
walk and have his daily ride, which he kept up steadily until
the very end. These last twenty years were, I am sure, very
happy ones. The cares and anxieties of his railroad and
business life were all behind him. The crushing burdens

Memorial Address xlix
which came after he left the Union Pacific were disposed of
and lifted from his shoulders. He was constantly occupied
with work which he keenly enjoyed, work worth doing, and
which he had the satisfaction of knowing was well done,
and the natural "aptitude" had at last full and unrestricted
opportunity. His physical and mental vigor remained unim
paired to a degree which made it impossible to realize the
number of his years. He was spared the trials of gradual
decay which age so often brings. He escaped the fate which
above all others he would have dreaded and resented :
To hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery.
In the full tide of activity and work, instinct with interest in
life, he was seized with pneumonia; a few days of illness and
the end came on the 20th of March, only two months before
his eightieth birthday. To him was given the good fortune,
which usually comes alone to youth untimely taken, of leav
ing in the lives of those who knew and admired and loved
him, as well as of those who were nearest and dearest to him,
a gap which never can be filled.
In such fashion this career so crowded with work, with
public service, with achievements of many kinds, came to
the inevitable close. What shall be said of the man himself
who had a career so striking and who in such a vivid and ear
nest manner lived the life of his time, who exercised so much
influence upon the community of which he was a part and in
various ways upon the thought and the development of his
country? How shall we approach any attempt to judge him
and his work? Charles Adams would have been the first
to agree with Drummond, of Hawthornden, "That there is

1 Memorial Address
nothing lighter than mere praise." In his admirable biog
raphies, in all his historical writings, when he deals with
those who have played their part upon the stage of life and
then have gone from among us, he never treads the beaten
paths of eulogy and undiscriminating panegyric. He would,
I am sure, resent any failure to follow his own precepts and
example, when those who honored and admired him came to
speak of him after his work was done. As we may learn from
his autobiography, he judged himself far more severely, far
more harshly one may often say, than any dispassionate
critic would think of doing. Rarely does he express satisfac
tion with anything he did. Constantly does he point out
where he had failed to reach the standard he desired, and the
censure of himself for lost opportunities recurs, often quite
unjustly, as it seems to me, again and again. His aims were
very high, very large; like most effective men he fell short of
his own ideals, like most men who make anything he made
mistakes. But he overrated the number of lost opportunities
and he underrated his own successes. He was very modest in
his judgment upon all that he did himself, but it must be con
fessed that he was equally modest in his judgment of other
people, an attitude often mistaken for self-satisfaction when
in reality it implies nothing of the sort. This was eminently
true of Charles Adams, who was wholly free from small
conceits and petty self-complacencies. No one can read his
autobiography and fail to see that so far as he personally was
concerned he was humble-minded; but when he analyzed or
criticised any man, whether that man was historical or con
temporary, he dealt with him as he dealt with himself —
unsparingly, rarely with any illusions, but always as fairly
as he could. He fully intended to be simply just in judgment,

Memorial Address li
for malice, jealousy, or uncharitableness had no existence in
his nature.
In reviewing his life one is struck most by the extent and
variety of his activities and filled with wonder that any man
had the really enormous energy, both mental and physical,
necessary to undertake and to accomplish so much. He felt
himself that he had attempted to do too many things and
had expended his efforts in too many directions. As a rule,
no doubt, the greatest reputations and the greatest results,
both in fame and accomplishment, have been obtained by
the concentration of a man's powers upon a single object; but
this in no way detracts from the effectiveness of the work or
the credit due to one who has had a large measure of success
and of high usefulness in many different fields of thought
and action, as was the case with Charles Adams. His energy
may have spent itself on too many objects, but it was never
fruitless, and to whatever subject he turned he left his mark
and a deep impress behind him. His varied interests and
incessant labors in many directions were very different from
the mere restlessness which flits here and there, touching
everything without adorning anything, and effecting nothing.
His labors may have been, they were, indeed, very diverse,
but they were never in vain.
Next to the extent and variety of his activities that which
is most arresting is the fact that in all he undertook he never
entered upon the one field for which, by strong inheritance
as well as by natural capacity, he would seem to have been
most peculiarly fitted. Statesmanship, politics in the largest
sense, diplomacy, were with him bred in the bone, were an
instinct rather than an inborn tendency or inclination. Yet
he never made any effort toward a public life in the ordinary

Hi Memorial Address
and restricted sense. He certainly never sought, it seems as
if he never even desired, public office, either political or dip
lomatic, although by inheritance and natural endowments
he was so remarkably suited for both. He took a deep inter
est in politics and was entirely conversant with them both
at home and abroad. He understood all political questions
thoroughly, far better than most of those who are imme
diately engaged in them. He was intensely patriotic, pro
foundly American; he performed all the duties of a citizen at
all times, but he never became a public man himself in the
accepted meaning of the term, although he demonstrated
by his life that public service of the highest kind could be
rendered without holding public office. In the work he did
he influenced public thought and the development of his
country; he left in our great railroad system, in education, in
our park systems, in our history and literature, substantial
results, monuments of labors far more beneficent and en
during than those achieved by most men who have official
titles appended to their names, in catalogues and dictiona
ries. He held strong political views and never hesitated to
express them at elections great and small. He was an inde
pendent in politics, not the kind which always votes against
and opposes one party without admitting that they belong to
the other, but a genuine independent, voting for and support
ing the candidacy and the principles which he believed un
der existing conditions were best for the public welfare. His
opinions and views were sharply and publicly expressed in
all contests over public questions of any importance and had
a wide influence because of his real independence and entire
sincerity. Those who differed from him never questioned
his disinterestedness or the complete absence of self-seeking,

Memorial Address liii

which was so marked in all he did. Strongly as his opinions
were held and expressed, he always could put himself in
the other man's place, understand his position, and do him
justice without an air of self-righteousness or any touch of
illiberality. And yet, despite this knowledge of politics, this
inborn aptitude for public affairs, as I have just said, he never
sought or held any public office dependent upon political
elections or political appointment. Those which he accepted
came to him without any political reason and solely because
he was the man above all others in the town or State fitted
to perform a particular and important public service.
The reason that he never sought the higher public offices,
that he never tried to take the place which seemed in all
ways to belong to him in the broad and inviting field of
national politics at home, and the still wider field of interna-
tionarpolitics abroad for which he was so especially adapted,
is to be found, I think, in what he himself calls at the outset
his "individualism." At a later day, in a very interesting
address at the Hawthorne centenary, he said, "I am, also,
naturally inclined to be otherwise-minded, and a bit icono
clastic." This is what he meant, when describing his boy
hood, by "individualism," more clearly and expressively
stated; and here is to be discovered, I think, the cause of his
entire abstention from any effort to follow in the footsteps of
his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, which
had carried them to the summits both in public service and
in history. To'be "otherwise-minded" both naturally and in
practice leads, in the case of a man of original thought and
high ability, to much achievement on his part and to a strong
and stimulating influence of great value to the community.
But this quality, like all marked attributes, has, if not its

liv Memorial Address
defect, the necessity of sacrifice in some other direction.
It makes it difficult for its possessor to work with other men
on a large scale. In the many commissions upon which
Charles Adams served his relations with his colleagues were
always pleasant and harmonious in the fullest sense. But
these colleagues were few and his leadership and superiority,
so far as their especial work was concerned, were entirely
and readily acknowledged. When he was brought into rela
tions with larger numbers of colleagues and associates with
whom it was necessary to act in furtherance of a common
purpose, as in the case of the Union Pacific, we have but to
read what he says in this connection of the financial mag
nates and business men with whom he came in contact in
order to realize the difficulties he found in the manage
ment of varying opinions and in taking joint action where
many men were involved. In politics this necessity for
cooperation, not only with many others but with large bod
ies and groups of men, is greatly increased, to a degree in
fact surpassing that of any other form of human activity.
Politics are carried on, among English-speaking people at
least, through the instrumentality of parties. Parties are
composed of thousands, of millions of men, indeed, who are
agreed upon certain general principles and certain broad
policies, but who of necessity differ widely among them
selves as to details, often of a very serious character, and
also as to those who are to be selected to represent and lead
the party. To attain success not only are much patience
and a readiness always to subordinate the lesser to the
higher and larger purpose demanded, but also a willingness
to compromise details in order to obtain united action, as
well as to accept at times not merely a half loaf, but even

Memorial Address lv
a quarter or less with a view to an ultimate result and to a
further advance in the future. These sacrifices of individu
ality Charles Adams did not care to make, felt, perhaps, that;
he could not make them. He preferred to exercise his influ
ence and his powers for the furtherance of the great and useful
ends he sought, in other ways, and he therefore shunned or
at least never tried to enter the wider and more conspicuous
fields of public life and service, for which by inheritance,
training, and talents he was so remarkably adapted. But if
his individualism, in his own opinion, prevented his entrance
upon the field which seemed so peculiarly his own, it was at
the same time the source of his power, of his influence, and
of his success in the many others where he played a most
distinguished part. For his "otherwis'e-mindedness," to use
his own homely and most picturesque phrase, was, it must
always be remembered, a quality far removed from the
empty love of facile paradox. We have had of late years, if
¦ not here, at least in England, a group — it might almost be
called a school — of paradox-makers who have achieved a
now fading notoriety and who have certainly ardently ad
mired each other. In the trick of paradox, no doubt, some
cleverness has been shown and some passing amusement ex
cited. But at bottom the whole business is shallow, and, like
all tricks constantly repeated, becomes tiresome. A paradox
is merely an inverted platitude or truism. If a string of plati
tudes wearies, the same collection inverted, after the short
lived novelty of inversion wears off, becomes even more in
tolerable, because the truism is, as a rule, true, while the
paradox is not, and in the long run truth is a better com
panion than falsehood. If a man stands on his head in the
street, he is sure to attract momentary attention, but he is

lvi Memorial Address
less desirable, less easy to live with, and far less useful than
those who pass by about their business in the normal and
unnoticeable position of the human biped. With the pro
fessional paradox in all its tiresome futility and melancholy
vacuity, the "otherwise-mindedness" of Charles Adams had
no relation whatever. Still less had it any resemblance, not
even the most remote, to cheap cynicism or to an artificial
pose. He saw with clear vision what was defective, what
was wrong, as he believed, in his own times and in his own
country, but he did not on that account hold up with fac
titious admiration some long dead century, or some foreign
country as an ideal where all was perfect, for he knew that
such perfection existed nowhere and that the bygone cen
tury and the foreign country had their defects and their
wrongs, which, if not worse than those of his own time and
of his own land, were certainly quite as bad. He was not a
pessimist, and professional pessimism had, for him, no at
traction On the other hand he had no patience with "the
barren, optimistic sophistries of comfortable moles," for the
instinct of the reformer was strong within him. He saw
life steadily and saw it whole, he knew that it was a tan
gled web in which the strands of evil and good both min
gled, and to him it seemed a duty to tear out the one and
preserve the other. This he could not have done had he
not sanely recognized the existence of both.
The "otherwise-mindedness" of Charles Adams was in
reality independent and often original thought as to all the
conditions which he met. Whether it was in education or
railroad systems, in literature or politics, in life or history,
his instinct was to question the accepted system or the ac
cepted view, and if he thought it harmful or erroneous he

Memorial Address lvii
set himself to correct it. This spirit of questioning, of divine
discontent, which is not satisfied with mere ineffective snarl
ing, but which seeks always a practical result, is the spirit
which has saved the world from stagnation, which has lifted
man from the shell-heaps and the cave-dwellings to the place
which for good or ill he occupies to-day. This was the spirit
of Charles Adams. He always expressed his views or opinions
with uncompromising vigor so that every one took notice of
them and no one failed to understand them. When con
vinced that he had made a mistake he admitted it with the
same uncompromising clearness. I have been reminded more
than once by his confession of some error, of the story of
Dr. Johnson, who replied, when a lady asked him why he
had wrongly defined the word "pastern," — "Ignorance,
Madam, pure ignorance." The same blunt sincerity, the
same absolute honesty of mind, was eminently character
istic of Charles Adams. He stated his opinions with all the
force of absolute conviction, and he was equally direct and
outspoken if he was satisfied that he was mistaken, or if
further reflection or new facts led him to change his mind.
Disagreement he was sure to arouse and intended to do so.
But whether he went too far or not, whether he was wholly
right or measurably wrong, in practical affairs he wrought
improvements and brought progress; in history, if he did
not always change the accepted opinion, he caused men to
review and reconsider their judgment in the interests of
truth. In whatever he did throughout his long, active, and
distinguished career he was always a stimulating and up
lifting influence. To his questioning spirit backed by his
energy, his love of practical results, his readiness to under
stand the positions of other men from whom he differed, he

lviii Memorial Address
owed his success and all that he accomplished for his State
and country, for American letters and for American history.
He underrated his own measure of success, as it seems to me,
but he judged himself and his career in a singularly dispas
sionate way. At the close of his autobiography he says :
Finally I want to say that preparing this resume has been for
me a decidedly profitable use of time. It has caused me to re
view, to weigh, and to measure. As a result of that process, I
feel I have no cause of complaint with the world. I have been
a remarkably, an exceptionally, fortunate man. I have had
health, absence of death, dissipation, and worthlessness in my
family, with no overwhelming calamity to face and subside
under; and the world has taken me for all I was fairly worth.
Looking back, and above all, in reading that destroyed diary of
mine, I see with tolerable clearness my own limitations. I was
by no means what I in youth supposed myself to be. As to
opportunity, mine seems to have been infinite. No man could
ask for better chances. In a literary way, financially, politi
cally, I might have been anything, had it only been in me. The
capacity, not the occasion, has been wanting. It was so in the
army; it was so in railroads, in politics, and in business; it was
so in literature and history. In one and all my limitations made
themselves felt; most of all, in the law. On the other hand, my
abilities, as ability goes in this world, have been considerable;
never first-rate, but more than respectable. They have enabled
me to accomplish what I have accomplished; and I have accom
plished something.
... In other directions also I have, perhaps, accomplished
nothing considerable, compared with what my three immediate
ancestors accomplished; but, on the other hand, I have done
some things better than they ever did; and, what is more and
most of all, I have had a much better time in life — got more
enjoyment out of it. In this respect I would not change with
any of them.

Memorial Address lix

This brief extract, which will be read in the future with
its context, as it ought to be if it is to be fully understood,
seems to me very illuminating. It shows to any one who
will consider it carefully that Charles Adams was, as I
have said, essentially humble-minded as to himself and that
he was disposed to underestimate his own success and
achievements. But it also shows that he was in the high
est degree honest-minded. He meant to give himself full
credit even when he judged himself most harshly. He hated
shams, he looked truth and facts squarely in the face, and
he shrank from neither. Boasting was as alien to him as
repining. These are very noble intellectual qualities. There
are, indeed, none finer, none which should more command
the imitation and respect of men.
With these qualities of mind in Charles Adams the moral
qualities fully corresponded. The highest sense of honor, the
most absolute moral integrity, were so completely his, so
accepted by all as a matter of course, that in his life no one
thought it necessary even to allude to them; but when we
speak of him in commemoration they must find their place
upon the printed page for the benefit of those who will only
know him there. He was a man of the highest courage, both
moral and physical, and of the purest patriotism. He served
his country in the field through four years of war. There he
might have paused with the consciousness that the duty
and the debt which all men owe their country had been fully
paid. But for that debt and that duty there was for him
no full payment possible. He continued to render public
service in many ways until the day of his death.
In the same fashion he sought to serve his fellow-men, not
only in the wide sense of the public, but the individual man

Ix Memorial Address
and woman. He was generous, he liked to be helpful. He
was a good friend, although he made few professions, and so
loyal that he found disloyalty hard to comprehend. Under
a manner somewhat brusque, sometimes abrupt, was con
cealed one of the kindest, most affectionate hearts that ever
beat, and how tender his sympathy could be those to whom
it went out know well.
The uppermost thought, the keenest feeling, in the minds
of all who knew him is pervaded by the sense of personal
loss and of personal sorrow. One lingers reluctant by the
closing door which shuts him out from the present and
leaves him with his great ancestors as a figure in our history.
As we turn away, this final word may at least be said. The
world is torn with war, tortured with pain and anguish,
oppressed with dark forebodings. Many dangerous and diffi
cult questions confront our beloved country. But the fact
that we as a people can still bring forth, can still honor, still
be influenced and helped by a man of the character, ideals,
and aspirations of Charles Adams, must give us hope in the
present and confidence in the years that are yet to be.
The Horatian lines, so old, so familiar, so beautiful, come
unsought to the memory because they can be said of Charles
Adams without reservation and in all the simplicity of
truth: Justum ac tenacem propositi virum,
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solida, neque Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae,
Nee fulminantis magna manus Jovis :
Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruinae.

Charles Francis Adams
1835-1915
&An ^Autobiography

&€ Charles Francis Adams *&
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I
YOUTH AND EDUCATION
Shakespeare causes Falstaff to tell Chief Justice Gas-
coigne, in a certain familiar interview, that he "was bom
about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head,
and something a round belly." l No character of that period
lives for us now quite so distinctly and in the flesh as Shake
speare's creation, and we must skip a hundred and seventy-
five years before coming to another, this time one who
really lived, moved and had his being, but who to-day is
as much a presence in the world of the past as Sir John
Falstaff. That battle of Shrewsbury in which Shakespeare
makes Falstaff figure occurred July 21, 1403 ; so it is fair to
presume that Falstaff, had he come into the world at all,
would have made his appearance in it at "about three of
the clock in the afternoon" of some day in the year 1360 —
there or thereabouts. Michel de Montaigne, the succeeding
vivid individuality referred to, has recorded the exact hour
when he was born, "betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in
the forenoon, the last of February, 1533." 2 It so happens
that, owing to the fact of my father's keeping a diary, I can
fix the exact hour of my birth as definitely as did either Fal
staff or Montaigne. I came into this world in a house on
1 2 King Henry IV, 1, 2. ! Essays, Book 1, ch. xix.

Charles Francis Adams

Hancock Avenue, as the narrow footway on the right-hand
side of the statue of Horace Mann, west of the State-House
grounds in Boston is still designated, between nine and
eleven p.m. of the 27th of May, 1835. My father and mother
had passed the winter at the house of my grandfather,
Peter C. Brooks, on Pearl Street; but, on the nth of May
they had moved up to Hancock Avenue, their own house,
with a view to the approaching event. In my father's diary
of that period there is a reference which fixes another and,
to the generality, far more interesting date. Quincy gran
ite was then in great vogue. On the 27th of April my father
went out to Quincy, and up to the Old Granite Railway in
Milton, on business connected with leasing some quarry
lands, and he there "observed some beautiful specimens
which are in process of sculpture for the new hotel of Mr.
Astor in New York." These were the familiar Astor House
monoliths, until recently so conspicuous a landmark in the
architecture of Broadway.
The period of childhood, and school and college days of
any man, no matter how considerable, are not a profitable
field on which to dilate ; and yet, after all, as Wordsworth
has said: "The child is father of the man," and, for the au-
tobiographer, if he only knows how to deal with them, the
recollections of early life and education, told in the light of
experience, carry about as useful lessons as any of riper
years; if, indeed, they do not carry some far more useful. As
the twig is bent, the tree inclines ; I know this has been so
in my case, and my youth and education now seem to me
to have been a skilfully arranged series of mistakes, first on
the part of others and then on my own part.
During all my earlier years my father and mother were

Youth and Education

living very quietly in Boston and Quincy, and there they
continued to live until, in 1859, my father went into active
public life. I was then twenty-four years old. Previous to
that great, and blessed, break, they were always at home,
never even going to Europe — not a small thing in those
days — and, until, in 1853, 1 went to college, I lived at home.
It was just the sort of bringing-up I ought not to have had.
The Boston life of those days was simple, and, in many re
spects, not bad; but it was distinctly provincial and self-
complacent. Until 1842 my father lived on' in the Hancock
Avenue house. He then moved to the house he subsequently
occupied as a winter residence during forty-five years, No.
57 Mt. Vernon Street, nearly opposite the head of Walnut
Street, a vamped-up dwelling, the purchase and occupation
of which were highly characteristic of the man. Bought
by my grandfather, Peter C. Brooks, for his daughter, my
mother, the house had been built in the early part of the
century, and in the way then usual. Subsequently it had
been re-modelled, and a little elementary plumbing and
heating apparatus forced bodily into it; but, unfortunately,
it contained one large and handsome room on the second
floor into which the sun poured, and which occupied the
entire front. The only really desirable room in the house,
my father fixed on it for his library regardless of other con
siderations. So the house was bought for my mother, and
in it I grew up. That house threw a shadow across my whole
early life. I well remember my disappointment at its aspect
the first time I ever rang the door-bell — a boy of seven.
And when, forty-seven years later — my mother having
died and the house having been emptied of everything — I
crossed the threshold for the last time, and turned the key

Charles Francis Adams

in the door, I walked away with a distinct sense of relief,
thanking God that chapter was close«rxf have not a single
pleasant recollection associated with No. 57 Mt. Vernon
Street. There hangs about it, stretching through a memory
covering long years, a monotonous atmosphere of winter
gloom. It was not so with Quincy, our summer, as well as im
memorial family home. Quincy was associated in my mind
with spring and summer — bright skies, open windows,
green fields, singing birds, the blue bay with white sails dot
ting it, and a distant view over a country rolling into great
whale-back hills, with the State-House dome on the horizon.
Boston was gloom personified, frost, snow and discomfort;
short days and long school-hours; wet, cold feet, and evening
lessons. In those days — 1 840-1 853 — Quincy was by no
means a bad place in which to grow up. A Massachusetts
country town, it had not altogether outgrown the colonial
period, it still savored of the past. The famous Quincy
granite quarries had been opened some years before, and
already, physically and morally, had worked the place mani
fest injury; but their far-reaching destructive influence was
not made fully manifest. In point of fact, though it would
hardly now be imagined, Quincy was in a natural way more
richly endowed than any other region adjacent to Boston.
Lying on the seaward slope of the Blue Hill range, without
being a seaboard place it stretched for miles along the shores
of Boston Bay, with the rocky and picturesque Squantum
headland at one extremity and the Great Hill and Fore
River at the other. The hills at the west and north offered
residential sites of the choicest character, since gutted for
the stone that underlay them, and now converted into an

Youth and Education

abomination of desolation. The passage of ten thousand
years could not restore a trace of the natural advantages in
that region obliterated since my boyhood.
The Old Colony Railroad, connecting what was originally
the Plymouth Colony with that of Massachusetts Bay, was
not constructed until I was ten years old; and up to as late
as 1850 Quincy was practically what it had always been —
a quiet, steady-going, rural Massachusetts community, with
its monotonous main thoroughfares and commonplace con
necting streets, both thoroughfare and by-ways lined with
wooden houses, wholly innocent of any attempts at archi
tecture, and all painted white with window blinds of green.
With the exception of the workers in the quarries, not
yet developed into a purely mining community — with all
the term implies — the place was still peopled by those of
the original stock; for the foreign and more particularly the
Irish element had not yet reached the self-asserting point.
Later Quincy became to a large extent a bed-room annex to
the Boston ware-house; but in my boyhood period it was
still largely agricultural, while its leading industry was the
making of boots and shoes, almost every house along the
main street having a small one-story annex, from which on
any summer's day could be heard the incessant tapping of
the hammer on the lap-stone. The factory and the machine-
made shoe were as yet unknown or in their earliest stages of
development. In the centre of the town, where the roads to
Plymouth and Taunton branched, stood the meeting-house
and the town-hall; the "tavern," as it was called, also was
here located, with the big, shady elm-trees in front of it.
From it the daily stage-coaches started for Boston over the
"pike," or went down Plymouth way; while, in summer,

8 Charles Francis Adams
on the porch and in their shirt sleeves, sat the red-faced,
big-bellied, village topers and loafers, as well known as the
town-pump. The blacksmith's shop on the main street, the
tannery "down in the Hollow," and the oxen-drawn stone-
teams were objects of deep interest, as my brother John and
I, red-headed and freckle-faced urchins of six and eight years,
trudged daily through the village to and from school. Since
then what they are pleased to call "the march of improve
ment" has done away with that whole phase of more placid
existence. The mass of mankind in Quincy as elsewhere is
now doubtless much better housed, better taught and better
served than it then was; but the place I as a child loved so
well no longer exists. It has been transformed into a con
ventional, commonplace suburban community, progressive
and well to do, but wholly devoid of individuality. So, no
more than its everlasting hills or the islands in its bay are
the present inhabitants of Quincy suggestive of the Quincy
of my boyhood. The hills have been stripped, and gutted or
built over, made common and vulgarized, or devastated and
turned, as I have already said, into a mining horror, while
the islands have lost their green, whale-back outlines under
an eruption of summer hotels and seashore cottages. As to
the population, no one knows me now as I walk the once
familiar streets; and I recall no faces. With local feeling,
traditions also are gone. As I pass to-and-fro in Quincy I
now seem to wander with ghosts.
Going back to the old days, my grandfather with his fam
ily lived in what we knew as "the old house, down the hill,"
while we occupied "the house on the hill," built by my father
two years after I was born. There we passed the summers,
from late May to early November, until we children grew

Youth and Education

up. Then the house no longer sufficed. We were crowded
out. My grandfather died in 1848, and my grandmother
occupied " the house down the hill " only one or two summers
afterwards. In 1850, I think it was, my father took posses
sion; and there in June, 1889, my mother died, just one year
more than a century after John and Abigail Adams first
took possession in 1788, after their return from Europe and
our first English Mission. We were all fond of "the old
house," and pleasant recollections cluster about it. Still
belonging to the family, it is now (1912) occupied by my
brother Brooks; and I know of no other case in all my New
England acquaintance of a fourth generation still living
under the same roof-tree, covering an unbroken occupancy
of considerably over a century.
My earliest recollections of that house are associated with
my grandfather and his family, consisting of my grand
mother, his daughter-in-law, "Mrs. John," and his grand
daughter, the only surviving child of his second son, John.
As to my grandfather, he was during the whole period I
remember him an old man, absorbed in work and public
life. He seemed to be always writing — as, indeed, he was.
I can see him now, seated at his table in the middle of the
large east room, which he used as a library, a very old-
looking gentleman, with a bald head and white fringe of
hair — writing, writing — with a perpetual inkstain on the
fore-finger and thumb of the right hand. He was kind and
considerate to his grandchildren, and seemed to like to have
us in that library of his, walled in with over-loaded book
shelves; but his was not a holiday temperament. Always
unaccompanied, he used to wander about the ragged, un
kempt old place — with its pear and cherry trees, and old-

i o Charles Francis Adams
time orchard — hatchet and saw in hand, pruning and
watching his seedlings; and he would take grave, sedate
walks — constitutionals — invariably along the highway,
and apparently absorbed in meditation; but he never seemed
to relax; nor could I imagine him playful. In his library he
was always at work, or nodding in his chair. Though in de
tail different, my father was in substance much the same.
To their own great misfortune, neither of them had any real
taste — no innate love ¦ — for innocent outdoor amusement;
that is, they did not care to get near to Nature whether in
the woods or on the water. They were, moreover, both of
them afflicted with an everlasting sense of work to be ac
complished — "so much to do, so little done!" The terrible
New England conscience implanted in men who, inheriting
its traditions, had largely outgrown Calvinistic theology.
They were, in a word, by inheritance ingrained Puritans,
and no Puritan by nature probably ever was really com
panionable. Of the two, however, my grandfather was in
comparably the more active-minded and interesting. His
was a truly inquiring and observing disposition; and, more
over, he had a fairly pronounced taste for social life. His
chief difficulty lay in a tendency to introspection, which was
almost morbidly developed by the journalizing habit. His
diary was his daily confidant; and he grew to desire no other.
The "old house" stood on the Plymouth road facing
south, in comparatively low ground; but in 1837 my father
built a country home on "the Hill" — President's Hill, as
it was called, Stoneyfield Hill in Provincial days — in what
had previously been John Adams's cow-pasture. The two
residences were perhaps an eighth of a mile apart, though
in full view of each other; and, from the gallery of my father's

Youth and Education

ii

house — portico, we called it — my grandfather used daily
to time the rising and the setting sun. Now, seventy years
later, I can see him standing or sitting, watch in hand, not
ing the earliest and last rays of the summer day. There is
nothing of that period I more vividly recall. A somewhat
solitary man, he was to me, hardly more than a child, an
attractive as well as a great one. He impressed my imagina
tion. It was not so with my father. He was built on more rigid
and narrower lines. He was even less companionable. He
was never the companion of our sports and holidays. To us,
it would, as I now see, have made all the difference conceiv
able had he loved the woods and the water, — walked and
rode and sailed a boat; been, in short, our companion as well
as instructor. The Puritan was in him, and he did n't know
how! In reading his diary, for instance, I came across two
entries which tell the whole story — they are as a calcium
light cast upon him, and his relations with his children. They
are from the record of 1843, and as follows; my sister, his
eldest child, being then a girl of about twelve: "Took a
walk with my daughter, Louisa. We went along the road
to Quincy Point, until we reached a street that has been
lately opened and called North Street, from which we struck
into another called South Street, which comes out below
Mrs. Miller's house. It is curious, and illustrative of my
little inclination to ramble, that, so long as I have lived in
Quincy, I have never before to my knowledge been in this
pretty little road." Yet South Street is one of the oldest
and most picturesque — at least it was so then, and long
after — it has now, eheu ! gone the way of all the rest — it
was, I say, one of the oldest, the most picturesque, and to

1 2 Charles Francis Adams
me the most familiar roads in Quincy; and almost within
sight of his house. Yet at thirty-six he did n't know of its
existence! So the same year, but two days later. My brother
John and I, that summer, were at a sort of small boarding-
school, at Hingham ¦ — of which, more, presently — and we
were brought home every Saturday, to pass Sunday. The
autumn was come, and with it the smelting season; the
only kind of sport in which I ever knew my father to en
gage. He used now and then to take us down to Black's
Creek, as it was called, where was Greenleaf's wharf, half-
a-mile or so from the house. So he now made this entry of
30th September: "The weather was charming. I idled
away the morning on Mr. Daniel Greenleaf's wharf, with
very little success. Perhaps this consumption of time is
scarcely justifiable; but why not take some of life for simple
enjoyments, provided that they interfere with no known
duty? My boys came home from school and joined me. We
remained until dinner time."
There you have it! Hereditarily warped, he had no con
ception of the idea that in idling away that soft, kindly
September day in companionship with his two boys just
home from school, and all close to Nature, he was saving
one day at least from utter loss — making of it the very
best possible use that could be made! And so he had to ex
cuse himself, to himself, for this scarcely justifiable waste
of time! The thought of it even now saddens and irritates
me — the difference to me would have been so great. I
have suffered from it all through life. The twig was bent
wrong. I ought to have been brought up in closer touch
with Nature and its enjoyments. I should then have ac
quired aptitudes — sailing, rambling, the playing of games,

Youth and Education 1 3

the genuine love of outdoor life — which I never did ac
quire, and the lack of which I lament more and more every
year I live. I would to-day give much to feel at home on a
boat or a bicycle. I have since sailed a great deal, and bi
cycled somewhat; but it was in both cases too late! I never
got so as to feel really at home when handling sheet and
tiller, or when on a wheel. And so the most important as
well as enjoyable branches of education for me were neg
lected or abjured in youth, and only partly made good by my
subsequent fortunate army experience at over twenty-six.
But my father saw no good whatever in athletics; and he
had a prejudice against the gymnasium. As to my army
experience, altogether the most beneficial of my life educa
tionally, until long after the event he simply deplored it as
to me ruinous. What was in truth my salvation, developed,
as he at the time persuaded himself, all my most objection
able tendencies. In his case, two hundred years of ancestral
swaddling clothes could not be burst. The loss has been
great, and, in my case, the injury sustained was irreparable.
It was never, except in part, made good.
This was educational error number one; and, before I get
through, the list will be long! My father had the old New
England sense of duty in religious observances. The Sab
bath and church-going were institutions. All through my
childhood how I disliked Sunday! I was glad when Monday
came; for me it was n't "black Monday," for it was six days
before another Sunday. I remember now the silence, the
sombre idleness, the sanctified atmosphere of restraint of
those days, with their church-bells, their sedate walk and
their special duties. We children had to be brought up
strictly in the way we should go; for then we would not de-

14 Charles Francis Adams
part from it when we were old ! Would n't we ! The recol
lection of those Sundays haunts me now. We always had a
late breakfast — every one did; and we dined early — roast
beef always for dinner; and I got a dislike for roast beef
which lasted almost to manhood, because I thus had to
eat it every Sunday at 1.30, after a breakfast at 9. Then
came the Sunday hair-combing and dressing. After which,
Bible reading, four chapters, each of us four verses in rota
tion. Then a Sunday lesson, committing some verses from
the Bible or a religious poem to memory. I especially re
member the Sermon on the Mount and Pope's Messiah;
and these were the hardest lessons of the whole week, those
we all disliked most; and so distasteful were they that they
have left on me to this day a sort of aversion to the Bible
and to Pope. Then came the going to Church. Lord! that
going to Church! Twice a day, rain or shine, summer and
winter. In town [Boston] we went to that dreary old Con
gregational barn in Chauncy Street, — the gathering place
of the First Church of Boston — where my uncle, Dr.
Frothingham, held forth. And, by the way, only the other
day I heard a good story of Dr. Frothingham. It came from
Mr. Stetson, with whom I was associated in the Commis
sion to award cost, etc.-, of the Metropolitan Park System.
He was the son of old Caleb Stetson, of Medford, who mar
ried my father and mother more than ninety years ago.
He mentioned a turn of speech of Dr. Lunt's, our Quincy
pastor, who once remarked of my uncle Frothingham, in a
grand burst of expression: "Dr. Frothingham is a man of
gentle and saintly life; I picture him as a sanctified isle in
the midst of a wild and Godless sea."
Dr. Frothingham may have been all that. He certainly

Youth and Education 1 5

was a man of very sweet and gentle character; but, as a
preacher, he recalls to me only a slow, somewhat soft and
diffuse delivery in that superheated, roof-lighted, somnolent
barrack, where I passed so many weary, penitential hours
in those winter months in "the forties" and the "early fif
ties." The old meeting-house was removed in 1868, 1 think;
and I well remember going there on the Sunday when serv
ices were held in it for the last time [May 10, 1868] in order
that, as I went down the familiar steps on leaving, I could
say to myself: "There; that is behind me. Never, never
again, shall I enter those doors, or sit in that pew."
Such was my Boston church-going. That at Quincy was
not so bad; and yet bad enough. Dr. William P. Lunt was a
natural orator. He looked the preacher; and his voice was
rich and full. The church too was more cheerful, and the
summer air used to steal in through the open windows. But
the only portion of the service which ever commended itself
to me was that closing prayer, which I knew by heart —
and can repeat now — and then the benediction — and the
hateful services were over! I was free then to hurry home,
to get out of my Sunday into my week-day clothes, and I
could go and play; for Sunday was now done, and would n't
come again for six days ! Those New England Sabbaths actu
ally embittered my youth. It required the drastic war edu
cation to emancipate me from them. Educational mistake
number two!
Fortunately for me, the railroad did not get into Quincy
until 1846, and I was then eleven years old; so I did have a
few years of child life really in the country. The common-
schools my father did not care to send his children to; and
I have always been glad of it. I don't associate with the

1 6 Charles Francis Adams
laborers on my place, nor would the association be agreeable
to either of us. Their customs, language, habits and con
ventionalities differ from mine; as do those of their children.
I believe in school life; and I believe in the equality of men
before the law; but social equality, whether for man or
child, is altogether another thing. My father, at least, did n't
force that on us. So, as children, we went to the small
private schools, were taught in a way by the clergymen of
the Episcopal Church, or, what was quite as well for us,
were not taught at all. But that school question got serious;
and, in 1843 — I being then just eight — John and I, by
a happy inspiration, were sent to Hingham, to be boarded
and schooled by a young man named Wilder, who took in
four other boys, two named Eldridge, from Boston, and two
others, sons of George Bancroft, the historian, both of whom
subsequently I was with in college, the younger being in the
same class with me.1 I remember the first week at Hingham
well. How homesick John and I were! We were only eight
and nine years old, and had never been away from home;
and we were as miserable as boys usually are under such
circumstances. But that summer ought to have taught a
lesson to my parents and to us. John and I always after
wards agreed in looking back on the months at Hingham as
the one bright, pleasant, joyous summer of our school-days.
It stands out from among the others, in white. We did n't
learn anything; but we were with other boys, and we bathed,
and rambled, and were up to boyish mischief. Forty years
and more afterwards I used often to ride through Hingham
on my way to our summer seaside resort, the Glades, in
North Scituate, and I always liked to go by that house,
1 John Chandler Bancroft (H.U. 1854) and George Bancroft (H. U. 1856).

Youth and Education 1 7
looking up at the window of the room in which John and I
slept. And here was educational error number three; an error
I never have been able sufficiently to deplore, for it deeply
affected my character, my physical development, and my
subsequent existence even to this day. As a developing boy
I peculiarly needed the influence and atmosphere of board
ing-school life. I should have been compelled to rough it
with other boys. Of that I stood in great want, and that for
several reasons.
And, in the first place, though in no way remarkable, I
see now that I was, and am still, individual. I don't see
things, and take things, quite in the usuaTancT average way.
I did n't when a boy; and the best and most useful education
I ever had was when undergoing constant attrition after I
went to college, and, subsequently, in the army. I look back
on it with deep thankfulness, as well as sincere pleasure.
I needed more of it— all I could have of it! Not by nature
daring — physically, on the contrary, inclined to be shrink
ing—having a positive inaptitude for games and athletic
exercises, disposed to be studious in a way, I grew up as a
child during the period of my grandfather's greatest politi
cal prominence; and its light was reflected on me at school.
I was the grandson of John Quincy Adams; and not quite
as other boys. This I felt. There was therefore in me a dan
gerous tendency, which needed correction sadly, and which
a boarding-school life would have strongly tended to cor
rect. Moreover, I would so much have enjoyed it; just as
I enjoyed the mere taste I had of it at Hingham. It might
have made me "a good fellow." At any rate, it would
have taken me away from home, and home influences and

1 8 Charles Francis Adams
surroundings; and these, in my case were bad, or, rather, not
what I needed. But I never did go to boarding-school, and
the plastic period was passed in immediate contact with
home and amid a most miscellaneous collection of books,
in which I sedulously hunted up everything that was perni
cious, as well as much that was good. Here was educational
mistake number four!
In my boyhood nothing whatever was done to amuse chil
dren. They might amuse themselves, or go unamused; that
was their affair ! That was before the day of games and sports ;
and at Quincy we had few horses, and no boats. I did not
realize it at the time, but my vacations and intervals of
leisure were dreariness personified. We bathed in Black's
Creek, and that was all; and, curiously enough, bathing —
diving and swimming — is the one activity which has stood
by me ever since. It has been my delight; and in it I have
excelled. That, I did acquire when young; and the pleasure
I have had in that one out-of-doors sport has caused me to
realize how infinite, how irreparable has been my loss in
not acquiring other muscular aptitudes while so doing was
possible. And there I struck a natural defect which a differ
ent education would have strongly tended to counteract.
I am inclined to be what is known as muscle-slow — that
is my muscular system is not elastic. I think I have some
where remarked in writing on this; and when learning to
ride a bicycle, at over sixty, an appreciation of the fact first
dawned on me. This ought to have been corrected in my
youth by practice at all sorts of games — skating, fencing,
boxing, riding. Unfortunately — most unfortunately, for
me — my father did not at all believe in that sort of training.
Sports and games he held in horror; almost as much as for

Youth and Education 1 9

young men just out of college he held Europe in horror, be
cause a classmate of his — Alleyne Otis — after graduation
chanced to go to Europe, and came home an ass, and
remained an ass all the long continuing days of life. My
father did n't realize that Alleyne Otis was born an ass; and
was, though as yet not effusively so developed, an ass when
he went to Europe, as well as when he came home. So he
failed to discriminate between individuals; and, laying down
one rule for all, his theory was that the proper thing for
every young man was to get to work as soon as he could
scrabble through college, begin to make a living, marry, and
become, as he would express it, "a useful member of soci
ety." Any exceptionalism or individuality he regarded with
aversion. It was a snare and delusion; so, in my case, he
uniformly, and, in fact, all through life, diagnosed wrongly,
and took a mistaken course. He meant well; but he was
neither sympathetic nor observant. With him boys were
alike, and one hat fitted them all; while Europe »was merely
another term for demoralization. As I look back on his course
towards me, well as he meant it and thoroughly conscien
tious as he was, I should now respect myself a great deal more
if I had then rebelled and run away from home, to sea or
the Devil. Indeed, if I had had in me any element of real
badness, or even recklessness of temperament, it would have
been fatally developed. But I was n't bad or a dare-devil;
and I was born with a decided sense of obligation to myself
and to others.
But, in looking back on that early home and school edu
cational period since I began this writing, and considering
the light that period throws on the man's subsequent life, I
confess to a sense of bepuzzlement. I find myself observing

20 Charles Francis Adams
and studying myself at a distance of nearly seventy years,
and trying to make myself out. My observation in life
leads me to believe that nearly every human being has
an aptitude; that is, there is something that he or she can
do better than all other things. One in a hundred, again,
has a remarkable aptitude; and, in one in a thousand, this
aptitude is developed into something extraordinary. It
then amounts to natural insight, and constitutes genius.
Now a perfect system of education, if it could be devised,
would be one which, while developing to the fullest extent
all the faculties, would allow free play to the special apti
tude. But this is just what our American school system fails
to do, and does not aim at. In that system a child is — a
child! and all children are cast in the same matrix. Thus the
average child gets along with a tolerable degree of comfort;
but the child with an individuality experiences much the
fate a child with large feet would undergo if all children's
shoes were made on one last.
In my case, it so chanced that I was individual without
any specially pronounced aptitude or exceptional capacity.
In reading one of Montaigne's Essays the other day I came
across the following, which seemed very applicable to me.
He was writing of his own childhood, and he said: "I had a
slow wit, that would go no faster than it was led; a tardy
understanding, a languishing invention, and, above all, in
eradicable defect of memory; so that it is no wonder if, from
all these, nothing considerable could be extracted." For me,
as I now see it, the absolutely ideal training would have
been that described in School Days at Rugby. I ought to have
been sent away from home and been rubbed into shape
among other boys; I should have been made to undergo a

Youth and Education

21

severe all-around discipline; I should have been forced to
participate in all sorts of athletic games; I ought to have
been rounded into shape as much like other boys as a school
life could round me. The radical error in my case was that
I was kept at home, and brought up in an uncongenial day-
school. I do not hesitate to say that these mistakes of child
hood have gravely prejudiced my entire life.
At ten years of age I did have the good fortune to be sent
to a private day-school kept by a Mr. David B. Tower. He
was a very portly, good-natured man, coming from the
Cohasset family of that name, and a good teacher. For some
reason, Tower saw, or thought he saw, something in me; and
to him I am, to this day, under great obligation. He en
couraged me; and did all a man could to cure my lament
able want of capacity for verbal memorization. At his school
I rapidly gained in confidence, and began to feel some faith
in myself. Unfortunately, it was a day school, kept in a room
in the Park Street church-building, and I was at home in
the evenings and Sundays; and such play as I had was in
the streets of Boston. I needed the atmosphere of boarding-
school life.
Instead of getting it, I was, at the age of thirteen, sent to
the Boston Latin School. Of this institution my father had
a very exalted opinion. He had gone to it himself, when
brought home from Europe in 1818, and been under Master
Gould. For some reason, it suited him; perhaps in contrast
to the school he went to in England, and the antiquated
systems of teaching to which he had there been subjected —
systems about as absurd and illogical as those pursued in a
State's prison. In any event, however, the Latin School —
the "famous Boston Latin School," as it was then, and has

2 2 Charles Francis Adams
since been, called — became a kind of fetish with my father,
and to it in due time all his sons were destined to go, as a
matter of course.
It may have worked well with my father under Dr. Gould,
but it did n't work well with his sons under Mr. Dixwell
— that I can assert with confidence. The school building
was then in Bedford Street — a street has since been laid
out over its site. The school building was a cold, dreary,
granite edifice, of the stone-mason style of architecture in
vogue about 1840. It was pulled down about thirty years
ago; and I rejoiced to see it go! It effaced to a degree a hate
ful memory. I was at the Latin School three years; my
brother John was at it five. I loathed it, and John loathed
it worse than I. Not one single cheerful or satisfactory mem
ory is with me associated therewith. Its methods were bad,
its standards low, its rooms unspeakably gloomy. It was a
dull, traditional, lifeless day-academy, in which a conven
tional, commonplace, platoon-front, educational drill was
carried on. I absolutely languished there, and, for that rea
son, my judgments might be deemed harsh; but one day,
only a few years ago, I found myself seated at table next
David P. Kimball, who was always at the Latin School at
the head of the class before mine, and who, subsequently,
was first scholar in my class at Harvard. I got talking with
him of schools, for he had in life been a successful man, and
our relations were kindly. So I said to him: "Well, David,
I hardly need ask you, I suppose your sons all went to the
Latin School." He turned on me, and vindictively snapped
out, "Latin School! I wouldn't send a dog to the Latin
School!" I certainly felt that way; but I never got on there,
and always gravitated towards the foot of the class; David

Youth and Education 2 3
Kimball, on the contrary, was at the head, and a favorite
prize-taker. All the same, on that subject we were one. My
single pleasant association with the Boston Latin School
was — leaving it! Under the system there in vogue in the
days of Dixwell and Gardner, I don't see how any good
results, as respects scholarship, individuality or character,
were reasonably to be expected. It was a conventional, me
chanical, low-standard day-school and classical grind-mill.
I left it sixty years ago, and I think of the period I spent
there still as the dreariest, the most depressing and the most
thoroughly worse than profitless of my life. I have not a
good word to say of it; and like John Randolph and the sheep,
I would go a long distance out of my way to give it a kick.
Sending me to the Boston Latin School was educational
mistake number five: and a far-reaching one!
Then came in rapid succession mistakes numbers six and
seven — serious both, very serious ! As I plainly did n't get
on at the Boston Latin School, my father, in 185 1, concluded
to take me away. I ought then to have gone to Exeter or
Andover, been there fitted for college, and gone in the regular
way. Instead of that, largely at my own solicitation, my
father put me under the charge of Francis W. Palfrey, the
son of his old friend Dr. John G. Palfrey, whom, in reality,
he wanted to aid. The intention was good; the choice bad
— absurd. Frank Palfrey graduated that year, and, with
me, he was far more of a companion than a preceptor. With
quick faculties he was a fair scholar; but he greatly lacked
judgment and sobriety, and his and my thoughts were far
more intent on parties, social life and dissipation than on
our studies. It was a singularly unfortunate arrangement.
More unfortunately still, I liked it; and, for some unac-

24 Charles Francis Adams
countable reason, instead of entering college at the regular
time and in the usual way, I stayed out a year, and entered
sophomore, in 1853. It was a great blunder; and I have
never ceased to regret it. Had I been really fortunate, I
would, in 1853, have failed to pass my examinations for the
advanced standing, and been thrown back on the class of
1857. A severe mortification and disappointment at the
moment, this would, in reality, have been for me a piece of
great good luck; for the class of '57 was a remarkable class
in many ways, and especially for its class feeling and spirit.
It contained, too, an unusual number of agreeable and in-
teresting men, many of whom have since attained distinc
tion, and with whom I grew to hold close relations; while,
on the other hand, the class of '56 was noticeably lacking in
all these respects. It was as a class distinctly unnoticeable
— a low average; and, in subsequent years, the chief dis
tinction it achieved was contributing two inmates to the
State's prison.
None the less, my college life I look back on with pleasure,
and a moderate satisfaction. I blundered through in a way,
committing, I may fairly say, as I see it now, about as many
mistakes as I easily could; but, after all — studied from a
distance in time — it was the period of freedom and germi
nation. I was boyish and silly, but I did begin to develop.
Acting on tradition, and ' influenced by my brother John's
example, I did not live in the buildings and in the full at
mosphere of college life; and, during the two last and best
years, I had my brother Henry to room with me, though he
was two classes after me. This was bad for both of us; but
I did learn by experience, and preserved him subsequently
from the mistakes into which I had fallen. When I gradu-

Youth and Education 2 5

ated, I persuaded him to live in the buildings, and by so
doing, having a chum of his own class, to identify himself
absolutely with college life and the associations of Hol-
worthy. He did so, and it saved his college course.
It was at Harvard that my aptitude, such as it was, be
gan to develop; and to that I owed most of the satisfaction
I derived from college life. I had always been a reader; and
I now began to take to writing. Every man of any intellec
tual activity has, I presume, been conscious of certain pe
riods of germination — times of receptivity. If a book then
chances into his hands, he reads it in a way which there
after acts as a milestone on the road of life. He has devel
oped a new sense; the seed has fallen in soil ready to germi
nate and make it bear fruit. I perfectly well remember in
the winter of 1848 my father returning from a journey to
Washington, and bringing in his hand a paper-bound copy
of Harper Bros.' cheap reprint of the first volume of Macau-
lay's England, then just out. I was thirteen; and of Ma-
caulay I had never even heard the name. Boy-like, I picked
the book up, and began to turn over its pages. I can see the
room and the day now — the dining-room in the Mt. Ver
non Street house, the fire in the grate, the hair-covered
rocking-chair in which I sat, the table, set for dinner. I took
the book up, and almost instantly got absorbed in it. Though
I did not the least in the world realize it, I then and there
quickened, my aptitude asserted itself. The only trouble
afterwards was that, being a mere aptitude and not an over
powering call, this tendency, or inclination, never domi
nated me to the exclusion of all else. It was just the ordinary
case of a facility in a certain direction, existent, but not
strong enough to dictate a line of life action.

2 6 Charles Francis Adams
Nevertheless, in college the tendency developed, and I
was one of the recognized litterateurs of my time and class.
In the Pudding Club, I was Secretary, Poet and Odist, and
my success as such was marked. I knew it, and felt it. I
wrote for the Magazine; there the articles — on Whittier,
Hawthorne, Charles Reade, etc. — are yet, bound in my
voluminous Miscellanies. This was the one great and grati
fying feature of my college life, the sense of growth. For
the rest, it was very, very pleasant; but it did n't amount
to much. A great miscellaneous reader, I was no student,
and had no "call." I got through my course without any
trouble; securing no rank, but avoiding all difficulties. I
was not wise in my selection of studies; but I had no sort of
encouragement to wisdom. For instance, I had rather a
fancy for Greek. With no aptitude for language of any sort,
I was conscientious; and, in my own way, studiously in
clined. Those were the days of Professors Felton and Soph
ocles, and the methods of instruction in Greek at Harvard
were simply beneath contempt. It was taught in thorough
school-boy fashion — neither philosophically nor elegantly;
we were not made grammarians, and we were not initiated
into a charming literature. We blundered along in class-
readers, a parcel of half-taught school-boys. I came within
an ace of being a fair Greek scholar. The slightest encour
agement or assistance would have made one of me. But
Felton and Sophocles threw me off the track; and they were,
both of them, admirably calculated so to do. In my sopho
more year, merely as a self-imposed task, I read the Iliad
through, from the first line to the last. I got so that I could
read it at sight — a hundred lines an hour. A very little
more, and I would have acquired the faculty of reading

Youth and Education 2 7
Greek as a living language — as I read French and German.
The methods of instruction in use killed the possibility.
Absolutely without inducement to keep on, I weakly de
sisted; and, to my infinite and lasting subsequent regret, the
half-acquired faculty fell into disuse; and now I can't even
read the Greek characters. Again, with a faint aptitude, I
had neither call nor encouragement. It has been so with me
all through life.
In those years I kept a diary. So doing was enjoined on
me by my father; and I kept it from my Latin School days
until the time I went into the army, in my twenty-fifth
year. Later on I kept the volumes sealed up in a package,
with directions that they should be destroyed in the event
of my death. A few years ago — some ten or twelve — I
opened the parcel, and looked through the volumes. I did
this during my Sundays, passed in the house at Quincy
while living in Boston — very charming Sundays they were,
too; pleasant to pass, pleasant to look back on. That was in
my busy, Union-Pacific period. Starting early, before the
family were down, I used to walk out to Quincy — always by
the old Plymouth road and over Milton Hill — and pass the
quiet, delightful morning hours, reading undisturbed, in my
sun-lighted library. Then as the day grew old and the light
failed, I would start back, and walk home to Boston, through
Neponset and by Massachusetts Avenue. Those were the
pleasantest days I then had in my whole winter life. Those,
I would like to re-live.
During those days I exhumed the sealed package, and,
thirty years later, read over that old diary. The revela
tion of myself to myself was positively shocking. Then and
there I was disillusioned. Up to that time — and I was then

2 8 Charles Francis Adams
about fifty-five — I had indulged in the pleasing delusion that
it was in me, under proper conditions of time, place and occa
sion, to do, or be, something rather noticeable. I have never
thought so since. Seeing myself face to face through fifty
years cured me of that deception. I felt that no human being
who, between fifteen and twenty-five, so pictured himself
from day to day could, by any possibility, develop into any
thing really considerable.* It was n't that the thing was bad
or that my record was discreditable; it was worse! It was
sjlly. That it was crude, goes without saying. That I did n't
mind! But I did blush and groan and swear over its unmis
takable, unconscious immaturity and ineptitude, its con
ceit, its weakness and its cantj I saw myself in a looking-
glass, and I said — "Can that indeed be I!" and, reflecting,
I then realized that the child was father of the man ! It was
with difficulty I forced myself to read through that dread
ful record; and, as I finished each volume, it went into the
fire; and I stood over it until the last leaf was ashes. It was
a tough lesson; but a useful one. I had seen myself as others
had seen me. I have never felt the same about myself since.
I now humbly thank fortune that I have almost got through
life without making a conspicuous ass of myself.
But to go back to college days. "Tell me who your friends
are, and I will tell you who you are." That is an unfailing
test; and, going back, I must confess that my college friends
were of a very miscellaneous character. One thing I can,
however, surely say of them, that, edifying or otherwise as
influences — idle or studious, sedate or dissipated — and I
was intimate with all kinds — they were the brightest and
most attractive men in the Cambridge of my time. Stephen
G. Perkins was, perhaps, the closest of my friends. He was

Youth and Education 2 9

afterwards killed at the battle of Cedar Mountain, in the
summer of 1862 — a lieutenant of the gallant Second Mas
sachusetts Infantry; and I say of him now, nearly forty
years after his death, what General F. C. Barlow, of the
class of '55, said of him to me many years ago — Stephen
Perkins was, on the whole, the man of "the choicest mind
I ever knew." He was manly, simple, refined; and he had
withal fine perceptions and a delicate humor. He always
impressed me with a sense of my own inferiority, and his
friendship was a compliment. He loved to talk; but in a
quiet, reflective and observant way. He was mature and
self-respecting; one who thought much, and looked quite
through the acts of men. I read of his death one day when
in camp at Hilton Head, and I felt I had lost something
never to be replaced — a friend of college days. He lies
buried, I believe, in the Georgetown cemetery; and "green
be the turf above him!"
I cannot spare time to run over the names of the others.
Some of them were from the South; and they also, most of
them, died in the war. Not a few were very dissipated in
college, and their dissipation ended them. Others were the
exact opposite; and not a few achieved eminence — Phillips
Brooks, Frank Barlow, Edward Dalton, H. H. Furness.
Taken altogether, it was a goodly company, and it almost
reconciles me to the image I saw of myself in my diary, that
it was given me to walk as an equal in such a throng.
Meanwhile, I was not popular in my college days; nor,
indeed, have I ever been so since. My brother John was.
He had a very charming, ingratiating presence and manner,
when in the mood, and a far greater social aptitude. He was
essentially "a good fellow," as the term went, and a charm-

30 Charles Francis Adams
ing companion. I wanted to be; but it was n't quite in me.
Never quiet and natural, I was inclined to be always acting
a part; and I did not act it well. Moreover, gauche, I was
singularly lacking in what is known as tact. I had almost a
faculty for doing or saying the wrong thing at any given
time; and I was always painfully self-conscious. This made
me shy; and the world, as usual, set my shyness to the ac
count of pride. Not a bad fellow — indeed, at heart, a very
good fellow, anxious to be friends with all the world and liked
of every one — I never could overcome my pre-natal man
ner, and learn to do and say gracious things in a gracious
way. It was so in college; it has been so ever since. It
was congenital — hereditary and in the blood; or, as James
Russell Lowell remarked in some familiar letter of his printed
by one in long subsequent years a greatly prized friend
of mine — Charles Eliot Norton — "the Adamses have a
genius for saying even a gracious thing in an ungracious
way!" I well remember Norton's aspect of unconcealed
embarrassment when I referred with keen appreciation to
this passage in the volume he had edited, and expressed my
sincere gladness that he had not editorially omitted it. It
was so keen and true!
Yet, recurring to college days, at Cambridge, I was not
actually unpopular. I belonged, and belonged easily and of
right, to all the clubs and all the societies, literary and social;
my difficulty, I suppose, was that I was always thinking
too much of myself, and not enough of others. Certainly,
the first impression I made on people was not altogether a
favorable one. And, here again, the child was father of the
man. As to my college course, and what I then did, I have never

Youth and Education 3 1

quite been able to make up my mind. I was studious in a
way, for I followed my aptitudes and inclinations, and they
led me to/infinite reading and much writing. Was this bet
ter than to have studied for college rank? — for of that I
had none. I was not even in the first half of the class. On
the whole, in my case, I think the course I pursued was best.
I broadened. The nutriment, and there was lots of it, passed
into my system all the same — it entered into the grand, in
the sense of final, result. I at least did not idle away my
time. As contrasted with my father, my awful college diary
compared with his of the same period of life — all of which I
have been over — shows that I then was not half the man he
was at the same age ; but, a better fellow, I had much the more
enjoyable time. The mistake in my case lay in not under
standing myself, and cultivating persistence in some plan.
As it was I just browsed about as fancy led. As I have said,
the simple fact was, that, an ordinary man, I had no strongly
pronounced aptitude; and, accordingly, felt no distinct call.
Still, I look back on my Harvard days with pleasure, as a
period of rapid development and much enjoyment. It com
pares brightly with what went before; and, educationally,
was second in importance and value only to my subsequent
army experience.
It came to its predestined end in 1856, just as I attained
my majority. That was the year of the Buchanan-Fremont
campaign, the year in which the Republican party assumed
national proportions. I had been brought up in an atmos
phere of politics. My earliest recollections were associated
with my grandfather's triumphs in the conflicts of the
House of Representatives, and I was impressed in imagina
tion by the circumstances of his death and the outburst of

3 2 Charles Francis Adams
popular feeling elicited by it. I remember now most vividly
his funeral on that March day in Quincy, the eloquence and
impressiveness of Dr. Lunt's funeral discourse, with the
coffin lying before him, the solemn appearance of the fa
miliar and crowded church, and the booming of the minute-
guns from the hill, on which I afterwards lived, as the body
was slowly borne from tabernacle to tomb. I also remem
bered in a vague way the bitter disappointment of the election
of 1844, and the war with Mexico which followed. In the
canvass of 1848 my father took me with him when he went
to Buffalo; and, while the Convention was in session, Charles
Sumner, who was there but not a delegate, took me to Niagara,
where, a few days later, my father joined us. He had then
been nominated for Vice-President, on the ticket with Van
Buren. In those days we saw a great deal of Mr. Sumner,
and I felt for him an admiration closely verging on affection.
He was very kind and considerate to us children, taking a
deep interest in us, and being very companionable. He was
at that time thirty-seven, and certainly a striking and most
attractive personality. The world was all before him; he
was kindly, earnest, enthusiastic and very genial. A con
stant guest at my father's house, he exercised a great influ
ence over me, and one very elevating. To him, as he was at
that period and later, I feel under deep obligation.
Those were the days of the Free Soil party; but I threw
! my first vote in 1856, and as a Republican. Thus I was from
childhood a part of the anti-slavery agitation. I grew up
in the atmosphere of it; and always at school I was in the
small minority, my schoolmates being almost without ex
ception the sons of Whigs, and as a rule devoted adherents
of Daniel Webster, between whom and my grandfather it

Youth and Education 3 3

was tacitly recognized there was no love lost. The very
name of my grandfather was to the Webster Whig gall and
wormwood. It is strange how tense enmities endure and
are handed down. Even now, well on in a new century, the
tradition of the bitter controversies which marked the com
mencement of the last century prevent the public recogni
tion of those of my name. Their prominence and the great
character of the service they rendered, no one pretends to
deny; no memorial thereof exists.
But politics, and why I never found my way into political
life, will come up naturally later on and in other connec
tions. I must first dispose of Harvard, and college life. The
course I ought to have pursued at Harvard is now plain to
me; and I almost wholly missed it. I should have followed
Greek and Latin as literatures; taking the almost wholly
worthless prescribed courses under the dead-alive methods
of instruction then in use, but acquiring the faculty of sight
reading by chamber practice. This I now see I was on the
point of doing, and could easily have done. It would have
been a most useful training for the practical work of after
life; unfortunately, as I have said, I met with no one to in
cite me to that educational line, and I had not sufficient
force to strike out a path for myself. I should then, next,
have compelled myself to take some of the more elemen
tary mathematical courses, simply for the mental discipline
they afford. Having no mathematical aptitude whatever, I
never could have attained any rank in those courses, or fig
ured otherwise than as a dolt in the recitation room; but
that would in the desired result have "cut no ice," as the
expression goes. What I needed was the regular mental
gymnastics — the daily practice of following a line of sus-

34 Charles Francis Adams

tained thought out to exact results, more or less remote.
Such an intellectual discipline I needed above all else; and,
moreover, I could easily have acquired it; for, in subsequent
life, I have more than once puzzled myself and somewhat
surprised associates by reasoning out abstract formulas on
general principles applicable to all cases of a similar charac
ter. Had I in college been trained, or trained myself on these
lines, so doing would have contributed materially to my
effectiveness in practical life. Finally, I should have settled
myself systematically down on the development of my apti
tude — the art of literary expression, and would naturally
have done so. In this last respect, however, I was not
wholly wanting; it came about by gravitation.
This subject is one which has since interested me greatly,
especially of late years; and I have reached some conclu
sions peculiarly my own. At Harvard there was quite a
sufficiency of elective courses in my time; and, since then,
they have been multiplied out of all reason. And yet what
would for me have been the most valuable of electives for
purposes of mental training has never been proposed — a
course in chess ! Gravely to suggest it even would give rise
to a look of surprise — probably a smile. Yet what is it
but the German kriegspiel adapted to civil life vocations ?
In playing chess, you must have a defined plan of campaign
and follow it up intelligently and consecutively; you must
watch your opponent and understand and meet his play.
You must measure yourself against him. All this I have
been doing after a fashion throughout my life; yet I never
went through any special training in preparation for it. A
course in chess would have been forme — kriegspiel! So, also,
for others. Why not sometimes educate through amusement?

Youth and Education 3 5

Beyond all that, however, the difficulty then lay, as it
still lies, with the Harvard system. It was and is, in my
judgment, radically wrong; and the more satisfactory re
sults can never be secured until an organic change is worked
in it. Without knowing what the matter was, I suffered
under the system still in vogue in the middle of the last cen
tury as a student; and now (19 12), well advanced in another
century, I distinctly saw it as a member of one of the gov
erning boards to as late a period as 1906. I then set forth
my experience and conclusions drawn therefrom in a Phi
Beta Kappa Address — my parting word as an Overseer
— delivered before the Columbia Chapter. That address
is in print, and I still (1912) adhere to the conclusions
therein set forth. In one word : the educational trouble with
Harvard in my time was the total absence of touch and
direct personal influence as between student and instructor.
The academic, schoolmaster system prevailed; and, out
side of the recitation room, it was not good form — it was
contrary to usage — for the instructors and the instructed
to hold personal relations. Our professors in the Harvard of
"the fifties" were a set of rather eminent scholars and highly
respectable men. They attended to their duties with com
mendable assiduity, and drudged along in a dreary hum
drum sort of a way in a stereotyped method of classroom
instruction. But as for giving direction to, in the sense of
shaping, the individual minds of young men in their most
plastic stage, so far as I know nothing of the kind was even
dreamed of; it never entered into the professorial mind. This
was what I needed, and all I needed — an intelligent, in
spiring direction; and I never got it, nor a suggestion of it.
I was left absolutely without guidance. I might blunder

36 Charles Francis Adams
through, and, doubtless, somehow would blunder through,
just as I did; but if I could n't work my problem out for
myself, it would remain unsolved. And that was the Har
vard system. It remains in essence the system still — the old,
outgrown, pedagogic relation of the large class-recitation
room. The only variation has been through Eliot's effort
to replace it by the yet more pernicious system of premature
specialization. This is a confusion of the college and the uni
versity functions, and constitutes a distinct menace to all
true higher education. The function of the college is an
all-round development, as a basis for university speciali
zations. Eliot never grasped that fundamental fact; and so
he undertook to turn Harvard College into a German
university — specializing the student at eighteen. He thus
made still worse what was in my time bad enough. He in
stituted a system of one-sided contact in place of a system
based on no contact at all. It is devoutly to be hoped that,
some day, a glimmer of true light will effect an entrance into
the professional educator's head. It certainly had n't done
so up to 1906.
A better considered and more intelligent system will
doubtless in due time evolve itself; but when, or how, re
mains to be seen. I only now know that so far as producing
the ideal results on individual minds standing in crying
need of direction, the system in use was very bad fifty years
ago, and I have every reason to believe that the system now
in use is yet worse. In my time, its methods were mechani
cal; it turned out nothing individually artistic. I see now
that I was myself a very fair bit of clay for the wheel had the
potter had an eye and a hand for his work. I might have
been shaped into something rather good. As it was, I was

Youth and Education 3 7

tumbled into the common hopper, to emerge therefrom as
God willed. No instructor produced, or endeavored to pro
duce, the slightest impression on me; no spark of enthu
siasm was sought to be infused into me. In that line, I
owed far more to Charles Sumner than to all of the Harvard
professors put together. And it was exactly the same with
my father before me. From the recitation room I got as
nearly as I can now see almost nothing at all; from the col
lege atmosphere and the close contact with a generation of
generous young fellows containing then, as the result showed,
infinite possibilities I got much of all that I have ever had
of quickening and good. So, after all, I owe a great debt to
Harvard. Leaving Harvard for good and all in June, 1856, 1 was, as
all well-disposed young men of narrow vision and common-
sense direction from outside then were, full of the idea of
"getting to work," as the cant term went. Some of my
friends, including Stephen Perkins, went to Europe. Per
haps I should have done well to go with them; but on that
point I am not clear. Indeed, I doubt. I was not a mature
young fellow, with a native sense of dignity and responsi
bility. I did not have the social faculty; I failed to impress
others with a sense of my being "a young man of promise."
So, if I had then gone abroad, apart from a pleasant experi
ence and a stock of memories, I doubt if I should have
brought much back with me. I was not only young, but
immature.

II
LAW AND POLITICS
But now came educational blunder number seven; and
another bad one. Having no particular sense of a special
vocation, I almost as a matter of course turned to the law.
It went without saying. Doing so, I ought to have entered
the Harvard Law School; passed through the full course
there; and then gone into the office of some law firm in active
practice. Cambridge was, however, associated in my mind
with dissipation and literary idleness, and I was "full of
high purpose" — I wanted to buckle down to real work!
So, through my father and his political associations, I got
myself taken into the office of Dana and Parker; and there
I reported myself as a student in September, after my grad
uation in June. I made a mistake in not going to the Law
School, and taking hold of the profession I meant to follow
in a thoughtful, sensible way; but, if I was going into any
office at all, I made no mistake in selecting that of R. H.
Dana and F. E. Parker. They were two men with whom
personal contact was in itself an education. That Mr. Dana
impressed himself deeply upon me, I long afterwards showed
by becoming his biographer; and, in my Life of Dana 1 I set
forth my opinion of F. E. Parker. His classmate, T. W.
Higginson, has also spoken of him in his volume entitled
Cheerful Yesterdays; and, though Higginson and I were very
differently constituted, we set much the same estimate on
Parker. On the whole, as I never could have been a lawyer
1 n. chap. 2.

Law and Politics 3 9
and must, under any circumstances, have drifted out of
what was to me a most unattractive calling, perhaps it was
quite as well that I passed that educational period not at
Cambridge, but in Court Street. I was at least in daily con
tact with active life, and rubbing up against men of high
character and marked ability.
During these years my brother John and I lived at home,
and were a great deal in society, that is, as young men of
the party-going, dancing set. Of Boston society, as it then
was and, I believe, still is, I can say little that is pleasant.
It was a boy-and-girl institution, the outgrowth of ten gen
erations of colonial and provincial life, about as senseless,
unmeaning and frivolous as could by any possibility be
imagined. It was essentially a Sammy and Billy, a Sallie
and Nellie affair; very pleasant and jolly for young people;
but, so far as the world and its ways were concerned, little
more than a big village development. In fact, I may say
that in the course of my life I have tried Boston socially on
all sides : I have summered it and wintered it, tried it drunk
and tried it sober; and, drunk or sober, there's nothing in
it — save Boston ! The trouble with Boston socially is that
it is an eddy, so to speak, in the great world-current. With
powerful formative traditions it has a keen self-appreciation.
For strangers, well introduced, it is a delightful city; for a
life-long resident it is curiously conventional and borne.
Not only are the social circles sharply divided, but the ages
do not mix. The old people and the young stand apart; and
Billy and Bobby and Sue do not feel at home in company
with outsiders of distinction, or their domestic elders. It
has always been so. In Boston, the salon has ever proved
impossible. We go to formal dinners, and we pass our even-

40 Charles Francis Adams
ings at home. The young people frolic and dance; the old
retire, or are retired — shelved! And so, of my early Boston
social life I have little to say save that it was not improving;
but still I had a very good time — a time brought to an abrupt
close in 1861, when I was swept away by the torrent of war.
My great friends during those years were my brother
John — with whom my relations were the closest possible,
for we lived together — my former tutor, Frank Palfrey,
and Arthur Dexter. Both of these latter were men of abil
ity; but the former had a curiously frivolous vein running
through his composition, which interfered greatly with his
success and standing; while Dexter, though really a man of
superior order, was, for himself, most unhappily compounded.
There ran all through him a false strain.' In many respects
brilliant, he lacked persistence and character. He perpetu
ally rang false. I knew him intimately for many years; but
our ways gradually parted. He died early in 1897; we had
long before become almost strangers. But at this period
(1856-1861) we saw a great deal of each other; and, on the
whole, I derived benefit from him. In the summer, my
brother John and I lived at Quincy, where we began to take
great interest in tree-planting, and he, then and later, for
ested Mt. Wollaston. Meanwhile, my aptitude was show
ing how little real force there was to it, for it was lying
almost wholly dormant. I wrote continually — diaries, let
ters, abstracts of books I read, and, now and then, an at
tempt at a review article; but there was no systematic effort;
and I really did not in any degree realize what careful, thor
ough, painstaking work was. The fact is, I was simply slow
in maturing. At last, in the early months of 1861 — dur
ing the winter which followed the election of Lincoln — I

Law and Politics 4 1

braced up, and, one day, went out to see Russell Lowell,
then a professor at Harvard and editor of the Atlantic, and
asked him if he would let me write an article for that maga
zine on a semi-political topic. He was then living, with his
wife, at Mrs. Upham's lodging-house. He received me very
cordially — for he was then a man of only about forty —
and I lunched with the two, talking very fast, and, I am
afraid, airing my views somewhat ingenuously. He encour
aged me to make the attempt; and so I set to work and wrote
my first well-considered, carefully prepared and laboriously
copied-out magazine paper. I have written many such
since, but that one — "The Reign of King Cotton" in the,
Atlantic for April, 1861 — marked in me a distinct stage of
development. I was getting my bearings. It proved quite a
success. It caused me to be recognized as a young man of
somewhat nebulous promise.
Meanwhile, as a lawyer I was not proving myself a success.
I showed just what I was by getting myself admitted to the
bar after about twenty months of desultory reading, and
decently prepared for practice in my own eyes only. George
T. Bigelow was then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
the Commonwealth; or became so shortly after. I knew
Judge Bigelow well, we being neighbors at Quincy, and I
was on terms of intimacy with his family. One day, without
consulting any one, I took it into my head that I would be
examined for entrance at the bar; and, what followed shows
the loose way in which admissions were then granted. I
asked Bigelow to examine me. He ought to have asked me
a few questions as to my length of study, etc., and then, in
a good-natured, friendly way advised me to wait a while
longer. Instead of that, however, he told me to come at a

42 Charles Francis Adams
certain time into the Supreme Court room, where he was
then holding court; and he would examine me. I did so, and
the clerk of the court at his direction handed me a list of
questions, covering, perhaps, one sheet of letter paper. I
then sat down at the clerk's desk, and wrote out answers to
such of them as I could. I remember well that on several
of the subjects in question I knew absolutely nothing. A
few days later I met the Judge on the platform of the Quincy
station, and he told me I might come up to the court room
and be sworn in. I did so; and became a member of the bar.
I was no more fit to be admitted than a child. The whole
thing illustrated my supreme incompetence, and the utterly
irregular way in which admission to the bar was then ob
tained. At the same time I rather imagine that Bigelow's
personal knowledge of me had something to do with it. He
had confidence in my coming out all right; if he did, he cer
tainly acted on his faith.
This must have been somewhere in 1858. Anyhow, I at
once left Dana and Parker, taking with me not much law
but many pleasant memories; and I have often since, with
some sense of humiliation, tried to imagine what the keen-
sighted, incisive Parker thought of me and my proceedings.
I would even now like to know; for in my whole life I have
since met no man who saw into the true inwardness of per
sons and things as it was given to Francis E. Parker to see.
In my case, however, it made not much difference. v I was
not cast for a lawyer; and I rather imagine Parker fully took
the fact in. I never took to the law; and I am sure the law
never came my way. However, I tried, establishing myself
first with my brother John, and later in a gloomy, dirty den
in my father's building, 23 Court Street; and there I sat for

Law and Politics 43

the next year and a half, trying to think that I was going
through an apprenticeship. I did n't realize it, but I was a
round peg trying to get into a square hole. Still, my father
was satisfied. He, now, was in Congress, and the home had
been broken up; much to my satisfaction. I liked the irre
sponsible, Bohemian life; though I did n't know it, I was
tired of conventional Boston. My father saw it all, however,
in a wholly different light. In his eyes I was passing through
a very critical period in a Way which promised much; I
would soon acquire steady business habits, and settle down
into a respectable and useful member of society. But now,
great events were immediately impending.
In '59, I think it was, we had the "Concord muster." All
of us young men were then in the militia; and a most useful
preliminary training it afterwards proved. We were drilling
the whole time. I was a member of the City Guard; and
then adjutant of the First Regiment of Infantry; and then
a private in the Fourth Battalion. In this way I picked up
the manual, and learned how to march. Moreover, after
my father went to Washington in the autumn of '59, I went
on there to pay him a visit, and I saw something of the
Washington world, and the great movement of events. I
was now twenty-four, and began to get a little into the
touch of society. I by no means lacked self-confidence; but
I was also self-conscious, and lamentably deficient in that
nice social faculty which, in a place like Washington, so
tides a young man along. None the less, I availed myself to
a certain extent of my opportunities.
I remember very well the Senate and House of that time.
Neither body impressed me. The House was a national
bear-garden; for that was, much more than now, a period

44 Charles Francis Adams
of the unpicturesque frontiersman and the overseer. Sec
tional feeling ran high, and bad manners were conspicu
ously in evidence; whiskey, expectoration and bowie-knives
were the order of that day. They were, indeed, the only kind
of "order" observed in the House, over which poor old Pen
nington, of New Jersey, had as a last recourse been chosen
to preside, probably the most wholly and all-round incom
petent Speaker the House ever had. It was altogether in
describable, and I remember my father laughing until he
had to wipe the tears from his eyes over an account I gave
of the usual procedure of the body of which he was a mem
ber, in a letter I wrote to the Milford Gazette, a paper in his
district. I had then the cacoethes scribendi, and it found a
rather injudicious and somewhat risky vent in newspaper
correspondence; but I redeemed my lack of judgment by a
strong sense of boyish humor. " It is n't very respectful,"
said my father, "but it's dreadfully true." "Of all the dis
orderly bodies I ever saw," I wrote, "the present House of
Representatives, under its efficient presiding officer, is by
many degrees the most disorderly. When nothing of interest
is before the House, it is simply a general hubbub. When
anything of interest is going on, the performances usually
resolve themselves into a concerted piece by any six mem
bers at once, with at intervals a general chorus of the whole
House. Then, indeed, confusion does become confounded, and
Speaker Pennington rides upon the storm; not, indeed, direct
ing, but, with uplifted voice and gavel, acting rather as maestro,
or grand conductor, to this thnndering song of the nation."
That House was an angry, quarrelsome body, full to over
flowing of men who subsequently became "Confederate
Brigadiers." Among them I specially recall Roger A. Pryor,

Law and Politics 45
of Virginia, who "petered out" during the Rebellion, and
subsequently came North and quietly took to the law in
Brooklyn, New York, then a pronounced fire-eater, a typi
cal Southerner of that period. I remember him at one of
Buchanan's receptions, a rather tall and lank Virginian,
stalking about with a lady on each arm. In shabby black,
of course, and ugly as a stone fence, with tallowy, close-
shaven features, and prominent high cheek-bones, his eyes
had a hard, venomous look, while his flowing locks, brushed
carefully back behind his ears, fell well down over his coat
collar, innocent of the shears. He was representative of a
large class — men who were just spoiling for a fight. They
had it, too! and, before they got through, had a belly-full!
But never on this earth did human beings more richly de
serve the complete, out-and-out thrashing that those men
then coveted, and afterwards had.
None the less tempora mutantur, et, etc., etc., even as re
spects that community and those very men. Long subse
quently, as a result of my two addresses on General Lee,
that at Chicago in 1902, and that at Lexington in 1907, I
became a very popular character in Virgmia; and the change
of sentiment was manifested many times and in ways very
gratifying to me. Even Roger A. Pryor assumed a pleasant
personal aspect. I first met him face to face in New York,
December 9, 191 1 — just fifty years later. He was then
manifestly a very old man, softened by experience and
domestic affliction, for he had lost a most promising son,
already professionally far advanced. It was at a reception
given by the New York Genealogical Society to old John
Bigelow, who died just one year later. I had agreed to read
a paper on the occasion, and Judge Pryor came expressly

46 Charles Francis Adams
to hear me. I recognized him, sitting on one of the front
benches, the moment I came into the room; and at once
went and introduced myself to him. He was plainly grati
fied; and so was I at seeing him there. On both sides, all
the old feeling was gone. In the quieter rays of a setting
sun, I like to think it was so!
Of H. Winter Davis I saw a good deal that winter. He
was a man of very different type; the extremely gentle
manly representative of the Baltimore "Plug-uglies" as
they were called. He died a few years later, having become
an extremist among the Union men. I don't know what his
game was; but, with him, I imagine it was all a game. A
man of medium size, very boyish in appearance, with thick,
dark curling hair, cut short, a small moustache and a dark
complexion, he had a quiet manner and was extremely care
ful in his dress. I heard him deliver from the floor of the
House one of the most effective, if not the most effective
speech I ever listened to. That day he followed Lamar, of
Mississippi, whom, long afterwards, I knew much better.
Lamar at that period looked the Southern college professor
— lank, tall, bearded, long-haired and large-featured. Of
both of these men — Davis and Lamar — my brother Henry
has much to say in his volume The Education of Henry
Adams, and his means of observation were far better and
closer than mine.1 This was not so with some others. John
Sherman was a case in point. He was then by far the most
noticed man on the floor of the House, having been sud
denly brought into much prominence in the long struggle
for possession of the Speaker's chair. Then in his first vigor,
1 His account of Henry W. Davis is in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings,
xliii. 660.

Law and Politics 47

John Sherman was a young-looking man of the Ohio type,
tall and slender, with black hair and beard, keen eyes and
a large nose. His face was expressive of character and deci
sion, and he had the reputation of being a fighter in every
sense of the word. I saw something of him in 1860-61 —
much more years later — and he edified me by telling me
on one occasion that, in politics, "he made it a rule always
to act with his party; on great matters from principle, and
on small matters from policy." He certainly followed his
rule throughout his public life; and he was more than forty
consecutive years in position at Washington. I heard of his
death (1900) while passing through Chicago.
The Senate was, however, in 1860-61 far the more inter
esting body; and I then made very fair use of my advan
tages. Seward was the leader on the Republican side;
though, as one looked down from the gallery, the only man,
I remember, whose. face and bearing, whose figure and the
air of large refinement about him, seemed to me impressive
was Mr. Sumner. He certainly always offered a notable
exception to the prevailing commonplace, and coarseness of
fibre, both mental and physical. Douglas, of Illinois, was
very much in evidence, " a squab, vulgar little man, with an
immense frowsy head." Mason, of Virginia — afterwards
my father's vanquished opponent in England — also at
tracted my attention from the first, "a large, handsome
man, not unpleasant to look at," as, dressed ostentatiously
in a grey suit of Virginia homespun, he appeared to own the
Senate-chamber. Of Senator Fessenden, of Maine, I at that
time saw a good deal, calling on him at his hotel-room on
Sunday afternoons, when he evidently was gratified at my
attention and glad of company in his boarding-house soli-

48 Charles Francis Adams
tude. He impressed me as a man of natural refinement and
decided force — every inch a Senator. He talked to me of
my grandfather, with whom he had served in the House,
and, for whom, as did all those men — his contemporaries
— he expressed a keen admiration. Fessenden left on me,
however, a sense of a dreariness and solitude in life, as I
found him always sitting there in that forlorn private "par
lor" of a Washington boarding-house hotel, as Washington
hotels then were — unkempt barracks, spotted along the
north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to
the Treasury. They all had the third-rate, Southern-
slouchy aspect and atmosphere. That may have been a
period of high thinking; it was certainly one of plain living;
and there was in Washington a noticeable absence of the
more ordinary elegancies of civilized life; its luxuries were
undreamed of. The "mess" and the Southern boarding-
house were in order, and accepted. They knew nothing
better; but Senator Fessenden's old-time hotel — furnished
sitting-room with its bed-room attachment, devoid of any
pretence of life's amenities and attractions — impressed me
with a sense of neither domesticity nor taste. I suppose,
however, it compared fairly well with what he was then
accustomed to at home, in Maine; but in all respects the
Washington of that period was in strange contrast with the
Washington of this. The Civil War marked the dividing line.
Recurring to Fessenden and what he told me of my grand
father, Jefferson Davis was on that topic the most out
spoken of all I met. I do not, indeed, with the exception of
Joshua R. Giddings, remember any public man of that epoch
who seemed to feel such a genuine sense of appreciation for
J. Q. Adams as Jefferson Davis, and he repeatedly put him-

Law and Politics 49

self on record on the subject. Davis, by the way, impressed
me that winter more agreeably than any Southern man I
met. I did not see him again until, in May, 1885, I called
on him at his house at Belvoir, near New Orleans; but to
me he was a distinctly attractive as well as interesting per
sonality. Of medium height and spare of figure, he had an
essentially Southern face, but he was very much of a gen
tleman in his address — courteous, unpretending and yet
quietly dignified. A man in no way aggressive, yet not to be
trifled with. I instinctively liked him; and regret extremely
that it was not my good fortune, then or later, to see more
of him.
Physically, Washington was then curiously unkempt, the
wide, half-built, unpaved streets being alternately oceans
of mud or deep in dust. A dirtier city materially — "Nig
ger" — it would not have been easy to imagine; while, so
cially, it was quite innocent of "style." Among those in
public life very few had houses of their own, and those of
such as had them were unpretentious — modest to a degree.
There were a few private carriages, but no equipage. The
entertainment was of the simplest. The social element was
altogether Southern in sympathy and in expression; and,
as a young man, I am forced to say that the inducements to
flirtation sometimes extended by certain of the young ladies
were of a nature not usual in more conventional centres —
they were of the jolly-girl brand. My now destroyed diaries
bore witness to the fact that on more than one occasion
I did not know what to do, or which way to look; and ig
nored what I did not dare reciprocate. Miss Harriet Lane
then presided over the White House; and, of wholly another
sort, she did it very well. Young, handsome, dignified and

50 Charles Francis Adams
imposing, she bore herself as became her position, having,
beside a London experience, a well-developed natural, social
faculty. I was presented to her at one of the White House
receptions of that very simple and most democratically un
conventional period when the White House entertainments,
conducted absolutely without rule or regulation, were
thronged by people of both sexes, dressed each one as his
or her means or fancy directed. As respects Miss Lane, I
was deeply impressed by the fact that, the next time I met
her, she addressed me by name. It was close upon forty
years later. I then once more found myself in the same
room with her. She was now an elderly lady; a white-haired,
childless widow, living in Washington; she was pointed out
to me at a wedding reception, and I "tried it on," going
up and expressing my disbelief in any possible recollection
of me on her part. But the old social faculty was there.
She at once called me by name. Through what process she
instinctively worked the problem out or by what mental
action she divined, I do not know; but that she should have
remembered both face and name is not supposable. It was
an instance of the exercise of a social faculty which I never
possessed in any degree, and the absence of which has been
in my case a badly felt handicap throughout life in many
ways. Few things do I envy the possession of in others more
than the faculty of remembering faces or placing names.
Subsequently, during the first winter of my later Wash
ington life, I saw a good deal of Mrs. Johnson, and our rela
tions became exceptionally friendly. The fact that I had been
part of the ante-bellum Washington of her White House
days constituted a sort of bond of kindliness between us.
Hence her death a year or two later was for me an appre-

Law and Politics 5 1
ciable loss — Washington became the poorer because of her
decease. There are frequent and admiring mentions of Miss
Lane, as she then was, in Hawthorne's Our Old Home: Eng
lish Sketches, and Mrs. Johnson could certainly have counted
me among her obliged admirers. She is a gracious memory.
My two winter visits to Washington in i860 and 1861
were my only social experiences outside of Boston until
after the war. They were of great educational benefit to
me, something I of all things needed. I there came in con
tact with men, and distinguished men; and I met women,
and not girls. In Boston there was no political element in
social life; and no foreign element. In Washington, you met
interesting men and some clever women; and conversation
sometimes rose above the level of society small-talk.
Meanwhile, at the law I was in these years doing abso
lutely nothing, making no progress. Regular in my habits,
I was constantly at my office; but business would not come
my way; and, naturally, I got discouraged. I kept writing,
if I did not publish; but — I am sorry to say it, though I
see it clearly now — I had not the native force to break
through the barriers, and strike out in some line for myself.
I remained a round peg in a square hole. I would now give
much, if I could look back on some virile action of my own
at that time; an attempt, even though it had been a failure.
It simply was not in me; and I went along, stupidly adhering
to the old precedents and traditions, just as if I were not a
young man, with a great, untried world all about me. I was
quite lacking in both aggressive initiative and correct fore
cast. In the summer of i860, however, came the monitions of
great impending change; though I quite failed to read the

5 2 Charles Francis Adams
signs aright. In the long, hot summer of i860, as we were
getting into the swing of that lurid, red-painted political
canvass which proved the prologue to the war, Governor
Seward one day turned up in Boston, coming from the
eastward. Just defeated at Chicago, Seward then showed
a real bigness. Nursing no sense of disappointment, he
came out in large, earnest support of the cause, and its
exponent who had been preferred to him. With a clear
eye, though that of an astute politician, to the unknown
and unforeseeable future, he was carefully cultivating rela
tions with my father, seeing in him I imagine a much-needed
New England political counterpoise to the distrustful and
impracticable Sumner. He had, I think — going back to
what took place in "the forties" — sized my father; and,
almost alone of the public men of the period, he had "sized"
him correctly. So now he turned up suddenly in Boston;
singled my father out for special notice; and came out to
Quincy to pass a day. Seward was then at the highest point
of reputation and political prominence he ever attained. As
a political factor he was of the first class; and he now pro
posed to my father, that he and I — I having met him in
Washington — should join him in an electioneering tour
through the Northwest in the coming month of September.
I eagerly caught at the idea, and prevailed on my father to
fall into it. We went, and it proved a considerable episode
in my life. I saw the West for the first time, and moved
among men.
During that summer also I saw a good deal of Charles
Sumner, and very pleasantly. We none of us in the least
suspected it; but for the old intimacy it was the beginning of
the end. He was then in great spirits. Physically, he had

Law and Politics 5 3
recovered from the Brooks assault, and was in the full swing
of political movement. In June he had delivered in the
Senate his long and carefully prepared, but most unphilo-
sophical, speech entitled by him the "Barbarism of Slavery."
This effort of his had long been fore-shadowed and was
loudly heralded; but I am glad to say that, my great personal
admiration for Sumner non obstante, my mental vision was
not now obscured. Of this speech I at the time wrote: "I
have steadily stood up for it, and defended and endorsed
everything in it; yet, in my heart of hearts, this speech is
heavy proof that Sumner is not nearly so great a man as I
had supposed and hoped. He had a great chance; and he
was not equal to the occasion. After being stricken down
as he was, with four years of subsequent illness, he should
have risen in the Senate-chamber grand and magnificent; — ¦
something more than mortal, above revenge or spite, he
should not have 'poured forth abuse as from a cart,' even on
institutions. He should have dealt only in great principles,
not in newspaper paragraphs and book clippings; he should
have said that which would have offended no man, and yet
would have touched and appealed to all. This he has not
done. His speech is a farrago of newspaper items collected
with toil and codified with reflection, but not marked by
good temper or pervaded by inspiration. It is the able ex
parte argument of an ordinary mortal, and by no means the
crowning effort of a great genius." I have not since read,
and never again shall read — as, I opine, will few others —
that bitter, railing indictment of June 4, i860; but I imagine
I was not far wrong in this contemporaneous estimate of it.
A few days later, however, I came across Sumner charac
teristically and pleasantly; and in a way curious for me now

54 Charles Francis Adams
(1900) to notice, looking over my diary of that time, having
wholly forgotten the incident. It had a noticeable bearing
on the address I had just been delivering at Madison, show
ing how I revived in the summer of 1900 an historical paral
lel which I had worked out in detail forty years before, and
then retained no faintest recollection of. My entry of July,
i860, was as follows:
"For the last two years I have been industriously labor
ing on a parallel, covering the slavery question, between my
grandfather and Calhoun. This last week my thunder has
been stolen, and rolled louder than I ever could roll it, and
that by no less a person than Charles Sumner, of the United
States Senate. In a political address in New York last week,
he began with that parallel exactly as I had thought it out;
and, when I had read what he said, a vague impression came
across me that I had one day at Washington, while dining
with him at home, run the parallel, and stated the relative
influence of the two men on our own time. My father pres
ently came into the office, and I spoke to him of it. He re
membered the conversation perfectly; and advised me for
the future to be more careful of my gems, if I did n't want to
have them stolen. My only desire was to give his dues to
my grandfather, so I can't say I care much for the thing;
but I think Sumner might have done it rather better; and,
if ever I now carry out the parallel, as I certainly meant to
do, I shall be said to perfect only, and not originate."
Queer coincidence! There is the parallel, to-day, in Sum
ner's Works} I have looked it up since coming across this
diary entry of my own; and forty years afterwards in the
Madison address, I harked back to my own old inspiration,
1 i- 193. 323-

Law and Politics 5 5
and, for the first time, presented my grandfather's record.
And, now, what do I care for Sumner?
But my diary record did not end there. Just a fortnight
later (July 29, i860) I went on as follows:
"Sumner dined here yesterday, and came out evidently
primed on some subject. I met him at the [Quincy] station;
and, as we walked over the hill home, out it came — ' We
must have an edition of my grandfather's political speeches
— this year — at once!' I read him an extract of a note I
had had from Mr. Giddings, a day or two before, in which
he [Giddings] speaks approvingly of the parallel in Sum
ner's Cooper Institute speech. On hearing it Sumner laughed
loud, and smote me on the shoulder with immense delight.
He seemed greatly amused at the idea of my own idea com
ing back to me in this way, through him, with the stamp of
approval from J. R. Giddings. After dinner, he went off
again on the subject of the speeches; his parallel had pro
voked discussion and comment, had been ridiculed; he knew
he was right; but where were his authorities? We must have
an edition of the speeches at once, we must get those at least
between hard covers! My father thought the time had not
yet come; my grandfather, when brought forward as a char
acter in history, had best be brought forward as a whole,
etc., etc. I cannot agree with him, except in part. A man's
historical character must rest on evidence; and it seems to
me the evidence on which my grandfather's ultimate posi
tion in the history of his time must rest cannot too soon
be brought before the public. A collection of his political
speeches and reports, if published now, would be of interest
as bearing on the questions of the day, and be read and re
ferred to now more perhaps than at any future time. I have

56 Charles Francis Adams
no idea, however, that such a collection will be issued, and
my grandfather must wait yet a while for justice."
This I now (191 2) find rather an interesting record of a
talk. In less than two years from that time, emancipation
under the war power was a living question, and my grand
father's utterances were rummaged up. Fourteen months
later, Sumner himself was working up the partial record on
the subject, which now appears in his Works ; x for which he
was indebted to a communication from me in the Boston
Transcript of September n, 1861. On the ist of January,
1863, Lincoln's proclamation took effect; and only now,
forty years later, has an incomplete record of my grand
father's enunciation of the doctrine of emancipation under
the war power been put on file.2 Sumner was wholly right.
An edition of those speeches was in the summer of i860
greatly needed; and they would have appeared in the very
nick of time. I ought to have brought them out. He meant
to incite me so to do. Again, I was not equal to the occasion
offered me.
At this period, however, I was seeing a good deal in an
intimate way of some men of considerable mark; and I am
glad to be able to say that, in this respect, I did appreciate
my privilege. I think, also, I stood fairly well in their esti
mate. I was very much younger; I did not realize how much,
or have a correct sense of my own position, failing properly
to subordinate myself. But I was twenty-five, and ought to
have matured more than I had. R. H. Dana was then forty-
five, and absent on his trip round the world taken to escape
a break-down, threatened from overwork and the utter dis
regard by him of all sanitary rules. Had I been awake to
1 vi. 19-23. « 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xv. 436.

Law and Politics 5 7
my opportunities, I would have gone with him; but, in fact,
so doing never even occurred to me. Ijwas accomplishing
nothing at home — eating my heart out in a clientless office,
and wasting my time in ball-rooms; and here was an oppor
tunity never to be had again, and I simply did not see it!
It has been so all through life — unequalled chances missed;
that with Dana in i860 one of the most educational and
maturing. Sumner I saw much of; he was then in his fiftieth
year. Seward was ten years older, and at his best. Dr. Pal
frey, occupied with his history, was older yet; born in May,
1796, he was in his sixty-fifth year, one year younger than
I now (1900) am. My father was fifty-three. I was a young
fellow, eager and aspiring; intensely interested in politics;
in a social way healthily frivolous; and trying to follow a
profession for which I had no natural aptitude. In fact,
I was blindly seeking for my bearings.
I find in my diary, which was little more than an empty
record of aspirations, comments on current events and social
dissipations — many of the last distinctly the reverse of
creditable, for I was, I do not regret to say, a very human
youth — a few, a very few, notes of conversations, etc., not
wholly without interest still. For instance, Seward was then
rapidly establishing himself in the estimate of all of us as
the Republican leader — the philosophical politician, states
man and guide of the party of the future. I shall revise and
review this estimate presently, in the full light of fifty years
later; but, in the summer of i860, he certainly bore himself
well. In a short speech he made on his arrival in Boston at
this time, he took occasion to declare himself a political
disciple of J. Q. Adams — which, except in theory, he dis
tinctly was not — and while at Quincy, sitting on the piazza

5 8 Charles Francis Adams
and puffing at his everlasting cigar, he talked freely about
himself, J. Q. Adams, and public life. My brother John re
minded him of a remark he (John) heard him make the pre
vious winter in Washington to the effect that no man should
continue in the Senate more than twelve years; and, ob
serving that he had said this before Lincoln's nomination,
inquired if he was of the same mind still. "Yes," said Sew
ard, "I still think so. I shall have been in the Senate twelve
years ; and, in that time, I have seen Benjton die a vagrant,
pining to get back there; Calhoun die, chagrined, disap
pointed, ambitious and unsatisfied; declaring almost in his
last words in the Senate that he would not speak to me;
Clay die, eating his heart away, and naming the Committee
of the Senate which was to carry him home to Kentucky,
designating Hamilton Fish, so as to cut me off; and I am
clear that unless a man can come out on some new course
in this country, appear in some new character, as did J. Q.
Adams, he must fail as those men failed. As compared with
J. Q. Adams, Calhoun was a man of talent and originality;
but he was visionary; whereas Mr. Adams, equal to him in
other respects, was a practical statesman. Calhoun, for in
stance, wrote a book about the Constitution in which he
advocated a dual executive and a balance of power between
the free and slave states, than which what could be more
absurd. But to imitate J. Q. Adams was not possible for
most men, because there were few who, like him, loved com
bat for combat's sake, and who could thus fight through a
long life. For himself, he [Seward] thought it much more
difficult to retire gracefully from public life than to keep in
it. It was different in Great Britain. There Palmerston had
been in Parliament perhaps forty years; but in Great Britain

Law and Politics 5 9
the same man might be King many times, and there was
a variety in Parliamentary life which Congress did not af
ford." While driving into town, where he was to take his
train home, I asked him about Webster, Clay and Calhoun,
with all three of whom he had sat in the Senate. He said
that, in his judgment, Calhoun was the most eminent of the
three; "but," he added, "they are all over-rated men; for
they converted the Senate-chamber into a mere intellectual
arena for their own struggles. Calhoun had undirected,
original eloquence; Clay had a fiery, brilliant imagination;
Webster, brute intellectual force. Calhoun's logic was not
sound; he led and did not follow it, using it to support a
pre-conceived theory."
My diary records that, when we got to town that day and
were waiting on the platform of the station for the start
ing of the train, we found there only a very few enthusiastic
souls to look at the famous New Yorker, " and I could n't
but agree with one or two of them that a more unpromising
looking subject for a great man than Seward did n't stand
on the depot platform at that time. Small, rusty in aspect,
dressed in a coat and trousers made apparently twenty
years ago and by a bad tailor at that, lolling against the par
tition as he talked with my father or those about him, with
a face and head in no way striking, who would have put his
hand on that man — small and insignificant — as the first
statesman in the country?"
The very next day Dr. Palfrey chanced to dine with us
at Quincy, on his way to Plymouth, where he proposed to
spend a few days in walking along the shore, to familiarize
himself with it in connection with his history. Sumner came
out the day after, a curious contrast to Seward, with his

60 Charles Francis Adams
fine presence and lofty carriage, his careful, well-arranged
dress, and his deep, rich voice. Sumner was always a dis
tinguished-looking man; he had a bearing and presence. He
was then in excellent spirits, "but evidently disgusted at
not being more completely backed up by his party in the
matter of his recent speech, the 'Barbarism of Slavery.'"
He does not doubt the success of the party; but fears for its
principles, if those composing it continue so timid in sup
port of them. He talked much of Seward, and of the ne
cessity of his taking the lead in Lincoln's Cabinet. He told
us that Seward was much mollified now; but, on his press
ing on him that necessity towards the close of the session
Seward had exclaimed that "not all the angels in Heaven
nor all the demons in Hell could induce him to subject his
name for ratification to the votes of twenty-four men on
that side of the Senate — indicating the side on which the
Democratic Senators sat."
My journey that autumn through the West in the train
of Governor Seward was a noticeable episode in life, and
had on me a most invigorating effect. I was then somewhat
run down in bodily health, as well as mentally demoralized.
Worn out waiting for that legal practice which to me never
came, I was in great need of change. I was in fact stag
nating. We — that is, my father and I — left Quincy on
Monday, September 3d, joined Mr. Seward's party at Kal
amazoo, Michigan, on Friday; went with him to Chicago,
Milwaukee and Madison; thence to Dubuque, where my
father left the party, and went home. We got to Quincy,
Illinois, by rail from Mendota; then crossed Missouri to St.
Joseph, in i860 the extreme western end of the railroad
system. We went by steamboat from St. Joseph to Leaven-

Law and Politics 6 1
worth; and from Leavenworth we drove by ambulance to
Lawrence. Returning over the same track, we puffed up the
dreary Missouri one dull, rainy day late in September, back
to St. Joseph, whence we crossed to St. Louis by rail. From
St. Louis we went by way of Springfield to Chicago; and
at Springfield Mr. Lincoln came into the car, accompanied
by Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, to pay his respects to Gov
ernor Seward. From Chicago we went to Cleveland, and
thence to Buffalo. My journey ended at Auburn, where I
passed a Sunday at Governor Seward's house, getting home
on the 9th of October; and a very discontented, homesick
young barrister I was when I found myself once more back
in my dismal, clientless office!
During this, to me, most memorable trip Governor Sew
ard evinced a uniform kindness and consideration which were
extraordinary, and are now unaccountable. It was a singular
party; and one not altogether to be commended to a young
man. Next to Seward the principal character was General '
James W. Nye — "Nye of Nevada"; and he was a charac- '
ter! He was then a man of only forty-six, a coarse, genial,
humorous, New York lawyer, stump-speaker and politician.
He had with him his daughter, a pretty, bright girl of only
seventeen, with whom I became very intimate during the
trip; though I never saw her afterwards until she recognized
me in a railway car twenty-five years later, and sent her
husband to ask me to come over to where she was sitting,
and renew our acquaintance. The General was excellent
company, and full of stories and experiences, for he had seen
all phases of life; but his conversation was by no means al
ways edifying, and he was a decidedly free liver. Indeed,
the consumption of liquors and cigars during that trip was

62 Charles Francis Adams
out of all cess. I, however, was young, and in no way encum
bered with scruples. Seward smoked the whole time; indeed
my diary of the trip from Mendota to Quincy — a night
journey by rail — says: "The early morning sun shone on
Seward, wrapped in a strange and indescribable Syrian
cashmere cloak, and my humble self, puffing our morning
cigars in a baggage-car, having rendered ourselves, as he
expressed it, 'independent on this tobacco question.' "
When it came to drinking, Seward was, for a man of sixty,
a free liver; and at times his brandy-and-water would excite
him, and set his tongue going with dangerous volubility; but
I never saw him more affected than that — never anything
approaching drunkenness. He simply liked the stimulus,
and was very fond of champagne; and when he was loaded,
his tongue wagged. He was a very considerate, delightful
travelling companion; and, so far as accomplishing work
was concerned, his faculty was extraordinary. Seeing him
the whole time I never could understand where, when or how
he then prepared the really remarkable speeches he deliv
ered in rapid succession.
That of i860 was my first trip into the great region west of
Niagara. I have since been over the same ground too often
to try even to take account of the times, and it has become
monotonous, even terribly tedious; I was young in i860,
and it was all new and fresh — my first taste of travel. Trav
elling was, however, in its most commonplace and uninter
esting estate; for the stage-coach and ambulance had dis
appeared, while the railroad appliances were crude, and
toilet accommodations in their infancy. The picturesque
ness of travel was gone; its comforts had not come. There
were, for instance, no private cars, and the most that any

Law and Politics 6 3
railroad company could do was to put an ordinary day-
coach at Governor Seward's special service. This was quite
frequently the case; but the eating-houses were wretched,
and the hotels overgrown taverns. The single picturesque
episode I saw was by night, on the upper Mississippi. It
was the wooding-up of river-boats by torch-light, and a
genuine spectacle- — the flames of the pine-knots blazing
up from the great side braziers lighting the tree-clad shores
and the red shirts of the hurrying roustabouts. But apart
from this, and the constant racing and manoeuvring of the
river-boats to get the lead of each other, the travel by water
was decidedly tedious, far more so than that by rail, which,
in its turn, was bad enough.
Kansas was the most interesting of the regions we visited.
It was just after the "border-ruffian" excitement, and the
Territory had not yet become a State. Kansas, the always
either bleeding or starving, had ceased to be a bone of con
tention between the sections, the slave interest silently ad
mitting itself defeated; but the scenes of the border-ruffian
outrages were pointed out and their memory was still fresh.
Kansas was in i860 but sparsely settled, and the unfortu
nate inhabitants were suffering under a prolonged and very
• destructive drought. There seemed no end to their misfor
tunes. I believe there was not at that time a mile of railroad
west of the Missouri; so our journey beyond the river, made
by ambulance, was delightful as a variety. The river was,
I remember, so low that we forded the Kaw at Lawrence,
the water not rising to the horses' bellies. I did not go be
yond Lawrence.
I have spoken of the meeting between Lincoln and Sew
ard at Springfield, as our party was passing through Illinois,

64 Charles Francis Adams

on the way from St. Louis to Chicago. My diary contained
an account of it. It was the first time I ever saw Lincoln;
afterwards I heard him deliver his inaugural; was presented
to him at a White House reception; and, finally, as an officer
of a cavalry regiment in the Army of the Potomac, passed
in review before him once in Virginia. Save that once at
Springfield, I never really spoke to him. We went through
to Chicago on the regular train, nor did they give Governor
Seward a car for himself; when we got to Springfield the train
was quite full, and our party were occupying seats as ordi
nary passengers. "Mr. Lincoln and Judge Trumbull," my
diary records, "came on board the train. Judge Trumbull
I had met before in Washington, and again in St. Louis the
previous day; but 'old Abe' was a revelation. There he was,
tall, shambling, plain and good-natured. He seemed shy
to a degree, and very awkward in manner; as if he felt out
of place, and had a realizing sense that properly the posi
tions should be reversed. Seward too appeared constrained."
Judge Trumbull, between whom and Seward the true sena
torial ill-will and cold distrust existed, did the introducing,
we all standing in the aisle of the car; for no arrangement had
been made for stopping the train, and we none of us left it.
There was no demonstration; not a pretence of a reception.
It was exactly as if a couple of ordinary business men had
come down to a station to meet some travellers passing
through, and exchange a few words during a five-minutes
stop. "Governor Seward, with his usual thoughtiulness on
such occasions, introduced Mr. Lincoln to all the members
of the party, and to me among the others. The only remark
Lincoln made to me was — 'A son of Charles Francis
Adams? I am glad to see you, Sir'; but at the same time I

Law and Politics 65
saw a look of interest. Lincoln's face is a good one, and he
has proved his skill as a debater; but, if I could judge from
a passing glance at a moment when the man was obviously
embarrassed, I should say that his eye never belonged to a
man great in action; it is neither the quick sharp eye of a
man of sudden and penetrating nature, nor the slow firm
eye of one of decided will; but it is a mild, dreamy, medita
tive eye which one would scarcely expect to see in a suc
cessful chief magistrate in these days of the republic. Mais

nous verrons."

A few days later, on our way from Chicago to Cleveland,
we ran across another prominent public man of that period
— a statesman of the American and western type. It was
characteristic — characteristic both of the individuals and
of the times; though, of course, I am no longer in touch, I
doubt if it could happen now. Governor Seward went from
Chicago to Cleveland by night, and I had my first experi
ence of the sleeping-car as it had at that time been developed.
It was a singularly crude, tentative affair, constructed on the
pattern of the canal-boat cabin; that is, with a tier of per
manent berths on each side of the aisle, practically three
shelves, one above the other, as I remember. Anyhow, after
smoking in the baggage-car — the only pretence of a smoker
— we wriggled into the recesses respectively assigned us;
and actually fell asleep, though fully dressed. When we got
to Toledo, I was suddenly waked up by a sound of loud
cheering, and looked for a midnight reception, for the coun
try was then throbbing with excitement. "Instead of a re
ception I heard some one rush into the car, and inquire in a
loud voice, 'Where 's Seward!' The Governor's berth was
pointed out, the inquirer stating that he was Mr. Douglas,

66 Charles Francis Adams
and he at once rushed up to it, thrust the curtains aside,
and exclaimed, 'Come, Governor, they want to see you;
come out and speak to the boys!' To this Seward replied
in a drowsy voice, 'How are you, Judge? No; I can't go out.
I'm sleepy.' 'Well, what of that?' said Douglas; 'they get
me out when I'm sleepy.' Seward, however, simply said he
shouldn't go out; to which Douglas replied, 'Well! if you
don't want to you shan't,' and withdrew. All this time it
never entered my head that the intruder was no other than
'the little Giant' of Illinois, then and in that way conduct
ing his Presidential campaign. He had a bottle of whiskey
with him, and, as he left the car, he stopped to take a drink;
and, next morning, I was told he was plainly drunk." He
had been having a Democratic meeting at Toledo, and the
cheering was incident thereto. I asked Seward about it.
He simply said that it was Douglas's "idea of political cour
tesy; but he [Seward] did n't mean to let Douglas exhibit
him to his [Douglas's] followers, just to make a little politi
cal capital for himself. So far as Douglas himself was con
cerned, Seward told me that they had always been on the
most friendly terms. I remarked that Douglas's conduct
on the floor of the Senate did not always square with that
fact. 'No,' he replied, 'but Douglas always did what you
refer to for political effect. Personally, we have always been
on the most friendly terms.' " So, on this occasion, Douglas,
a Presidential candidate, had, more than half drunk, rushed
into that car at midnight, whiskey-bottle in hand, to drag
Seward, the Premier to be, out of his sleeping-berth, to show
him in a railroad station to his (Douglas's) political heelers!
Our last campaign meeting was at Buffalo; where, I re
member, when brought forward as I perpetually was —

Law and Politics 6 7
generally under the idea on the part of the audience that it
was my father — I made my chief oratorical success of the
trip, reaHy getting out of a very false position quite well.
Saturday, the 6th of October, we got to Auburn; and it was
really pleasant to see Governor Seward as we approached
the journey's end. It suggested to me poor old Walter
Scott when he drew near to Abbotsford on his return from
Italy shortly before his death. So Seward now showed a
great deal of genuine, kindly human nature. "He seemed
to enlarge, and to dwell with real affection on every object
along the road. He told me of the country, and gave me the
names of the lakes and bridges ; and, when we stopped at
way stations, he would get out of the train, and look about
with a homeish air, exchanging greetings with almost every
man he met. He seemed to know the whole country-side. At
Cayuga, the local bar-keeper seemed to know him well, and,
with a grin, produced four pike, fresh from the Lake. 'Ah!'
said Seward, 'just what I want!' and, paying for them, he
turned them over to me. At Auburn, where we arrived about
nine o'clock, a noisy throng was waiting for him on the arrival
of the train. It was not a reception, but merely a friendly
welcome home. They rushed about him and would let him
do nothing for himself, until he, greatly pleased, was hustled
into a coach, and so ended his journey at his own door."
Seward, in fact, never appeared so well as at home, in
Auburn. He was there really and unaffectedly simple. He
walked the streets exchanging greetings with every one;
and, as he sat at home in his office, every one came in with
out form or ceremony, and to every one the same welcome
was extended. It was, too, all genuine — the relations were
kindly, unaffected, neighborly. His family relations were

68 Charles Francis Adams
admirable. With his wife and daughter, he was affection
ate, considerate, unselfish. At Auburn he really left on the
stranger an impression of individuality approaching great
ness. On the whole, looking back at that experience, I think
I must have acquitted myself more creditably than my
diary — now destroyed — would lead me to suppose. Cer
tainly, Seward and Nye bore with me pleasantly, and I saw
and talked with them on terms of great freedom. My diary
contained many long memoranda of conversations, but
they would have no value; so I do not preserve them. One
entry only seemed to carry a lesson — and not in any way a
novel one — in connection with what has since occurred.
"At breakfast General Nye asked me about my grand
father's diary, when would it be published, etc.? Seward
seemed to think it a dangerous experiment; and expressed a
hearty concurrence in my remark that the great thing con
cerning that diary was 'Who was to edit it?' For on the
editor must depend the great question of extracts, and the
light in which the diarist would be shown. 'Nothing,' said
he, 'is so dangerous to the reputation of a public man as a
diary. Look at Evelyn.1 A most respectable man; a Secre
tary of State for Charles II, and see what a picture he has
left of himself: "Got up this morning and put on my best
mulberry suit, which cost me ten pounds, and went to the
office; coming home saw a crowd collected, and, on enquiry
found it was to witness the execution of Sir Henry Vane; he
had a large boil on his neck, which he particularly requested
the executioner not to touch; about fifty persons in attend-
1 Pepys was intended, and Seward has made up his quotation to suit his
purpose. Some of it may be found in Pepys' account of the execution of Sir
Henry Vane, in Diary (Bright), n. 263.

Law and Politics 6 9
ance"; and so on. How would I appear if I had kept a
diary, and recorded all my cursing and swearing on the 19th
of May last? '" — a closing reference to the Chicago Con
vention of i860 and the nomination of Lincoln.
As between Evelyn and Pepys, it must be conceded, the
future Secretary was a trifle mixed; nor was his selection of
an example of frivolous diary-keeping exactly happy, for
there are not many eye-witness records of events more in
teresting than Pepys' account of the execution of Vane.
Of the rest of the memorable Presidential canvass of
i860, it would be useless here to say more. It still stands out
in my memory with awful clearness; and for me it was dis
tinctly educational. It was a demonstrative campaign, and,
in recalling its events, a lurid glare seems reflected from the
light of innumerable torches against an ominous gathering
of heavy lowering clouds. Nor is this a case of present im
agination casting a shadow backwards; it was an actuality.
The campaign of i860 was essentially a midnight demon
stration — it was the "Wide-awake" canvass of rockets,
illuminations and torch-light processions. Every night was
marked by its tumult, shouting, marching and counter
marching, the reverberation of explosives and the rush of
rockets and Roman candles. The future was reflected on
the skies. But of the tremendous nature of that future, we
then had no conception. We all dwelt in a fool's Paradise.
It is a source of amazement now to realize our own short
sightedness; for, however much people may since have edu
cated themselves to believe that they foresaw everything,
and looked for exactly what afterwards took place, it is all
pure self-deception — cases of wisdom after the event. We
were, all around, of an average blindness. I know it was so

70 Charles Francis Adams
in the case of Seward and my father; as it was absolutely so
in that of Sumner. We knew nothing of the South, had no
realizing sense of the intensity of feeling which there pre
vailed; we fully believed it would all end in gasconade. We
fell into the rather serious error of under-estimating our
antagonist. For instance, here is my diary entry made ten
days after the election — the 18th of November, the elec
tion having been on the 7th: "After election came its results
— its effect on the South. Hardly were the returns in, when
there came mutterings of secession from the Slave States,
which swelled immediately into a shout. This, however, is
an old story; and we take it philosophically. The only diffi
culty is that it has led to a money pressure, and may result
in a panic. The South is in a bad way; for it has got to face
a financial and a political crisis at the same time, the one
aggravating the other. My own impression is that the ex
periment of secession is about to be tried; and I hope it will
be, for the country is weary of the threat. My impression
also is that the experiment will cost the States which try it
about ten millions of dollars, and that it will fail ignomini
ously. We shall see! Meanwhile we are calm; and, but for
the money pressure, I believe every one would say: 'Let the
experiment be tried.' " Two months later I wrote: "Po
litically, the world is busy. My letters from Washington
[which have disappeared since] will some day be of value;
but it is strange how the back is proportioned to the burden.
A few months ago the word 'Disunion' threw us into a cold
tremor; but now, the secession of a State is an event of
hardly importance enough for a paragraph in a newspaper.
At last the Northern spirit is roused, and I think there will
be trouble before we back down. The action of the seceding

Law and Politics 7 1
Slave States has put them wholly in the wrong; and, day
by day, my impression is growing that the crisis is past, that
it is mostly sound and fury in the South, that the victory
is going to rest with us, and that there will be no fight."
All this was, however, pure self-deception — whistling to
keep the courage up. In truth it was a wretched time. Ter
ribly anxious, we watched the daily papers with feverish
interest, snatching at every straw. For instance, on the 9th
of February I wrote: "Tuesday [four days previous] a great
sense of relief passed over the whole community as it heard
that Virginia had, almost unanimously, spoken against dis
union. In the morning we got a few returns, enough to give
us the general complexion of the result; and, I confess, my
heart went up into my mouth, as I read those returns, for
I felt that the tide of secession was at last turned, and I felt
confident, and still am confident, that the ebb will be no less
rapid than was the flow. Decisive news reached us in the
afternoon. I was skating on Jamaica Pond, all by myself,
when I noticed the throng of skaters flocking together on the
further side of the Pond, and almost immediately they began
to shout and cheer with all their souls. Some one had come
out bringing a paper with fuller and final returns. The
tears almost stood in my eyes; and I skated off to be alone,
for I realized that the crisis was actually passed."

Ill
WASHINGTON, 1861
That winter I went on to Washington on the 18th of Feb
ruary, and remained until the 13 th of March, staying over
Lincoln's inauguration, of which I was a witness. An in
tensely interesting period, we all in a way realized its nature.
And yet I now wonder at our lack of prescience and general
incapacity, North and South, to realize even in a remote
degree the imminence as well as magnitude of the impend
ing catastrophe. Something would surely happen to avert
it! We didn't know what — we couldn't even suggest a
"something"; but we clung to the childish belief all the
same. Consequently, neither as a whole nor as individuals
did we make any preparation. Perhaps it was just as well;
and yet there was the flag flying over Fort Sumter, with the
eyes of the whole country directed that way! Still, I cannot
now but wonder at my own purblindness; for I was at the
time in position to know fairly well what was going on, be
ing in close contact with prominent men, and an interested
if not a keen observer. Of course I had no share in events or
influence over them — no one that I know of did. We were,
as I now see, drifting — drifting into an inevitable and close
impending war; but this we could not realize, and every day
brought with it reports, doubts, hopes and fears. My record
of that period was quite complete, what with diary and let
ters, and has now an historical value of the lesser sort; for
it shows what the plan, so far as they had one, of Seward
and my father was, as they groped their way along. My

Washington, 1861 73
father and Governor Seward had by this time been brought
into close cooperation. Their policy was simple, and, as I
still see it, eminently sensible — though based on an entire
misapprehension of the facts, and fore-doomed to failure.
f Their scheme was to divide the South, by conciliating the
,; northern tier of Slave States, including Virginia especially;
and, holding them loyal until the tide of reaction, setting in,
should drive the seceding States into a false position from
which they would ultimately be compelled to recede. All
winter the immediate effort had been to gain time until the
Government had been transferred to the newly elected
Administration. This essential point had been practically
assured through the Virginia election. The peaceable inau
guration of Lincoln was now practically certain; the next
question was as to the policy he would adopt when he be
came President. The working theory of my father and of
Seward was that the less extreme Slave States — notably
Virginia — were in a condition of senseless panic from fear
of something terrible intended — some invasion of their
constitutional rights, they did not well know what; but, if
Lincoln could be safely inaugurated and his Administration
set quietly in motion without any overt act of force having
taken place on either side, it was not unreasonable to hope
this groundless fear would gradually subside, and a strong
and rising Union reaction could be anticipated. The ques
tion would then settle itself, without bloodshed; and once
for all. Wholly mistaken, as the result showed, it was still,
at that stage of trouble-development, the only sound the
ory to work on, at any rate until the possession of the
Government was secured. Meanwhile, Lincoln's attitude
was wholly unknown. His every movement was jealously

74 Charles Francis Adams
watched; his utterances closely followed. In Washington,
the Republican party was divided between the extremists
and coercionists — of whom Sumner and Chase were the
exponents; and the conciliators and opportunists — of whom
Seward and my father were chief. With which side would
Lincoln be allied? That, North and South, was the question.
That winter I saw in Washington a great deal of Seward,
and I still think he was then at his best — truly a statesman.
The secession movement had by its force, volume and in
tensity taken him by surprise. Failing correctly to appre
ciate conditions, he had shown that he was not a statesman
of the first order; but still his attitude, bearing and utter
ances were statesmanlike. Awaiting final developments, he
was conciliatory, patient, and, outwardly, cool and confi
dent. He had formulated a policy based on the careful
avoidance of a collision and bloodshed until there had been
ample time allowed for reflection and the saving second-
thought. The course of subsequent events showed that he
was wholly wrong in basing any hopes on this misconcep
tion of the real attitude and feelings of the South; but, on
the other hand, they also showed that the day of compro
mise was over, and that the attitude of conciliation, while it
might gain valuable time, endangered nothing.
In point of fact, as was found out in the following April,
Seward was laboring under a total misconception of the real
facts in the case and of the logic of events. If, however, he
had been endowed with the prophetic gift and read the fu
ture as an open book, I do not now see that his policy or line
of conduct at this juncture would have been other than
they were in any essential aspect. It was a period of crys
tallization, North and South; and any attempt at decisive

Washington, 1861 75
action on either side would have been premature and dis
astrous. A more far-seeing statesman would, perhaps, have
occupied himself, very quietly, in the work of preparation,
observing the course of events and — biding his time! But
this again was, practically, the course pursued; the Execu
tive Government was still in the old hands — untransf erred;
Congress was composed largely of future Confederates; and
whatever was done had to be done through the States. So,
even now, I cannot see any error or weakness in Seward's
attitude and policy. My father acted in close harmony with
him; totally misapprehending, he also, the nature of the sit
uation, and wholly failing to realize the intensity of the forces
at work. Since the election, Lincoln had hitherto main
tained a Sphinxlike silence. He was still at Springfield, while
Seward, understood to be the coming Secretary of State, had
found himself compelled to formulate such a policy as he
might, without any means of knowing the mind of his fu
ture chief, or forecasting his policy and action.
Thus when, in February, 1861, 1 reached my father's house
there, the situation in Washington was about as chaotic
as was possible, I see it all now; then it was inscrutable
to the best informed or the wisest. The simple fact was that
the ship was drifting on the rocks of a lee shore; nothing
could save it; this, however, was something none of us could
bring ourselves to believe. We still clung to a delusive hope
that the coming change of commanders would alter the
whole aspect of the situation, and we would work clear.
Meanwhile, where and what sort of a man was the new com
mander? That conundrum was foremost in all minds. Abra
ham Lincoln was an absolutely unknown quantity; and yet
he was the one possible Deus ex machina !

76 Charles Francis Adams
The President-elect had left Springfield on the nth. In
the interim his silence had been broken; he had been doing
a good deal of talking. The whole value of my record of
those days lies in its giving the spirit of the passing time,
the daily fluctuating hopes and fears of a critical and most
exciting period.
I reached Washington on the afternoon of Tuesday, the
19th of February. My father's house on K Street North
west, near Pennsylvania Avenue, was full; so I was quar
tered in lodgings at Jost's, on Pennsylvania Avenue — the
place, by the way, where Russell, of the London Times, lived
shortly after, and from the windows of which he observed
the condition of Washington's main thoroughfare in the
days succeeding Bull Run. My brother Henry was acting
as secretary to my father, and he also was living at Jost's,
where he met me on my arrival. A little later on he wrote
his own contemporaneous account of these events; and this
account I, just fifty years later, communicated to the Massa
chusetts Historical Society; 1 and what I there said forms
part of the present record.
My own narrative, however, begins at my meeting him
on that Tuesday afternoon in February, 1861. It ran thus:
"I don't know why, but Henry's very presence seemed to
exercise a depressing influence on me. Hardly daring to
put to him a question, I prepared for dinner. We all sat down
[at my father's house] but, somehow or other, while the
talking was fast, all present were evidently blue as indigo.
Evil was in the air; and I felt it. I finally got a clue to the
trouble in a feminine outburst on the mention of our Presi
dent-elect's name, and it became at once apparent that his
1 Proceedings, xliii. 656.

Washington, 1861 77
recent peripatetic oratory on his route to Washington had
by no means served to elevate him in the estimation of the
Adams family circle. Little was said, however, until dinner
was over; when, at last, my father gave mouth. Temporarily,
it then appeared, the fat was all in the fire. He did not hesi
tate to say that, ten days before, the whole game was in
Seward's hands; but now it was surrendered again to the
chapter of accidents. The difficulty was wholly owing to
Lincoln's folly in not consulting with his official advisers,
but saying whatever came into his head. Thus he was divid
ing his party deplorably — destroying the chance of union
in action. Seward's position had thus been made lament
able; for, with his strength exhausted, he was surrounded
by opponents, friends and foes; and here now was Lincoln,
without consultation or understanding with Seward, and
with no apparent regard for the policy indicated by him,
showing an ignorance as complete as lamentable of the posi
tion of public affairs, fomenting dissensions and jealousies
already too formidable. Jeopardizing, in fact, the only hope
of the country's salvation. The present indications were
that the extremists — the Sumners and Greeleys — had
prevailed, and that Seward had been thrown overboard.
In which case, my father did not hesitate to say that he
expected war within sixty days."
His prophecy on the whole
Was fair enough as prophesyings go;
At fault a little in detail, but quite
Precise enough in the main; and hereupon
I pay due homage.
In point of fact, and as afterwards appeared, Seward was
not thrown over, and Lincoln had not joined the extremists;

7 8 Charles Francis Adams
but we did have war in exactly fifty-three days from that
talking. My record then goes on: "Later in the evening I
had quite a long talk to the same effect. He [my father] told
me that a few days before Governor Hicks, of Maryland,
Andrew Johnson, and Cassius M. Clay had offered to an
swer for their States on the basis of the propositions of the •
Committee of Thirty-three; and that Mr. Rives, of the Vir
ginia State Senate, had told him that, upon those proposi
tions, they could carry every Virginia district in the spring
election; but, in consequence of the developments of the
last few days the whole aspect of affairs had changed, and
Seward was at that time more depressed than he had been
previously during the whole Winter — in fact no man in
Washington then knew where he was standing. I walked
home, blue enough. The very knowledge of the military
preparations going on all about gave me in the darkness a
feeling almost approaching fear. In my letters I had all
winter long noted the sudden and violent transitions from
extreme exultation to the depth of despair; but I had not
learnt from experience. I now felt as much in doubt as if
this had been my first experience of a panic, and asked
myself in vain — Where is it all to end? The issue seemed
made up, and the result in the worst possible hands — those
of the Virginia Convention. We sat in Jost's discussing the
gloomy aspect of affairs until long after midnight; but,
though I felt that my nerves had received a considerable
shock, I did not notice that my night's sleep was troubled."
I had gone on to Washington in company with Arthur
Dexter of Boston (H. U. 1851), a grandson of Samuel Dexter,
Secretary of War in the Cabinet of John Adams, and then
on intimate terms with my family generally. Two days after

Washington, 1861 79
our arrival we went together to the Capitol, and I sent in
my cards to Mr. Sumner and Governor Seward, not having
seen the last since I left his house at Auburn, in the previous
October. "Sumner came out almost immediately, greeting
me most cordially, and at once invited us round to the cloak
room. On the way we passed a rather tall, strongly built
man, with black hair and a swarthy complexion, who,
Sumner said, was Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, and imme
diately introduced me to him. Mr. Johnson shook hands
with me, and at once referred to the fact that he had formerly
sat next to my grandfather in the House of Representatives,
occupied his seat during his first illness, and seen him fall in
his last. Mr. Johnson's manners are quite gentle, though
slightly formal. He has a deep, black eye, and, with his
somewhat neat black clothes and clean-shaven face, looks,
physically and intellectually, like a strong man. While
talking with him, I turned round and my eyes fell on Seward,
just coming out of one of the side doors in the lobby. There
he was, the same small, thin, sallow man, with the pale,
wrinkled, strongly marked face — plain and imperturbable
— the thick, guttural voice and the everlasting cigar. Yet
it was immediately apparent that his winter's cares had told
on him, for he looked thin and worn, and ten years older
than when I had left him at Auburn. I went into the cloak
room, and sat down with Sumner; but, seeing Wilkinson, of
Minnesota, in the Senate-chamber, I sent in for him. The
conversation soon turned on the one topic of the day, and
for the first time I realized that I was in Washington, and
how intense was the excitement and how bitter the feeling.
It was immediately apparent that all these men had been
brooding over the questions at issue and dwelling on them

80 Charles Francis Adams
till their minds had lost their tone, and become morbid.
They were in fact now the last men in the country to be
entrusted with responsibility. The conversation was long,
interesting and excited. Wilkinson was riding the high blood-
and-thunder horse; but, after uttering one or two excited
platitudes about Major Anderson and 'the traitors,' and
looking somewhat surprised when I remarked that 'all that
might do very well for the hustings but would n't go down
with me,' he subsided." I ought, by the way, to say here
that, while in the Northwest with Seward in September, I
had seen a great deal of Wilkinson, and quite intimately;
and had "sized him up." He was no grave or potent Senator
to me; and he knew it well enough. But to return to my
diary. Wilkinson subsided; but "not so Sumner. I had
heard that he was excited, but his manner and language
amazed me. He talked like a crazy man, orating, gesticu
lating, rolling out deep periods in theatrical, whispered tones,
— repeating himself, and doing everything but reason. He
began by remarking in a deep, low voice and with earnest
gestures that 'the session was drawing to a close, and the
only question of real practical statesmanship before it had
not been touched and would not be touched — that was the
treatment to be accorded to the seceding States — the only
question of true statesmanship.' I suggested that this ques
tion was not at all a new one; that secession was but another
name for revolution; and, accordingly, it was but the old
question of the treatment of revolution, and nothing more!
This idea seemed rather to stagger him, and he passed on
to talk of what he called 'the compromisers' — meaning
Seward and my father. In less than five minutes, however,
he was back on his old topic of 'the one true question of real

Washington, 1861 8 1
statesmanship'; and this he kept reiterating, each time more
excitedly until our conversation came to a close. I soon saw
that reason was out of the question, and the only course for
me was to hold my tongue, letting him run down. Still, I
could not resist the temptation now and again to put a spoke
in his wheel; but it was not possible to throw him off the
track, he merely gave a bump and a jerk, and went on fiercer
in his utter disregard of logic and policy. His attack was on
Seward and 'the compromisers'; 'he had thought of this
matter in the daytime, and lay awake over it whole nights;
it was all clear to him; to him, his path was as clear as day,'
and then he reverted with a jolt to 'the one question.'
'Seward,' he went on, 'did not realize the true position of
affairs; he had been demented all the session, and the film
had not yet cleared from his eyes. He was demoralizing the
North. If he had but held firmly to his position, and refused
all parley with secessionists, all would have been well. An
appeal should have been made to the loyal, Union-loving
feeling of the border Slave States, and all would have been
well.' 'Seward,' he said, 'had read to him his speech, and
to him only of the Senate,' and he then proceeded to orate;
with intense feeling and animated gesticulation, he described
how he 'had pleaded with him, he had prayed him, besought
him, implored him by his past record, his good name, his
memory hereafter' to omit certain passages. Had he done
so, ' assuming the pure ground of his party, the whole North
would have rallied to him; — but now — too late! — too
late ! ' Then he would reiterate : ' I am sure — I am certain —
I see my way so clearly; such a glorious victory was before
us; right was with us, God was with us — our success was
sure did we only hold firmly to our principles.' Once I lost

8 2 Charles Francis Adams
my patience, and attempted to stop the conversation as not
likely to lead to any good result; but at this he got angry,
and said that I was discussing, not he; that I began it; and
then he went straight on, for, evidently, he could think of
nothing else. It was very painful. The man talked so with
out reason, and almost without connection; and yet he gave
me distinctly to understand that he alone could now guide
affairs; that Seward was a mere politician vainly trying to
deal with great issues. I was disgusted, shocked and morti
fied; the more because of Dexter's presence, who entertains
for Sumner a pet aversion. Finally Seward came out; and
what a relief it was! Thin and pale, but calm, gentle and
patient, he was as philosophical as ever, as pleasant and
companionable; and I now realized his position. With a
formidable enemy in front and such allies around — foolish,
positive, angry — it was a general-of-division in battle, his
reserves used up and waiting for reinforcements — praying
for night or Bliicher. And meanwhile, Lincoln, his Bliicher,
was perambulating the country, kissing little girls and grow
ing whiskers ! We talked for a few moments only, as he was
quite busy. He said that half the men there — indicating
the Senate-chamber — were intent on pulling the house
down, and he was merely trying to prevent them; that he
was very much occupied, for the women and children of the
whole South were writing to him, and looking to him for
protection. "As we walked home, we passed the artillery. It was the
first time I had seen them. Washington is almost in a state
of siege. Every morning and evening I hear from my room
the bugles and drums of no less than three companies quar
tered almost within a stone's throw of us."

Washington, 1861 83
Such is a copy made in 1900 of my contemporaneous
record of a very noticeable talk, and one the painful impres
sion created by which at the time it took place is still vivid
in memory; for it was disillusioning. Even now I can see
Sumner's eyes gleaming with something distinctly suggestive
of insanity, as he rolled out his oratorical periods. He was
plainly off his balance, nor did I ever again feel towards him
as before. Of my record, made at the time, I forgot the
existence. The deluge of the Civil War had swept over my
recollection, obliterating every trace of it, until in 1900 I had
occasion to recur to it. It then threw additional light on a
subject I have twice had occasion to discuss — once in my
Life of Dana, and again in that of my father. I shall have to
discuss it once more. In my Dana, I see, I gave to Mr. Dana
at the time an account of this conversation almost exactly
as I now find it in my diary.1 Since doing so I have frequently
tried to make out some theory which would afford a reason
able explanation of Sumner's attitude. What policy did he
propose? What course of action was it that was so clear to
him? — that would result so immediately in a glorious vic
tory? It is most unfortunate that when then in Washington
I was not a little older, and did not have a good deal more
tact and objectiveness. Had I been so blessed, I might have
learned and recorded — for I was industrious enough with
my pen, recording indeed at great length — many things now
of interest. Sumner's brain was at that time super-heated,
his nervous system over-loaded. When he got in that condi
tion, and in February, 1861, he was so almost continuously,
he seemed surcharged with rhetoric. His voice vibrated with
a tremulous depth, he orated, he laid down the law. Had I
1 Life of Richard Henry Dana, n. 252.

84 Charles Francis Adams
only had the sense to invite him to do so, he would have dis
closed the heart of his mystery. As it is I have had to piece
together a plausible hypothesis.
I understood the position of Wilkinson at that crisis. It
was as simple as it was senseless. He wanted to fight "the
traitors " then and there, regardless of conditions. That the
machinery of government was still in the hands of the old
regime, that we had neither army nor navy, that a precipi
tate act would bring on a premature crisis — none of these
things did he take into account. He was just mad; and he
wanted to get at the "traitors." The course he suggested
was not sensible; but it could be understood. Not so Sumner.
What curious hallucination did he then have in his head?
What was he driving at when he orated and reiterated his
"one question of true statesmanship, which had not even
been touched" ? What was that proposed mysterious treat
ment of the seceding States ? This question has interested me,
because it was here that my father broke with Sumner, and
their intimacy ceased for good. After that, I never met him
again on the old footing. Either he had become perverted
or I had developed. Possibly both.
When I wrote the Life of Dana this problem did not occur
to me. When Sumner discoursed to me in Washington,
Secession was in my thought simply Revolution; and, so, a
very simple thing. It, later, became such in Sumner's mind,
as in every one else's. But how was it with him at the earlier
period — the intensely interesting educational period which
immediately preceded the crisis ? What did he have in mind
when declaiming to me and Dexter that morning in the
Senate ante-chamber? As the result of much puzzling and
piecing together I think I afterwards reached a correct so-

Washington, 1861 85
lution of the psychological puzzle. That Sumner was an
agitator, a rhetorician and a theorist — in a word, an ego
tistical doctrinaire — is well understood. As such he was
devoid of hard common sense and true sagacity of insight.
He saw every situation through his feelings, often over
excited, and he evolved his facts from his inner conscious
ness. His mind had dwelt on the issues which now presented
themselves, waking and sleeping, until he had ceased to be
a reasoning being; and his friends at times feared for his
sanity.1 His mission was to denounce Seward, and, if possi
ble, force him from public life. He openly declared Seward
ready to sell us out. In February, 1861, he was actually
haunted with fear of some compromise. In point of fact the
time for compromise was past; that any clear-sighted, well-
informed man should have seen, and ceased to concern him
self with the thought of it. Sumner still regarded it as the
one great danger. The policy he had in mind — concerning
the results of which he felt such absolute certainty of con
viction — was in reality based on an hallucination and a
complete misapprehension of the facts of the situation.
His idea was that the Republican party should take what
he called a lofty moral stand. Firm, absolutely unyielding, it
should use no word of conciliation, much less make any
suggestion of compromise. It should, on the contrary, go
straight forward in its course; and then came in his utter
inability to comprehend the slave-holding character and the
situation in the South. He fully believed that "firmness,"
as he called it, was all that was necessary; in its presence
they would yield, like petulant, passionate children, prone
to violence. He looked upon the whole slave-holding class as
1 Life of Dana, 11. 258.

86 Charles Francis Adams
a combination of ruffianism and bluster, whiskey-drinking
and tobacco-chewing. In dealing with them "firmness" was
essential; by them, any word of concession would be con
strued into an indication of fear or symptom of weakness,
and do infinite mischief. When, in June, 1861, Russell, of
the Times, got back to Washington from his trip through the
Confederacy he pronounced Mr. Sumner as " ignorant of the
whole condition of things below Mason and Dixon's line as
he was of the politics of Timbuctoo." l So in February —
three months previous — he derived his confidence from the
wholly imaginary condition of affairs, evolved from his own
inner consciousness. As he implied in his talk with me, he
believed fully in the existence of a strong Union sentiment —
a really predominating sentiment — in all the border Slave
States. That sentiment he considered was "debauched," as
he expressed it, or, more properly, demoralized by any word
of conciliation. Those entertaining it "besought us" not so
to weaken them. If, on the contrary, the "slaveocracy" was
met with absolutely unyielding firmness the people now
cowed by it would assert themselves, and the "slaveocracy"
would yield. But how about the seceding States — those
below South Carolina and bordering on the Gulf? There was
where his question — "the only question" — of "true states
manship" came in; and there was my cause of mystification.
He never intimated to me, but his solution of that difficulty
was "to let them go," he "would not lift a finger to retain
them." We would be well rid of them and their slavery.
This explanation of his theory never suggested itself to me
at the time of our conversation, and I only became aware of
it recently in reading Russell's Diary 2 and YarnelPs Recol-
1 My Diary, 11. 121. 2 1. 80.

Washington, 1861 87
lections, x but it accounts for all he said in the talk I have
narrated. His theory was that, in presence of a display of
absolute firmness at Washington, the border States would,
in the end, adhere to the Union, and the Gulf States, after a
sufficient exhibition of bluster and rhodomontade, resulting
in their secession, would come back into the Union on our
own terms. So, let them go; there need be no war. Only be
"firm" and it would in the near future be a complete and
glorious triumph; only Seward's and my father's weakness
now jeopardized it. No sillier figment ever gained footing
in agitator's imagination; that subsequent events demon
strated to him. The supposed Union sentiment did not exist
in the border Slave States ; it was both the intention and in
the power of the extreme Slave States to precipitate a conflict;
the possession of the National Capital would, as he well
knew, be in dispute. Such, however, was in February, 1861,
the policy which Charles Sumner felt absolutely certain
would afford a plain and easy way to glorious and permanent
victory! As I look back on it — recalling those days of doubt and
pain — we were all wrong; a band of men — anxious, ex
cited, blind or blind-folded — some passionate and vindic
tive; ready, ripe for blows, all groping their way to a dreaded
result; but Sumner was the most wrong and the blindest of
the whole throng; though by all odds the most certain in his
own clearness of vision and knowledge of the facts. Seward
and my father were in his belief wrong; for they fixed their
eyes on the change of administration, and looked no further,
confidently believing that a reaction would then set in, and
reason reassert itself. Seward so told Russell, of the Times,
1 Yarnell, Recollections, 8.

8 8 Charles Francis Adams
speaking with perfect confidence only five days before
Sumter: " the States would come back at the rate of one a
month."1 The "compromisers," as Sumner called them,
referring always to Seward and my father, but who in reality
were Crittenden and the supporters of his East-and-West
line project, were so very wrong as to call for no comment;
for the Southern extremists — let alone the Northern Re
publicans — would not consider it, and were intent on a
separate, slave-holding nationality, and nothing short of
that. The day for compromise on that basis was wholly past.
On the other hand, the Northern extremists were wrong, for
they, after the manner of my friend, Wilkinson, wholly
underestimated their enemy. On the whole, therefore, up to
this point — the change of administration — Seward and
my father were the coolest and wisest counsellors. They
were wrong in their understanding of the ultimate and funda
mental facts of the situation; but their error implied no con
sequences. They proposed to get possession of the machinery
of the Government; that was absolutely essential. That
secured, they counted on a sullen but undemonstrative atti
tude on the part of the seceded States, and a strong and
increasing reaction in the border States; and, if in this they
proved mistaken, a policy of another character must then be
shaped to meet events as they developed. In such case the
true course could not yet be foreseen. That was the only
statesmanship possible in the situation as it then was; and
the event fully justified it.
Unfortunately for Seward, following this wise policy until
the close of April, when he then at last found his hopes van
ishing; when, plainly, no reaction in the border States was
1 My Diary, i. 103; n. 113.

Washington, 1861 89

to be longer hoped for, and the problem of the Southern forts
pressed for an immediate solution — could, indeed, no longer
be deferred — then, one day, Seward lost his head. He
found himself fairly beyond his depth; and he plunged! The
foreign-war panacea took possession of him; and he yielded
to it. Then, once for all, he showed himself unequal to the
great occasion; his limitations became apparent. The fact is,
as I now see him, Seward was an able, a specious and adroit,
and a very versatile man; but he escaped being really great.
He made a parade of philosophy, and by it I was very effec
tually deceived; but it was not the genuine article. It was,
on the contrary, something else — stuff of a very flimsy tex
ture. Seward was not well grounded either in learning or in
the facts surrounding him — did not have a strong, firm
grasp. He was, after all, as men instinctively felt, more of a
politician than a statesman. Perhaps my own impression
could best be conveyed — looking back on him now through
the perspective of forty years — by saying that he was an
adroit politician and pseudo-statesman, having in him a dash
of the philosopher. He was patient, good-tempered, tolerant,
and a great believer in his countrymen and their institutions.
Sumner, on the other hand, I knew better. He was a very
considerable historical figure — the most considerable in
Massachusetts during my time. As I have already said, a
theorist, agitator and rhetorician, a doctrinaire with no real
insight into men and conditions, Sumner was a tremendous
egotist and woefully lacking in plain common sense. Strange
to say, by no means a bad politician, he was no statesman.
Intolerant to the last degree when any issue he had at heart
was involved, he was as a Senator great, and, in many
respects, ideal. He was there essentially a round peg in a

90 Charles Francis Adams
round hole; and he filled the hole, also, though by no means
a small one.
To return, however, to myself and the narrative of 1861.
My father was more fortunate than Seward. Absolutely
right and wise in his course up to the change of administra
tion, he then ceased to have any connection with the conduct
of home affairs. When the reaction he had so confidently
counted on failed to develop, and a new policy had to be
devised, he was wrong in his inclination; for he failed to see
that the time for action had at last come, and the issue must
be met. He favored the abandonment of Sumter. His horror
of civil war was such that I find myself at a loss to fix the
point at which he would have made a stand. I am not at all
sure he would not have concluded that a peaceable separation
was best. This, however, is and was a mere abstract proposi
tion. A peaceable separation, involving as it did the border
States and the National Capital, was out of the question. Had
my father remained in public life in Washington, he would
have found his course marked out for him in his own despite,
as did the others. On one point, however, I am clear: he
never would have been a victim of Seward's foreign-war delu
sion. No more so in Washington than he was in London.
I left off on the 21st of February. On the 22d, a dull,
murky day, Henry and I dined at Arlington, with the family
of General Lee. He was not there, and I never had even a
glance at him; though, possibly, I may have seen him one
day shortly after, as I was riding away from Arlington after
a morning call. If I did, he was going up the Avenue in a
carriage, just returned from Texas; and he looked at my
sister and myself from the window — curiously — a military,
handsome man, with a short, grey beard. The dinner at

Washington, 1861 9 1
Arlington was interesting, and I remember it well. One of
General Lee's sons1 had been a classmate of Henry's at
Harvard. A daughter, Miss Agnes, I thought extremely
attractive. We had some young officers of artillery there.
A few months later we were all arrayed against each other;
and I fancy there must have been fully half-a-dozen future
generals and colonels about the Arlington table that day.
The following evening I went to a reception at Mrs.
Eames's, then the salon of Washington. I there met J. J.
Crittenden and Governor Morehead, of Kentucky, both
in Washington in attendance on the time-consuming, but
otherwise futile, Peace Conference. "As good specimens of
the Kentucky gentleman as one often meets; large, with
white heads, stout, burly figures, and those elaborately
polite but very formal manners so common with Southern
gentlemen. I had more or less talk with both; and, I must
say, I was more impressed by their appearance than by what
they said. They seemed possessed with the Southern idea
that cotton is all in all; and they actually told me that the
South neither wished nor intended to be more prosperous
than now, or to produce anything but cotton; 'they were,
Sir, the most prosperous people on the face of the Globe, Sir,'
etc., etc. And this is much the sort of stuff now talked in
Washington by most Southern men."
On the 25 th I was in the gallery of the House. The report
of the Committee of Thirty-three was under discussion. I
took a deep interest in the fate of the recommendations con
tained in that report, being as purblind as all the rest in
regard to the small importance of all things then under dis
cussion; and those opposed to them were having recourse to
1 William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (1837-1891).

92 Charles Francis Adams
dilatory tactics. So I recorded that I was made "almost
crazy by the indecision and lack of force of the old owl of a
Speaker [Pennington]. The fate of the country seemed hang
ing in the balance, and the dolt had not force to drive busi
ness ahead. As I fidgetted in the galleries, I groaned in
spirit: 'Oh! for one hour of Banks!' Finally, despairing of
action, I turned my steps homeward. On the way I saw
Governor Seward, and joining him, walked up the Avenue.
He was rather more neatly dressed than usual, and seemed
quite cheerful, as he walked along, holding his light bamboo
cane by both hands in front of him across his legs, watching
everything that went on in the Avenue, and talking inces
santly. I left him at his door, going to dine 'with some
friends' at Willard's — of course, the President-elect."
During this visit to Washington I made my first acquaint
ance with that Virginia country, with which I was destined
shortly after to become so drearily familiar. In fact, I never
approached such a knowledge of Massachusetts as, between
1862 and 1864, I acquired of Virginia from the Potomac to
the James. And now, on a cantering horse, I enjoyed greatly
scampering over the country, noting "its miserable popu
lation, its half-tilled farms and hardly passable roads; its
deserted houses, the benighted inhabitants of the houses not
deserted, and the wretched cultivation. I could not but
deplore the fact that so fine a portion of our heritage was
cursed with slavery."
The evening of the 28th I passed with Andrew Johnson,
whose acquaintance I had made in the Senate waiting-room
a few days before. Johnson was then at the highest point
of his reputation. A Southern Unionist, a "poor white " of
Eastern Tennessee, who, by native energy, had elevated

Washington, 1861 93
himself to the Senate, he was holding his own there against
Davis and all the representatives of Sumner's "Slaveocracy,"
who were trying in vain to dragoon him. It was not given us
to look into the future, and see Andrew Johnson as he later
on exhibited himself from the unfortunate altitude to which
Booth's pistol elevated him. In February, 1861, he bore
himself very gallantly in a most trying position. And so I
wisely called on him, with a view to better acquaintance. "I
found him at home in his hotel, stived up in one miserable
room, littered with folded speeches and copies of public docu
ments, and otherwise containing a bed and some scanty
chamber furniture. He received me cordially, and introduced
me to his son, a by no means distinguished-looking specimen
of the young Tennesseean. As we talked, he paced slowly up
and down the room, or sat facing me, speaking slowly and
very carefully, with force though not with much feeling.
We first discussed a convention election which had just been
held in North Carolina, with the result of which he was
greatly elated, though to evince feeling one way or the other
is evidently no part of his philosophy. The great thing about
the man is evidently his nerve — his apparent force and cool
ness in a position of danger. I spoke to him of his colleague,
Nicholson. 'I can't,' he said, 'speak with freedom of my
colleague because of our position; but when I became con
vinced that this conspiracy existed, it seemed to me very
desirable that we should act together, and I consulted him.
But I soon found that he had been swept away in the general
current. When I spoke to him, Sir, there was dismay depicted
on that man's countenance.' 'But,' he went on to add,
' though I can't speak of him personally, I will make a general
remark, with no particular application: there are, you know,

94 Charles Francis Adams
some men of a nature so selfish and conceited that they can't
take a broad, generous view of any subject; and so mean
and cowardly that they dare not pursue it if they could.' Of
Sumner, he said that he knew him slightly — enough to
exchange ordinary civilities; but he seemed to him on the
present issues to be morbid and diseased, in fact, actually
crazy. The feeling towards him on the Democratic side of
the Senate he described as one of rather 'contempt' than
anything else. He talked freely of political questions, agree
ing with me that no remark had ever been more ingeniously
misconstrued and misrepresented than Seward's 'irrepressi
ble conflict'; and he admitted that slavery was, as an insti
tution, opposed to the spirit of Christianity. The constitu
tional amendment framed by my father [and which Lincoln
expressly approved in his inaugural of the following week]
he said was enough for him to go home on, and sustain
himself in Tennessee. He then went off on the'secession con
spiracy. He declared that nearly all the Senators from the
South were parties to it, and he was afraid that Breckenridge
and 'Joe' Lane were both of them in it. He was most amus
ingly severe over the secession of Floridal 'There's that
Yulee,' he said, 'miserable little cuss! I remember him in
the House ¦ — the contemptible little Jew — standing there
and begging us — yes ! begging us to let Florida in\as a State.
Well! we let her in, and took care of her, and fought her
Indians; and now that despicable little beggar stands up in
the Senate and talks about her rights.' Towards Jews, he
evidently felt a strong aversion; for, after finishing^Tvith^
Yulee he began on Benjamin, exclaiming: 'There's another
Jew — that miserable Benjamin ! He looks on a country and
a government as he would on a suit of old clothes. He sold

Washington, 1861 95

out the old one; and he would sell out the new if he could in
so doing make two or three millions.' The seceded States,
he said, must come back; the remote and northern portions
of the States would, he declared, pass other ordinances, and
bring them back. He denounced Wigfall, of Texas, as 'a
damned blackguard,' who hadn't a cent; and 'that's his way!
the strongest secessionists never owned the hair of a nigger.'
His conclusion was that somebody would be, and ought to
be, hanged for all this. I was with him about an hour and
a half, and left, considerably edified by Andrew Johnson."
On Sunday, March 3d, the day preceding Lincoln's inaugu
ration, I called on the Sewards in the afternoon. "I found
them at dinner; but Governor Seward's son chanced to be in
the hall, and he urged me so strongly that I went in and
joined them at the dinner-table. There I found, much to my
gratification, General King, of Milwaukee [one of my travel
ling companions during the trip of the previous summer], and
also General James Watson Webb, of the New York Courier
and Enquirer, besides some Auburn friends of Governor
Seward's. He was comparatively quiet, and seemed less ex
uberant in spirit than usual; but almost the only thing he
did say caused with me a long breath of relief. Referring to
the coming inaugural, he remarked that he had been reading
it, and that while it would satisfy the whole country, it more
than covered all his [Seward's] heresies."
Seward at the same time made another remark which,
though I failed to note it down at the time, made an impres
sion on me, and I have since often repeated it, and noticeably
in some remarks I made at the meeting of the Historical
Society in 1909, on the observance of Lincoln's Centennial.1
1 Proceedings, xlii. 145-54.

96 Charles Francis Adams
I there put on file my recollections of that mid-day Wash
ington Sunday dinner of 1 861. Seward then said, referring
to Lincoln and his intercourse with him: "The President has
a curious vein of sentiment running through his thought,
which is his most valuable mental attribute." Long subse
quent events gave a noticeable significance to those words,
and caused me to bear them freshly in recollection. They
showed, in my opinion, not only considerable insight, but a
most creditable spirit of appreciation on Seward's part. Few
men in public life, then or now, would have noticed the
attribute at all; and the few who did would, most of them,
have taken it as an element of weakness. It was one of not a
few casual remarks of Seward in those days which have
caused me to realize that, with all his "outs," he was after
all a man of finer fibre than the rest.
Lincoln's inauguration (Monday) came with a sudden
change of weather. The sun shone brightly, but a strong
wind carried on it clouds of that Washington dust, which,
then much more than now — for the streets were not yet
asphalted — was wont to render walking detestable on days
of early March. I wrote two accounts of what took place;
one in my diary, which, however, was rather short, as I also
wrote for publication a long descriptive letter, printed a few
days later in the Boston Transcript} It was dated March
4th. From the Senate gallery I saw Lincoln walk in, arm in
arm with Buchanan, and the two seated themselves in front
of the desk of the Vice-President. And, " in spite of the wry
neck and dubious eye, the outgoing President was," to my
mind, "undeniably the more presentable man of the two;
his tall, large figure, and white head, looked well beside Mr.
1 March 7, over the signature of "Conciliator."

Washington, 1861 97
Lincoln's lank, angular form and hirsute face; and the dress
of the President-elect did not indicate that knowledge of the
proprieties of the place which was desirable." Then followed
the inaugural, delivered from "the miserable scaffold" on
the east front before "a vast sea, not exactly of upturned
human faces, but of hats and shirt-bosoms of all descrip
tions." Of the inaugural, I did not hear one word; for I was
standing on a projection of the unfinished Senate wing of the
Capitol, watching the scene, and was thus too far removed.
But "Mr. Lincoln's delivery struck me as good; for it was
quiet, with but little gesture and small pretence of oratory;
the audience did not strike me as very enthusiastic — not
such as they tell us hailed Jackson when he stood on the same
steps on the occasion of the first invasion of Washington by
the hordes of the youthful West — but it was silent, atten
tive, appreciative, and wonderfully respectable and orderly.
At length a louder and more prolonged cheer announced that
the inaugural was delivered. The Chief Justice administered
the oath of office, and the long, eager, anxious struggle was
over. A Republican President was safely inaugurated.
"Not until the ceremony was over did the curious cease
to speculate as to the probabilities of 'a bead being drawn
on Mr. Lincoln,' and the chances of assassination; and the
question was curiously discussed whether the whole South
would not yet furnish one Ravaillac." Now the procession
was re-formed, and the new President was escorted to the
White House. I started for home. As I walked up by way of
F Street and the Patent Office, parallel with Pennsylvania
Avenue, the procession's route, I chanced to meet Mr.
Sumner, and joined him. "He seemed satisfied with the
inaugural, and remarked of it: 'I do not suppose Lincoln had

98 Charles Francis Adams
it in his mind, if indeed he ever heard of it; but the inaugural
seems to me best described by Napoleon's simile of "a hand
of iron and a velvet glove."' At home, on the other hand,
I found my father in high glee over the endorsement that
same inaugural gave him, and he was declaring the party
saved. I also met Winter Davis, who pronounced himself as
ready to stand on the President's position." Thus, that day,
every one was, as Seward predicted they would be, " satisfied."
Returning to my walk home with Mr. Sumner; "all day
I had looked in vain for the tall, commanding figure of
General Scott; he was not in the procession; he was not in
the Senate. As I left the Capitol" and was walking home
ward in company with Mr. Sumner, I came, at one of the
intersecting avenues where a view was obtained in several
directions, "upon a small carriage, drawn by a single horse
and surrounded by mounted staff officers and orderlies, the
whole the centre of a crowd of idlers. It was Scott's carriage,
and in it sat the old General himself, in full uniform, anxiously
observing the procession as it passed in the street beyond,
and holding himself ready for any emergency. What was
now dreaded was, of course, assassination followed by riot
and panic, and an immediate necessity for a display of force;
the fear of a coup de main was passed." Mr. Sumner stopped,
and exchanged greetings with Scott through the open win
dow of his carriage. The old General shook hands with us,
and seemed in high spirits and greatly relieved, as he watched
intently the perfectly quiet progress of events below, on
Pennsylvania Avenue. In his staff were several officers
destined soon to have high rank and participate in great
movements; they also were now in high spirits — satisfied
with themselves, and feeling that the situation was well in

Washington, 1861 99
hand. We walked in a street converging with the movement
of the procession, which, at length, "enveloped in its cloud
of dust, reached the White House, and I drew a long breath
when I saw Mr. Lincoln leave his carriage; and turned away
confident that the last danger was passed."
We all, the hope being father of the thought, had then
nursed ourselves into a feverish faith, and anxious rather
than real belief that, with a peaceful inauguration, the crisis
would be really in safety "passed," and I closed this letter
of mine in that spirit. "From this time," I wrote, "the
secession experiment, I believe, will die away, and the Union
feeling rise almost visibly, day by day, unless again the seces
sion feeling is revived by some sort of strange folly on the
part of the Administration. Within the last few days I have
conversed with many men from the South, including even
South Carolina, and all announce a better, kinder state of
feeling, needing only gentleness and conciliation to ripen into
Union." The one fact to which we then pinned our faith in
an ultimate peaceful solution was in the avoidance as yet of
any act of overt violence resulting in the shedding of blood.
Until this should actually occur we nourished a hope, amount
ing almost to a faith, that, somehow or other, it was fated
not to occur. Yet all the time we were conscious that we
were drifting with neither guidance nor control. It was a
period of anxious suspense; a fading reliance on "something."
A few days later, I attended the new President's first
evening levee. "A pretty business it was. Such a crush was,
I imagine, never seen in the White House before, on a similar,
or any other, occasion. After two vain attempts to get into
the reception room, Dexter and I resolutely set ourselves in
the main current, and were pushed and squeezed along. It

ioo Charles Francis Adams
was a motley crowd. There they were — the sovereigns;
some in evening dress, others in morning suits; with gloves
and without gloves; clean and dirty; all pressing in the same
direction, and all behaving with perfect propriety. There
was no ill temper; no vulgarity or noise; no rudeness; in spite
of the crowd and discomfort, everything was respectful and
decorous. The sight was one not pleasant to see, and even
less pleasant to participate in; but still good of its kind.
Here, as everywhere, the people governed themselves. At
last, after the breath was nearly out of our bodies, Dexter
and I came in sight of the President — the tall, rapidly
bobbing head of the good 'Abe,' as he shook hands with his
guests, and quickly passed them along. The vastly greater
number he hurried by him; but, when any one he knew came
along, he bent himself down to the necessary level, and
seemed to whisper a few words in the ear, in pleasant, homely
fashion; though not exactly in one becoming our President.
I hurried by as quickly as I could, and retreated into the
rear of the room, there to observe. I stayed about an hour
and a half, meeting Mr. Sumner, Mr. and Mrs. S. A. Douglas
and others, and subsequently, leaving by the south front,
reached home with 'tir'd eye-lids upon tir'd eyes.' "
The following Sunday it accidentally fell in my way to do
an excellent turn to Dr. John G. Palfrey, than whom I may
now say I have never in my life known a more truly esti
mable character. I do not think it is possible for a man to
live more consistently up to conscientious ideals than Dr.
Palfrey did through his whole life. He was almost morbidly
victim to the terrible New England conscience. No man had
sacrificed more than he in his advocacy of the anti-slavery
cause; but wholly unimaginative, he was not sympathetic in

Washington, 1861

101

the human way and altogether the reverse of magnetic.
Kindly, he was of conscience all compact. Very sensitive, he
was in no way self-assertive; and the popular movement had
passed him by. In the day of triumph, he seemed likely to go
unrewarded; buried there at Cambridge, immersed in his
history of New England, but needy and craving recognition.
I had talked with both Sumner and my father about him,
and had written home to ascertain what sort of an appoint
ment would be agreeable to him. As yet, we had been unable
to fix on anything. Sunday, the loth, I called to see Mr.
Sumner at his lodgings — a sitting- and bed-room on F Street,
I think. Presently, after some office-seekers had betaken
themselves away, we began to discuss Dr. Palfrey's case. He
alluded to a letter he had received from him [Palfrey] on the
subject, in which he had spoken of what he would like, but
nothing definite seemed to come out of it all; and then "he
[Sumner] suddenly turned to me, saying: 'By the way, I have
drawn an elephant, and don't know what to do with it.
Yesterday I was at the Post-Office Department, and Mr.
Blair [the Postmaster-General] informed me that the Boston
Post-Office belonged to me, as a Senator living in that city;
and I'm sure I don't know what to do with it.' It seemed
that the postmastership in the place of his residence was a
bit of patronage conceded as a perquisite to a Senator,
though Mr. Sumner was not even aware of the fact, having
always been in opposition. I at once hesitatingly suggested
Dr. Palfrey for the appointment; and, finding it not unfavor
ably received, pressed the idea hard upon him. Feeling that
I had made an impression, I got him to promise to dine with
us." This was a happy stroke on my part; for it had been
Sumner's habit to take his Sunday dinner in a perfectly

102 Charles Francis Adams
informal way at my father's. He came uninvited, but with
absolute regularity, and was always very welcome. When,
however, my father had, during the winter, shown indica
tions of a conciliatory bearing towards the South, Sumner
had discontinued his Sunday dinner practice. So doing was
intensely characteristic. A difference of opinion even on a
question of policy in a man's manners and bearing in the
conduct of the issue on slavery, he then classed with moral
delinquencies. His friendship and family intimacy my
father and mother then valued highly, their personal regard
was almost traditional; and seeing him in a kindly mood, I
now struck in as a conciliator. I knew, also, that my advo
cacy of Dr. Palfrey would be potently seconded by my father.
So I hurried home, and apprised my father of the state of the
case. Presently Sumner came, and that was the last time he
ever sat at my father's table — he who, for over a dozen
years, had been the guest most constant at it. It was, and
to my mind, still is a great pity; and there was no sufficient
reason for a break. However, intent on Palfrey's case, that
day I got Mr. Sumner there once more, and, as it proved, for
the last time. "He was in great feather. Such a wonderful
change I never saw in mortal man. The excitement and other
peculiarities, which had so disgusted me in our previous inter
views during this visit to Washington, had disappeared.
They had vanished wholly under the soothing influence of
success, and beneath the calm dignity of the chairmanship of
the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. He now aired his
new importance; and, in place of his former fierceness, he
roared as gently as a sucking dove. The pleasant way in
which he looked upon propositions, which, only the week
before, were 'compromises' with Hell, was, indeed, beautiful

Washington, 186 i 103
to behold. To-day he was great! He talked of Seward and
the diplomatic corps; and told us all the secrets of the Cabi
net, so far as he knew them; how Mrs. Lincoln wanted to
make a Collector of the Port of Boston, on account of her son
'Bobby,' and had made a naval officer; how disgusted the
diplomatic corps was at the possible nomination of Schurz
to Turin; how Lincoln and Seward had a conversation about
Schurz, in which Seward convinced Lincoln that Schurz
ought not to be sent, and Lincoln sent him to Seward, for
them to fight the matter out together; how the Western
barbarians had invaded the White House, and Mr. Lincoln
was meddling with every office in the gift of the Executive.
Finally, he began on Palfrey, so I took myself off, leaving
him in my father's hands."
That evening I went to the reception at Mrs. Eames's.
"If the President caught it at dinner, his wife caught it at
the reception. All manner of stories about her were flying
around; she wanted to do the right thing, but, not knowing
how, was too weak and proud to ask; she was going to put the
White House on an economical basis, and, to that end, was
about to dismiss 'the help,' as she called the servants; some
of whom, it was asserted, had already left because ' they must
live with gentlefolks'; she had got hold of newspaper report
ers and railroad conductors, as the best persons to go to for
advice and direction. Numberless stories of this sort were
current; and, while Mrs. Lincoln was in a stew, it was obvi
ous that her friends, the Illinoisans, were in a rumpus. Much
fun is brewing in Washington." It was now the dead season
in Washington, or rather, that year, the season of lull before
the fierce bursting of the storm. Congress had dispersed;
and expectancy was in the air, with greedy office-seekers

1 04 Charles Francis Adams
thronging streets and corridors. And such streets and such
corridors ! The unheroic was much in evidence.
We all left Washington on the 13 th. Two evenings before
Seward dined with us. He was now Secretary of State, and
just two weeks later Russell, of the Times, reached Wash
ington and had those conversations with him of which he
has in his My Diary given such a vivid, picturesque resume.
By the 10th of the month the Cabinet complications, which
reached a climax three weeks later, had begun to develop.
The question of mastery was yet to be settled. The President
was an absolutely unknown quantity; so much so that a
little later, as subsequently appeared, Seward invited him
practically to abdicate, delegating full authority to himself.
We, of my father's house, were all ardent Sewardites. We
thought that in him, and the pursuance of the policy he
either had devised, or at the proper time would devise, lay
the single chance of peace and the preservation of the Union.
As I now see it, his usefulness was, however, in fact then over.
He had been of great service, during the interim period, hold
ing things together and tiding over dangerous shoals. This
he had done; but he had done it under an entire misapprehen
sion of the real facts of the situation and with an absolutely
impossible result in view. As I have said, he believed in the
existence of a strong underlying Union sentiment in the
South; he looked forward with confidence to a sharp reaction
of sentiment there, as soon as the people of those States
realized that no harm was intended them; and he nourished
the delusive belief that a recourse to force could be avoided;
that, if it was avoided or postponed, the secession movement
would languish, and gradually die out. Thus he was now
exerting all his influence, greater by far than that of any

Washington, 1861 105

other one man, in a wrong direction. The possession of the
Government having been secured, the true policy to be pur
sued, it is now obvious, was to let events take their course,
inducing or compelling the seceded States to put themselves
in the wrong by assuming the initiative, striking the first
blow. A statesman equal to the occasion and grasping the
situation in its full scope, would undoubtedly have pursued
this course. Gathering his resources, he would have bided his
time, perhaps covertly provoking the blow. But Seward was
no Bismarck, and this was just the course Seward did not
wish to have pursued.
That evening, the nth, he talked freely, and the next day
I incorporated the substance of all he said in a letter printed
shortly after in the Boston Transcript} It is before me now,
pasted in my Scrap-book, and is supplemented by passages
in my diary. Talking in his off-hand way, Seward then
expressed to us, as four weeks later he did to Mr. Russell,2
"the fullest confidence that things were coming out right;
but he at the same time admitted that, three months before,
it was in no way impossible that Jefferson Davis might, at
the time he was speaking to us, have been in possession of
Washington. 'Ever since Congress met,' he said, 'we have
been on a lee shore. The sails have been flapping, and more
than once we have thugged on the bottom; but we have been
making offing all the time, and are now getting safely off shore
and into deep water.' " As Russell the moment he got into
the Confederacy afterwards became satisfied, Seward knew
nothing of the real state of feeling in the South.3 He derived
what little knowledge he had from local and unreliable, or
misinformed, sources. So, this' evening, he did not hesitate
1 March 15. 2 My Diary, 1. 88, 103. 3 lb., 1. 168.

106 Charles Francis Adams
to assert that "the fever of secession" was "fast disappear
ing, before the strong reaction for Union. The political
traitors of that region," he said — "the Hunters, Masons,
Wises, Clingmans and Garnetts — are trembling for their
lives, and their only chance, and they know it, of retaining
their power, lies in the revival of the excitement." The
abandonment of Fort Sumter, he argued, would therefore
not be taken by the South as a sign of weakness, but, on the
contrary, would give "a new and tremendous emphasis to
the now rapidly reviving Union spirit. The true men of
Virginia will, at the close of the coming April, sweep every
representative, even suspected of treason, from the National
Congress, and forewarn the chuckle-headed Mason and
sophistical Hunter of their impending fate; and Virginia
would but set an example to other States. To hold Fort
Sumter longer" was, therefore, "to stop the mouth and palsy
the arm of every Union man, and there are many of them,
throughout the seceded States, for no important end." The
abandonment of Sumter he considered, therefore, "a mere
question of time. It might be done then, and made the basis
of a claim of gratitude by the Administration; or it might be
done thirty days hence as a matter of necessity, and no credit
gained. If we set out to reinforce it, we must join battle
at our weakest point, and the enemy's strongest; our loss
might be heavy, while our gain could not be great." Hence,
I argued in the Transcript, the abandonment was decided
upon, and might be looked for any day. Thus at this stage
of the development of affairs — with a crisis immediately
impending — Seward was pursuing an impossible result in
pursuance of a policy devised under an entire misapprehen
sion of facts. Meanwhile, to abandon the Tortugas or Fort

Washington, 1861 107

Pickens was no part of Mr. Seward's plan. Those could be
held and defended; what he had in mind was to avoid a
collision at a point where we could not hope to escape defeat.
Accompanied by his family, my father left Washington,
and returned home, all of us nourishing this delusive hope
of peace and a restored Union. Once in Boston, we heard
nothing. On the 19th came the telegraphic announcement
of my father's nomination to the English Mission. "It fell
on our breakfast-table like a veritable bomb-shell, scattering
confusion and dismay. It had been much discussed in
Washington, but Seward had encountered so much difficulty,
and the President had seemed so intent on the nomination of
Dayton, that the news finally came on us like a thunderbolt.
My mother at once fell into tears and deep agitation; fore
seeing all sorts of evil consequences, and absolutely refusing
to be comforted; while my father looked dismayed. The
younger members of the household were astonished and con
founded." Such was my diary record. It is droll to look back
on; very characteristic and Bostonese. My father and mother
had lived there steadily for nearly thirty years. They had
grown into a rut, and begun to entertain a species of religious
cult on that head. My mother, in some respects remarkably
calculated for social life, took a constitutional and sincere
pleasure in the forecast of evil. She delighted in the dark
side of anticipation; she did not really think so; but liked to
think, and say, she thought so. She indulged in the luxury of
woe! So now, I remember well how she nursed herself into
a passing belief that somehow she was very much to be com-
passioned, and something not far removed from disgrace had
fallen upon us and upon her; and when she went out people
would look at her, and say, "Poor woman," etc., etc. It

108 Charles Francis Adams
seemed to give her quite a new view of the matter, when pres
ently every one she met, instead of avoiding a painful subject
or commiserating her, offered her congratulations or expres
sions of envy. So she cheered up amazingly. As to my father,
he had then lived so long in the atmosphere of Boston, that
I really think the great opportunity of his life when suddenly
thrust upon him caused a sincere feeling of consternation.
He really felt that he was being called on to make a great
personal and political sacrifice.
As for me, I now went back to my office. Presently my
father was summoned on to Washington to confer with the
Secretary. He was there during the closing days of March,
getting home on the ist of April. I well remember his re
turn. It then lacked only four days of a full month since the
inauguration of Lincoln, and there were no visible signs of
that reaction in the sentiment of the South which Seward
had looked for with such confidence. On the contrary,
though the new Administration did not threaten to resort
to coercion, the Confederacy seemed to be fast consolidat
ing. Nor in the border States did the aspect of affairs im
prove; on the contrary, it day by day grew unmistakably
menacing. My diary read as follows : "My father, summoned
by Seward to Washington a week ago, got home last night.
For several days, now, I have been conscious of a vague pre
sentiment that things were not going well. Instead of right
ing itself and coming up into the wind as soon as it was free
of the incubus of a Democratic Administration — as I all
along had so confidently hoped and predicted — the ship
seemed, on the contrary, to be steadily and helplessly drifting
upon the rocks, Secession and Reconstruction. So strongly
had this feeling got a hold on me, that, when my father came

Washington, 1861 109
into the breakfast-room, I feared to ask him any question on
the subject. I did at last; and, at first, he seemed to deny
that any change for the worse was apparent. Yet a few more
inquiries were enough. It was at once apparent that my
apprehensions were not only well founded, but that the real
truth was worse than I supposed. We are drifting; and drift
ing fearfully. Our last card has proved a low one; the card
on which we relied for everything. It is not the ace of trumps,
but only the deuce; if, indeed, it be a trump card at all."
Whether my father then still clung to the hope of a peace
able solution of the troubles, I cannot say. On that point
I never satisfied myself. In immediate presence of the inevit
able, I think we were all, and he especially, in a state ap
proaching mental bewilderment; we would not acknowledge
that of which we could not help being inwardly conscious.
We were, in fact, exactly in the position of people, passengers
and landsmen, on some battered hulk drifting slowly but
surely on the reefs that outlined a menacing lee shore. The
ship had not yet struck, but we waited breathlessly to hear
and feel her strike. Seward had in Washington evidently still
talked to my father in the old, optimistic, hopeful vein; just
as, a week later, he still talked in it to Russell. That, how
ever, would not longer pass current; and for myself, I can
only say that, from the moment I saw my father after he got
back, I ceased to hope. War, I felt, confronted us. As I
wrote, it was a bitter day — "without, a furious snow-storm
raging; within, for me at least, doubt, hesitation and gloom."
The only consolation I had was in the nomination of Dr.
Palfrey as Postmaster of Boston; a result I had been instru
mental in bringing about, "a long deferred act of political
justice," for which Dr. Palfrey, by a note written immedi-

no

Charles Francis Adams

ately after receiving the news of his appointment, signified
his sense of obligation to me individually. Three days later
I wrote: "Fast day! and never did this country stand in
greater need of aid from above than now. Still drifting —
drifting — drifting! Our case resembles nothing so much as
that of a ship, which, close on a lee shore, has only just
weathered a violent storm. Morning has broken, not fresh
and bright, but murky and sullen. The wind has died away,
but a strong under-tow is bearing us imperceptibly nearer
and nearer those rocks over which tremendous seas are
dashing. Unless God helps us, we shall in a few moments be
in the breakers." Then follow the usual weak observations
and objurgations over the absence of a guiding hand at the
helm, useless to repeat now, though natural enough then.
Ten days afterwards, on the 14th, I wrote: "The war has
begun! Fort Sumter is taken! Two bad announcements
together. Yet strangely enough no drop of blood has yet
been shed; or rather no life has been lost. Still, the first gun
in civil war is fired, and its echoes will reverberate through
years." I continued to keep a sort of intermittent diary — making
entries sometimes every day, but more usually once a week
or so — for the next year and a half, the last record being
written on the transport steamer which brought my regi
ment up from Hilton Head to Fortress Monroe, at the time
of Pope's ignominious Virginia campaign, in August, 1862.
This portion of my diary had, however, little, if any, value.
I find I rarely recorded what I saw, or noted conversations ;
and, living in a provincial city, I had no special sources of
information, nor did I often meet persons of any particular
note. It was the dreary, commonplace existence of a young

Washington, 1861

in

man, wasting his time in a professional life for which he,
correctly enough, believed himself most illy adapted, in an
out-of-the-way region but during a curiously exciting but
most critical crisis in public affairs. Thus my diary naturally
became almost wholly introspective; my worse than useless
introspections being diversified by lengthy lucubrations over
the varying aspects of the situation.
I did find in my diary before destroying it a few passages
worth transcribing, having reference to incidents which
occurred during those memorable eight months, April to
December, 1861. It was on the 13th of April that the Con
federate whip came down across the Northern face; and my
father sailed for Europe on the ist of May. Nominated on
the 1 8th of March and at once confirmed, he did not reach
his London post until the 13 th of May — exactly eight weeks,
or fifty-six days, later. Such a delay, at such a crisis, seems
inexplicable, as it was, in fact, inexcusable. Considering the
extremely critical state of affairs and the possible conse
quences delay might entail, the newly appointed minister
should have left on the steamer first following his appoint
ment, his instructions, if necessary, following him. He should
have been in London at least a month earlier than my
father got there. As it was, the Southern Commissioners
were on the ground first, and scored the apparently great
success of a recognition of belligerency before he arrived.
For reasons I have set forth in my Life of Charles Francis
Adams, this turned out in the sequel of events a most fortu
nate occurrence;1 that it did so turn out was, however, a bit
of good luck saving the country from the consequence of
a piece of unpardonable laches. There is a secret history
1 Life, 173.

112

Charles Francis Adams

attached to the incident, and I, then and later, came into
possession of it.
One day, I think it was during the third year of the Civil
War, when I chanced to be in Washington, Seward, then
Secretary of State, remarked to me in his off-hand but conse
quential way: "The greatest misfortune that ever happened
to the United States was that the marriage of your brother
occurred on the 29th of April, 1 861." We had been talking
of the rebel rams, and the attitude of Great Britain towards
this country, then very uncertain and menacing. I knew
what he meant. At the time my father was appointed to the
English Mission — a month before Sumter — my brother
John was about to be married. The date was fixed for April
29th. My father wanted to be present; and, when, immedi
ately after his confirmation, he went on to Washington, he
intimated that he would defer his sailing until the 1st of
May, if no exigency was thought to exist requiring an earlier
departure. Seward assented, whether reluctantly or against
his better judgment, I do not know; but at that time he was
still dwelling in his "Southern Unionist" dream-land, and
apparently had no realizing sense of the extremely critical
state of affairs, in Europe as well as at home. He quite a
time afterwards prepared in a leisurely way the memorable
instructions which he characteristically read to Russell, of
the Times, on the evening of April 8th.1' The crisis of Sumter
came on five days after that reading, and then followed the
brief isolation of Washington. Those instructions, thus com
municated in advance to the correspondent of a London
newspaper, did not accordingly reach my father until April
27th, and he sailed four days afterwards. Every stage of our
1 My Diary, 1. 102.

Washington, 1861 113
action ^yas thus marked by extreme deliberation; and the
Confederate Commissioners took full advantage of the fact.
There can, I think, be no question that my brother John's
marriage on the 29th of April, 1861, led to grave interna
tional complications. It is creditable to neither Seward nor
my father that the latter was allowed to dawdle away weeks
of precious time because of such a trifle. It was much as if a
general had permitted some social engagement to keep him
away from his headquarters on the eve of a great battle; and,
in his absence, the enemy secured possession of some coigne
of great vantage. The course of subsequent events, as I have
elsewhere pointed out,1 transformed this apparent mishap
into a fortunate occurrence.
1 Life of Charles Francis Adams, 173; see also the paper on "The British
Proclamation of May, 1861," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlviii. 190.

IV
WAR AND ARMY LIFE
At that time I had already entered into a sort of military
life. A member of the Fourth Battalion of Massachusetts
Volunteer Militia I was in garrison at Fort Independence, in
Boston Harbor, and a most useful and instructive elementary
military school that experience proved. Elementary in the
extreme, it was all the preliminary training I ever had. But on
that head I shall have more to say presently — confessions,
I might call them, to record. Sumter was fired on upon a
Friday; but the lines of communication were broken, and
"all day Sunday it was curious to notice the agitation of the
people; there was but one subject of thought or of conversa
tion. Vague and distressing rumors were flying freely about.
Next morning the head-lines of the daily papers told us that
it was war." The call for troops — the first of many such —
went forth that day; and, my diary fairly admitted, was the
occasion to me of a very uneasy night. Seven months later,
I received my long wished-for commission, and started off
with my regiment, with positive elation. I had in the interim
been educated up to the full fighting figure; but, in April,
it was like an alarm-bell at midnight. It was with a shock
I realized the situation. jr'War," I wrote that day, "is no
plaything, and, God knows, I have no wish to trifle with it.
I, therefore, shall not now volunteer, or expose myself to
unnecessary service. But I can, and will, obey orders at any
sacrifice, and, if called upon, shall go into active service.
Not to do so, would be to incur lasting disgrace, in compari-

War and Army Life 115

son with which the hardship and boredom and danger of a
campaign would be a festive pastime. If I must do it — and
I hope I must n't — I may as well put a good face on it. The
back is ever strengthened to the burden. To-day, I shrink
from the idea of a skirmish. Three weeks hence, I doubt not,
my mind will be trained up to fierce battle, if need be." I at
least then understood myself to that extent!
The same day the regiments began to come in from the
country, turning out full ranks. I should think much better
of myself now, if that day I had turned the key in my office-
door and gone off in the ranks of the Quincy company. But
so doing never even occurred to me. I simply was n't equal
to the occasion — my ordinary experience in life — before,
then and since. As it was, I wrote of the regiments that day
pouring into Boston: "They say there were strange scenes
at the country railroad stations — more weeping than is
usual. In Boston here there would have been a tremendous
demonstration, but for the weather; it was sufficiently strik
ing even as it was. It has been a dreary, dismal day, storm
ing heavily from the eastward; a day with rain enough to
extinguish any degree of enthusiasm; and, as the poor devils
plashed through the streets, less than half drilled and most
insufficiently clad — for few country companies are supplied
with overcoats — they were greeted with well-deserved
applause. But I could n't help feeling badly for them." A
few days later I wrote: "These be indeed stirring times, and
the age has in it, after all, the elements of the heroic. It is
now three days that our streets have been crowded with
soldiers and draped in flags; while our populace, usually so
staid and quiet, is crazy with patriotism. The contagion is,
in fact, hard to resist; and often, within these three days as

1 1 6 Charles Francis Adams
I have seen these men go by, half armed and a quarter uni
formed, many of them mere recruits, unarmed and with no
pretence of a uniform, following, carpet-bag in hand, the
rear of the column, I have felt a rising in the throat and been
conscious of a moisture in the eye, which caused me to feel
little of the soldier." Some days later there came along one
of those storms of alarmist rumors that then from time to
time developed, and one evening it was reported at one of
our leisure haunts that every available man was called for,
to be off next morning. " If this was true, it meant fight; and
we received it accordingly. Half of our battalion were new
recruits who had never handled a musket, all our officers
were inexperienced, nor was there a single uniform amongst
us; and yet we were to be ordered into immediate active
service. The men showed their pluck. Among them, there
was an outer gaiety and flow of humor; but it only covered
gravity and dismay. There was n't anywhere the faintest
sign of funk. For myself, though I kept up my spirits as well
as the best, I certainly realized how unprepared I was to go,
and what a doubtful experiment I thought it. As John and I
a little later walked up Beacon Street on our way home, the
sensation was certainly new. How many times we had trod
the same pavements before — grave and gay, drunk and
sober, from weddings and to funerals — but never until now
on the eve of battle."
At last, on the 24th of April, our battalion was ordered to
do garrison duty at Fort Independence, and so, closing my
office, I with the rest reported at the armory. We went down,
and took possession of the fort that afternoon, remaining
there five weeks. A pleasanter or more useful five weeks in
the educational way, I do not think I ever passed than those

War and Army Life 117

during which I played soldier at Fort Independence in April
and May, 1861. I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, and
what I there learned — the details of drill and of guard duty
— proved afterwards of the greatest value to me. But it was
only a military kindergarten. The first night down I was in
the guard detail. The guard-room — long unused and very
damp — was awful; but my description of my beat was not
bad, and covered many later experiences. My subsequent
brother officer and life-long friend, Harry Russell, and I that
night lay waking side-by-side. "The sky was at first over
cast; but the clouds scattered after the rising of the moon,
and, as the wind had fallen, I found my first tour of duty on
the ramparts far from unpleasant. The surroundings were
picturesque: on one side, beyond the parapet, the bay was
gently rippling in the moonlight, which flooded the islands
and shipping at anchor in the roadstead; while on the other
were the walls around the parade-ground of the fort, white
in the beams. In front of the guard-room a little knot of the
relief were smoking and chatting, and, now and again, a cold
gleam of light was reflected from the bayonet of the sentry
patrolling the opposite rampart. As I walked my beat, stop
ping occasionally^to admire the scene, I pondered the ques
tion of active service and reached my own conclusions con
cerning it in my particular case; and, finally, it struck me
that I had never known two hours pass more rapidly than
did those my two first on guard. Later, I saw the sun rise,
and at six I was relieved."
John was married on the evening of the 29th of April, at
Mrs. Crowninshield's house in Longwood, and my father,
with the remainder of the family, sailed on the ist of May.
That afternoon I went back to Fort Independence, for which

1 1 8 Charles Francis Adams
I already felt homesick; and there, without once even desir
ing to go to the City, I remained for the next three weeks.
The hint was a most forcible one, and I now wonder that I
did not take it. I then actually loathed my office, and felt no
call to my profession. My new life charmed me. I was young,
strong, loved existence in the open air, was not afraid of
hardship, alone of the whole garrison did I take my daily
plunges from the wharf, and I had in me the elements of a
1 thoroughly good soldier in the ranks. And yet I lacked the
I spirit of adventure, and the daring to throw myself into the
new life. No young fellow there would have enjoyed it more.
We were relieved, and came up to town on the last day of
May. After we had been dismissed at the armory, I went
home to the house in Mt. Vernon Street to don my citizens'
clothes, and, before going out to Quincy where the newly
married John then was, I dropped in at the Parker House,
on School Street, to join some friends. At their request, "I
looked at myself in the mirror, and was amazed. I had in
every respect the aspect of a prize-fighter. My face was
brown and tanned, my hair was cut close to my head, my
loose coat and blue shirt gave me a brawny reckless bearing,
and I thought I had never looked so rollicking and strong, or
felt so well, in all my life."
Going back to my office and its inanimate routine, the five
ensuing months, though I did not then realize it, were edu
cational. I was a conscientious young fellow in a way, with
a sufficing sense of my obligation to others, especially my
father. In reality everything then combined to carry me into
the army. I was young, unmarried, vigorous, and, in a sense,
in the way in my father's house, which my brother' then
occupied with his newly married wife; moreover, I was doing

War and Army Life 119

nothing in a profession profoundly distasteful to me. But I
fostered a delusion that my presence in Boston was very
essential to the proper conduct of my father's affairs, and I
felt no call to arms from any love of adventure. So, ashamed
to stay at home, conscious that one at least of the family
ought to be with the colors, I argued the matter continually
with myself. But it was only slowly, and by increasing
attacks, that the ever-spreading epidemic got possession
of me.
In June, I was suffering from an earlier and intermittent
attack, and wrote to my father. Presently I got a letter from
my brother Henry, who was with him in London. This letter
has disappeared, together with all my correspondence and
papers of the years before the war. I am sorry to have lost
that particular letter, for it now would have an almost his
torical value. Few points in connection with my work on my
father's life have more deeply interested me than the study
of Seward's foreign-war panacea for the cure of civil dissen
sion, in April- June, 1861 ; and my diary, under date of June
25, 1861, contained a reference to this letter, written by
Henry the day after the receipt by my father of that despatch
No. 10, of May 21st, from Seward, which Lincoln emascu
lated: "To-day I received a letter from Henry which fell on
me like a thunderbolt from a clear sky; for, after six pages of
general matter, he closed in a grand panic, telling me that
the day before a despatch had been received from Seward
which meant European war — that it would come within
two months. His own faith in Seward was, he said, shaken,
for he seemed resolved to lash the country into a foreign war.
As for me, he advised me to keep cool, not gratifying my
military ardor at present, but holding in reserve for a great

120

Charles Francis Adams

Canadian campaign. This letter almost terrified me, chiefly
because of Seward. Would it not be foolish under present
circumstances, and wicked under any, to force a third party,
against its will and without provocation into a bloody war,
merely because domestic contentions were getting too hot?"
But, all the same, the letter served to cool my immediate
ardor. The struggle in which we found ourselves engaged was
at that time just beginning to assume its correct proportions
in our eyes ; and I chafed bitterly over the empty escort duty
I was doing as one of the rank and file of the Fourth Battalion
— tramping the streets continually, seeing the three-year
regiments from Maine and New Hampshire off on their way
to Washington; and I wrote in reply to Henry that I was
"still eager for release. And why should I not be? Have I
not failed in my profession? Am I not continually hungry
for some outside stimulus ? Is it not now offered me? And in
what respect has my past been so successful, or in what way
is my future so brilliant in promise, that I should so long
hesitate to risk my life in this quarrel?"
A few weeks later my diary recorded a portent I still well
remember; though I have never seen it alluded to in any book
on that period. One evening early in July we had been drill
ing in the armory of the Battalion, then in the old Boylston
Market Building, corner of Washington and Boylston Streets.
As we left it, turning towards the Common, the exclamation
burst from several at once, "Why, there's a comet!" It was
the great comet of 1861 — the comet which took the whole
scientific world by surprise; for its advent had not been fore
told, and of it nothing was known. As striking as it was un
foreseen, it fairly burst on a startled world. The next day
the astronomers confessed themselves as much at a loss con-

War and Army Life

121

cerning it as the most superstitious layman, and I wrote of
it: "Close to the Dipper and, as it were, in the centre of our
Heavens, with its head not far from the North-star, its trail
streamed away to the southward like a milky way. But the
question which perplexed all — astronomers and laymen —
was: Where did it come from, and how did it get here? But
here it is, brilliant beyond description as it streams across
the sky. Already it is vanishing, and in a few nights will be
invisible. What a curious coincidence! In Europe, it can
hardly have been seen at all, for it shone high in our Heavens.
It has come on our National Anniversary, bursting upon us
unheralded and in the midst of our civil commotions. Its
stay seems likely to be as short as it is brilliant. Who can
read us the riddle?"
On the 4th of July, Gordon's regiment, afterwards the
memorable Second Massachusetts Infantry, went off, we,
the Fourth Battalion, doing escort service. It was largely
officered by my old friends, who crowded the platforms of the
cars and waved salutes as the train got in motion. It was a .
day of great heat; and " then, as usual after thus seeing others '
on their way to the real strife, we quietly marched back to
our armory — and were not ashamed!" A few days later
" Stephen Perkins, one of the very few close friends of my
own I ever had, went off, too; and I did not even see him
before he went. At the last moment he accepted a second
lieutenant's commission in the Gordon regiment, and fol
lowed it two days after. I had advised his going; but, when
he departed so suddenly, his going fell heavily on me.
Whether I ever see him again depends on the fate of war."
I never did see him again. Thirteen months later he was
killed at Cedar Mountain, in Virginia. I realized that a place

122

Charles Francis Adams

was made vacant in my circle not again to be filled. I have
the sense of that loss still.
The Bull Run experience came a few days after the de
parture of the Second. My diary contained a long entry
relating to it, simply setting forth the sensations of one
individual American far removed from the scene of action.
That incident of the war and the ensuing stampede occurred
on a Sunday. I passed the day at Quincy, and the battle,
well known to be impending, was the one topic of thought or
talk. Monday morning the papers were full of encouraging
reports; but very general. Getting to my office I had just
finished a letter, when "my heart sank within me as I sud
denly heard the newsboys shout in the street, 'Retreat of the
Federal Army!' Just then Dana (R. H.) came in on some
business; often have I seen Dana under trying circumstances,
but never before distrait, or outwardly flustered. But now
the tidings of a reverse weighed heavily on him, and he
could n't even pretend to think or talk of anything else. At
that time we supposed it was simply an orderly retreat
to Centreville, which seemed bad enough; and, though I
could n't work, in this pleasant faith I remained until, leav
ing the office, I met Caspar Crowninshield looking abso
lutely pale, and he then poured out to me the frightful tale
of running men, captured artillery, abandoned arms and
blasted honor. I too turned pale as I listened. We started
for the news-room, and, passing through State Street, we
could not help observing those strange and significant little
knots of men with troubled faces, so suggestive of times of
deep excitement." Dining at Quincy, we were unable to
resist the desire to know what further tidings might have
come, and Caspar and I drove back to town to see Boston in

War and Army Life 123

the hour of bitterest defeat. "The news we found, in some
respects, a little less discouraging; but, as for the city, its
quiet was remarkable. A few crowds lingered about the tele
graph offices and the newspaper buildings, long closed, and
those composing them stood in small knots, talking in sub
dued tones, and circulating the most awful rumors as to the
dead and missing. Nervous excitement was the feature of the
night; but the city was wholly quiet, and no news could be
obtained." Bull Run was followed by a regular panic — one of many,
preceding and following, in which Washington either was,
or was believed to be, in danger of capture. During it, my \
mind was always balancing arguments, should I go, or stay? ¦
I then began to realize the mistake I had made in not going
earlier, and I wrote: "Would to God now that I had been i
ordered away, or had of my own accord joined some organ
ization sent forward to Washington in April last, that I too
might have been found ready, when to be ready was the
duty of every man. But not," etc., etc., through the whole
gamut of honest self-deception. There was then, as subse
quent events showed, no earthly reason why I should not
have gone, and the best of reasons why I should go, and go
at once; but, I argued, if I now go, "I do so because I am
carried away by the enthusiasm of those around me, or in
the desire of a new and exciting life, with a chance of mili
tary distinction. I feel that war is not my vocation; and*.
that, in deserting the law for it, I should give up a profession
for which I am little adapted for one to which I am adapted
even less. This disposes also of my chance of military dis
tinction, and leaves only the question of yielding to the
contagion about me. That a soldier's life would give a new I

124 Charles Francis Adams
impetus to my energies, I know; that in it I should be happy
and grow, I am well enough aware; incidentally, also, it
might, and, I fancy, would lead to many advantageous
things; but these possible advantages, though they weigh
heavily enough with me, will not justify my leaving the
manifest duties which ought to keep me here. My father
has entrusted me with the care of the bulk of his property,
and never was property so difficult to manage as it now is,"
etc., etc., "and these considerations of real duty must out-
!: weigh the possible advantages to result from novelty, excite
ment and activity. Yes ! this chance is gone by, and I feel
that I shall not take part in the war." All of which shows
that at twenty-five I was a good deal of a prig, as well as
addicted to a mild form of sophistry. The fact was that my
father, with the coldness of temperament natural to him,
took a wholly wrong view of the subject and situation, did
not believe in any one taking a hand in actual fight, and
wholly failed to realize that it would have been an actual
disgrace had his family, of all possible families American,
been wholly unrepresented in the field. And I was the one
to go! At the same time, I did understand myself, and rec
ognize my own limitations. I had no natural call to a mili
tary life.
Early in September the Twentieth broke camp at Read-
ville, and went to the Potomac. The Twentieth was largely
officered by my friends. Frank Palfrey, wounded and dis
abled at Antietam, was its lieutenant-colonel; Paul Revere,
killed at Gettysburg, was major. I saw them off. With them
went Caspar Crowninshield, my household companion during
the summer, destined to be my camp companion later on,
and friend for long years. He died early in 1897, while I was

War and Army Life 125

living in Florence. It was a thoughtful day for me — that
pleasant, soft September noon when I shook hands all around
in the bustling camp, and then rode home to Quincy; and I
wrote in my diary that "I tried to feel satisfied with Quincy
and myself. I might have commanded the right of the line
of that regiment; and, instead, I am scolding tenants, audit
ing bills, discussing repairs, rendering accounts, and so —
doing my duty ! — Psh!"
This was in September, and the struggle went on all
through that month and the following. At last things were
ripe, and what may be termed the psychological crisis came
about. On the 30th of October, I thus recorded a very mem
orable event in my life: "I have astonished myself within
forty-eight hours. I have applied for the commission in
the cavalry regiment, which, on Saturday last, I declined!
Monday afternoon I went out to ride. It was a clear, windy
afternoon, and the autumn leaves gleamed through the crisp
October air in the afternoon sunshine. As I was walking my
horse through the Braintree woods and meditating on my
enforced staying at home, it suddenly flashed across me,
Why do I stay at home? And sure enough the reasons that,
two months ago, seemed so strong, all had vanished. The
business questions were all disposed of; nothing more re- \
quiring my presence here seemed likely to arise; and so,
Why should I not go? The first sensation was not pleasant;
and I found myself instinctively clinging to my old, old
reasons, now only excuses; but, in another moment, I was
all aglow. During that ride, I thought of nothing else; and,
when I got home from it, my mind was made up. I said
nothing to any one; but, yesterday, I sent a note to Sargent,
asking for a captaincy." The regiment in question was the

126 Charles Francis Adams
First Massachusetts Cavalry; Sargent was its lieutenant-
colonel — Horace Binney Sargent, of the class 01x843^ in
1 861 a man of a little less than forty, whom I had known
rather well for some years back; and, for some reason, had
of him conceived a good opinion, which subsequent events
in no way confirmed. Meanwhile, my delay had been pro
ductive, in one respect at least, of fortunate results. In
the earliest stages of the war the powers that were had been
slow in reaching any adequate conception either of its mag
nitude or of the time it would occupy. It had been assumed
that no volunteer mounted regiments would be called into
the service, as the preparation and training of cavalry re
quired more time than could be given in view of the early
ending of the conflict then anticipated as of course. No
cavalry regiment from Massachusetts was called for until
August; and though, like so many other of my friends, I
might not improbably have then been transferred to it from
an earlier infantry organization, I was in October just in
time. Meeting Sargent in one of my afternoon rides, it had
occurred to him to offer me a commission; which I, at the
j time, declined, in accordance with my earlier theory of duty
j at home. A few days later the cogitations of that afternoon
ride through the Braintree woods in the October atmosphere
settled the question. From that moment I did not again
hesitate. The relief of a resolution taken was great. Even
now, though more thanjiftjy_years have since passed on,
I look back on that ride as at the moment of an inspiration
— the time when I resolved to burst the bonds, and strike
out into the light from the depth of the darkness. No wiser
determination did I ever reach.
In November the news one day reached Boston of the

War and Army Life 127

stopping of the Trent by Captain Wilkes, and the seizure of
Mason and Slidell, the Confederate "envoys." In view of
my subsequent investigations of this affair, and conclusions
thereon as set forth in the elaborate paper contained in the
published Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical So
ciety for November, 191 1,1 my contemporary record was
rather curious, reflecting the tempestuous character of the
time: "I have never known news spread so quickly, or seen
people so astonished, so delighted and so perplexed. First
came a cackle of joy; and then, immediately on its heels, the
question, What will England do ? Immediately on hearing the
news I went round to Dana's (R. H.) office, and asked about
the law. The common fear as to England's attitude was
I found, not shared in that quarter; for Dana crowed with
delight as I told him, declaring that 'the Ambassador' could
on that issue 'blow Earl Russell out of the water'; and pro
nouncing himself ready to stake his 'professional reputation
on the proposition.' " During the ensuing days, the seizure,
and the law relating to it, were the sole subjects of conver
sation, and the newspapers were prolific of arguments and
precedents; "but," I wrote, "no argument or citation of
authorities could shake off the sense of alarm, and, in the
face of the law, stocks would fall; which last fact clearly
showed that our talk of going to war with England had in it
a considerable infusion of brag. Still, our friends 'the Am
bassadors' were in durance vile, which was a solid comfort;
and, in sleet and snow, in chilling winds and under cheerless
skies, my spirits rose as I walked to and from the railroad
station (for we were still at Quincy, and my walk to the
train was over the hill and commanded a full view of Boston
1 xlv. 35.

128 Charles Francis Adams
Bay), and looked at the low, distant walls of Fort Warren,
surrounded by the steel-blue sea, and reflected that those
amiable gentlemen were there; and there they would remain!
I remembered the last exhibition I saw Mason make of
himself in the Senate-chamber; and I smacked my lips with
joy." It was on the 19th of December that I at last learned
definitely that my name had been sent in for the commission
of first lieutenant. That evening, in the exuberance of my
joy, I wrote:/" Well, at last my commission! Within the
next four days I shall leave this room, and my native city.
My office will know me no more, and to my profession I shall
1 bid a long farewell. A new existence opens before me; and,
i when I return to the old haunts, I hope it will at least be in
\ more prosperous times and with more sanguine feelings."
My surprise would have been considerable, had I then been
informed that five full and eventful years — eventful to me
no less than to the community — were to pass away, before
I, then married and in my thirty-first year, was again to
find myself a resident in Boston. But, none the less, it was,
for me, a great, a blessed break in life!
Meanwhile, at the moment, I bothered myself not much
over the future. The cavalry regiment had that day come
into town to show itself and be reviewed. I saw it pass
through the streets ; and, finally, by chance merely, went to
1 the Common. "There I found an immense crowd; but I
| could not help being struck by the change. The enthusiasm
j and glow of the spring and summer were gone. It was the
same place, and there were the outgoing soldiers and there
\ were the people; but the spirit was gone. It was December;
and very different from those pleasant days in June. I got

War and Army Life 1 2 9

within the lines, and went to headquarters. There I fell in
with Colonel Harrison Ritchie, who astonished me by the
information that my name had, the day previous, been sent
in to the Governor, for a commission. Rarely have I ever
felt more elated. I almost gasped with delight. I was then
really off! Law and office seemed at once to vanish into a
dim distance, as a new life opened. Its exposures, hardships
and dangers I gave no thought to in my burst of genuine
satisfaction." Looking back now, fifty years after, were I asked whether
I would give up as an experience of subsequent value, both
educationally and in the way of reminiscence, my three years
at Harvard or my three and a half years in the army, I would v
have great difficulty in reaching a decision. On the whole, I
am inclined to think that my three and a half years of mili
tary service and open-air life were educationally of incom
parably the greater value of the two. And especially was!
this so for me, constituted as I was and yet amr It gave me '.
just that robust, virile stimulus to be derived only from a /
close contact with Nature and a roughing it among men and
in the open air, which I especially needed,/ The experiment '
was, it is true, a somewhat risky one, and involved not a few
hair-breadth escapes; but I succeeded in getting through
without sustaining any lasting personal or physical injury,
or any moral injury at all. I never was wounded ; and though,
when mustered out of the service in the summer of 1865 I
was a physical wreck, eighteen months of change and a sub
sequent temperate and healthy life repaired all waste and
injury. Thus, so far as physique is concerned, I from my
army experience got nothing but good. I was, and at seventy-
seven am, in every way the better for it. Otherwise, that

130 Charles Francis Adams
(experience was not only picturesque, but of the greatest pos
sible educational value. For two years enjoying it keenly, it,
so to speak, made a man of me.
And yet, somewhat paradoxically, I have never looked
\ back on that army experience with any degree of unalloyed
satisfaction. During my service — and it was a very active
service — I did my duty as well as I knew how, and to the
best of my ability. I never shirked, and never got into any
trouble from which I did not extricate myself with a reason
able degree of credit, if not in every instance altogether to
my own subsequent satisfaction. In many cases what I ought
to have done or said was much clearer to me afterwards than
at the time. And yet, in connection with that whole experi
ence I am conscious of being more and more impressed with
i a sense of my own limitations, deficiencies and shortcomings.
Not soldierly by nature, or of a daring and aggressive temper,
I have come more and more to recognize that not only had
my previous training in no way fitted me for the severe
experiences I then challenged, but also I have grown pain
fully and ever increasingly conscious of the fact that I was not
aware of my own lack of preparation and any preliminary
training. So to me now it is simply shocking to think of the
responsibilities we then lightly assumed, and the absence in
us of any adequate realizing sense of the nature of those
responsibilities. When I went into active service and the
command of men, my sole acquaintance with military life
and its duties was derived from my four weeks' tour of duty
at Fort Independence, where, a member of the Fourth Bat
talion, M.V.M., I acquired a little knowledge of the manual
and a smattering of the details of guard duty and of company
and battalion drill. It amounted in fact to nothing at all —

War and Army Life 131
not even the alphabet of a calling; and yet in my estimate it
seemed all that was needful. If in 1861, instead of passing
the summer at Quincy and in my office, I had served an
apprenticeship for three months in any military school, no
matter what, it would afterwards have been to me of infinite
service and incalculable value. As it was, I, like all the rest,
was a mere tyro, without even an adequate sense of my own
utter insufficiency, and the consequent desire to be better
informed. This lack of preliminary training affected also my whole
subsequent military life. I never was properly qualified as
an officer; and yet, before I got through, I performed, and
in doing so acquitted myself quite as well as the average, the
duties and obligations of a colonel of a regiment of twelve
hundred men. But as I think of the risks I in so doing ran,
not only for myself, but for my command, I am dismayed.
Still, what I most needed I never had — a competent and
kindly instructor, a military preceptor and model. At the
very outset ill fortune placed me in this respect in one of the
most unfortunate and altogether trying positions any young
fellow could have been projected into. I was put under
the immediate command of two men even less qualified to
instruct than I myself; and who together probably were as
unfitted for the work to be performed as was possible. And
these were my military preceptors! The constitutionally
unqualified were to instruct the uninformed. Into that pain
ful portion of my experience I do not care to enter. Let it
pass into oblivion. I staggered and blundered through it.
Nevertheless, educationally, my ill luck was indeed phenom
enal; and so impresses me even more now than at the time.
But that episode constitutes a page in my experiences to

132 Charles Francis Adams
which I refer in extenuation, as it were, of my own short
comings. As an officer, all I ever learned I learned from
rough experience and as an outcome of my own blunders.
/Nevertheless, though my case was in all these respects
i exceptional, I was as an officer indisputably one of the better
; class; for, though I did not appreciate my own deficiencies, I
\ at least had a sense of obligation, and a high standard of
duty. Nor did I ever try to advertise myself or to exploit
!my services. Considering everything, I think I may say I got
out of it uncommonly well.
Recurring now to the course of events, it was on a Sun
day, the 28th of December, 1861 — a very dull, gloomy and
generally forbidding day — that the First Massachusetts
Cavalry was loaded on to railroad cars, and started for New
York as its first stopping place, and subsequent point of
embarkation for Port Royal, then recently fallen into our
hands. I had reported for duty a day or two previous only,
and as first lieutenant been assigned to a company. Going
from a city house in Boston into a canvas camp at Christmas,
in Massachusetts, is, as I see it now, rather a severe experi
ence. Then I was young and full of ardor, and disposed to
take everything in an uncomplaining spirit. But, certainly,
as compared with what I remembered of the same sort of
thing during the summer months, our home parting was to
the last degree dreary. So far as my own position was con
cerned, it was by no means so bad as it might have been.
I was not the utter greenhorn in uniform I would have been
but for my experience at Fort Independence; and I took hold
as one somewhat familiar with camp routine. None the less,
it was the very close of the year — cold, drear and pitiless;
and it required youth and health and buoyancy to stand it.

War and Army Life 133
My description at the time of that Sunday of camp-breaking
was not bad. My brother John came out from Boston to
bring Caspar Crowninshield, his wife's brother, and me, some
articles and bid us good-bye. He found us busy with prepara
tion; but, at last, all was ready. "What a dreary three hours
followed! A cold, grey sky overhead, with ice and frozen
mud underfoot. In the distance, the familiar Blue Hills
looked black and cheerless, their sides patched with snow.
The air was rough and biting, and we, tired, hungry and
impatient, waited for the ending of inexplicable delays. John
alone was there to see me off; and, forthis, I was thankful.
I felt in a mood neither regretful nor sentimental; and, so
far from lingering over farewells to home, I asked only to
get away. It was dreary enough. Little knots of friends were
collected everywhere; but no one seemed to care for anything.
Grief and joy alike were frozen out. Finally, John gave out,
and declared he could stand the dreary discomfort no longer;
and I must say it was not without a sensation of envy I in
thought followed him back to his comfortable dinner. At
last we found ourselves on board the cars. I can pretend noi
sentiment at leaving home behind me; I felt none. The only j
strong sensation I had was one of relief at getting in motion
and, at last, having something to eat."
I have dwelt in detail over this period of my life simply
because, passing it in an eventful time, I then kept a contem
poraneous record. That record extended through the larger
part of the following year, until my regiment reached Virginia
in early September, 1862, and I went into active field service.
I then almost perforce discontinued it, nor was it renewed
for twenty-six years ; though 1 believe I always kept a brief
daily memorandum of where I was, and what I was doing.

134 Charles Francis Adams
During my years of active service in the war, my corre
spondence with my family supplied, however, the place of a
daily record, and much better than a diary; my letters have
also been preserved. I have never looked them over except
casually, one or two; but those I have looked over I found
natural, vivid and extremely interesting. It has always been
my intention to go over my family correspondence of that
period, and prepare portions of it for publication as a con
temporaneous war record, carried on, half in London and
half from the camp. I have no doubt it would make a
most interesting narrative, by no means without historical
value; but now (19 12) whether I ever get to it is more
than doubtful. So much to do; so little done!
That, however, is no part of my present plan; but those
letters, unlike my diary, I do not propose to destroy. For
present purposes, from this point on what I have to say is
mere reminiscence, and that at long range. Consequently,
of small value. My army experience comes first, extending
over three years and a half.
For a really considerable time I was now suddenly brought
into close touch with Nature and man; and, in so far, I have
not passed my entire life under conventional conditions.
Yet, as I have already said, I had no particular military
| aptitude. Far from being a born soldier, 1 was in many
j respects unfitted for such a career. Not quick, daring or
1 ready-witted, robust but not muscularly agile, I could not
! take advantage of sudden or unforeseen circumstances. With
no personal magnetism, I was rather deficient in presence of
I mind in time of peril. The most that could be said of me
was that, as a camp officer, I was distinctly above the aver
age. I was conscientious, understood my duties fairly well,

War and Army Life 135
and cared anxiously for my men and horses. But Ldid not:
understand myself, nor did I take in the situation/Unseeing j
of my opportunities, I quite failed to realize in any broad j
way the nature of the occasion. I went into the service with I
a strong sense of duty, and a desire to see hard work, in no
way seeking to save myself./! had no conception of army
functions, or of the relative fields of usefulness of the staff
and line. In common with most of my friends, I had rather
a contempt for the staff positions; we wanted to be where
the work' and hardship were, and where the knocks were to
be looked for. It was in some respects a praiseworthy feeling,
and I lived up to it; but living up to it involved much
hardship and danger, besides leaving out of sight, in my own
individual case, that, while I had no particular aptitude for/
line work, I would have made a really valuable staff officer, , '
had I only diligently qualified myself for the position. But
on this subject, and my own insufficiency so far as my correct
understanding of myself and the situation, and myself in
connection with the possibilities of the situation, were con
cerned, I a few years ago set forth my more enduring con
clusions in the Memoir I prepared of my friend Theodore
Lyman, for the Historical Society.1 He was more mature;
I was like all the rest. As it was, I had to learn by hard'
experience that, in warfare on a large scale, a regimental
officer, no matter how high his grade, sees nothing and knows
nothing of what is going on. He is a mere minor wheel, wheni
not simply a cog, in a vast and to him in greatest part unin
telligible machine, moving on given lines to a possible result;!
wholly regardless of his comfort or even life. Obedience, self- 1
sacrifice and patient endurance are the qualities most in
1 2 Proceedings, xx. 158-61.

136 Charles Francis Adams
demand for him; but as for any intelligent comprehension
of the game in progress, that for the regimental officer is
quite beyond his ken. Even a colonel of cavalry — in many
respects a most delightful grade — knows only his own com
mand, and is acquainted with nothing beyond his brigade
front. He and his are but one small factor in an immense
whole. A well-organized staff, on the contrary, constitutes
the army's brain, and everything centres at Headquarters.
iThere, and there alone, you know and see. So, the ideal
position at which I should have aimed, had I only known
! enough, would have been the inspector-generalship of an
I army corps under a well-qualified corps commander. For
< this part, had I only realized it, I was well qualified; I needed
[only a well-defined plan in my own mind, and a patient
study of functions. My lack of an early training was to be
supplied by close observation and constant tact. At the
close of the war, in February, 1865, that very position was
offered to me, and by A. A. Humphreys, the best corps com-
j mander in the whole army; and I declined it! I stand aghast
I now at my own folly; I threw such a chance away! But I
j will do myself the justice to say that I did so most regret-
j fully; and only from a strong sense of obligation to the regi
ment of which I had then just been made colonel. Duty or
: no duty, I have regretted it ever since. Though now I realize
1 how little qualified I was for the position, had I accepted it.
As I have already intimated, my initiation into military
life was most unlucky — that is the only word to apply to
it. It was a case of hard luck! I set out wrong; and my mis
takes and misfortunes followed me. It is all plain enough
now; but then I blunderingly groped my way, and the course
of events was dead against me. It is a long, disagreeable

War and A&my Life 1 3 7
story; and, while I do not propose unduly to dilate upon it,
it has its interest. . Then, as ever since, my great misfortune
lay in my utter lack of a nice, ingratiating tact in my deal
ings with other men and difficult situations. I was born
deficient in true objectiveness. It is an inherited deficiency,
a family trait; but it has been my great handicap and hin
drance in life, and never so much so as in the army. Interfer
ing with my success, it destroyed my comfort; and help it
I could not. Well-meaning, conscientious, kind-hearted as I
felt myself to be, it was not in me — it never has been in
me — instinctively to do or say the right thing at the proper
time. This fact undoubtedly aggravated my difficulties, and?
prevented me from extricating myself from them, as any
more adroit man would readily have done. On the other
hand, I was extremely unlucky; and, wholly by accident,
found myself during the first six months of my army life —
my initiation period — in the most trying and spirit-breaking
position I have known. Looking back on it now, I do not
see how I stood it; nor, on the other hand, do I now quite see
what I could have done other than I did do. It came about
in this wise.
The First Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry
was essentially a body of picked men. I have seen many
military organizations, and soldiers of all kinds and climes;
and I do not believe there ever were twelve hundred better
men got together than those composing that regiment. It
was the first complete cavalry regiment ever organized in
New England. It was made up largely of Americans, young,
athletic, ingenious, surprisingly alert and very adaptive.
I _alwj#s_gQl afong-weU-wiiJxmy-mem JK^

138 Charles Francis Adams
\ Not that I was popular or adored, by than^as was Caspar
\ Crowninshield, for instance; but they respected me, and I
| did well by them. I had a thoroughly good company — con
sidered the best in the regiment. That was "D" Company;
but originally I was assigned to "H." The colonel of the
regiment was a Virginian — Robert Williams, a West Point
graduate and officer of the^regular army, strongly recom
mended by General Scott, and carefully selected by Gover
nor Andrew first to organize and then command the initial
cavalry regiment. Perfectly trained, and a gentleman of the
Virginia school, very striking in appearance, Robert Williams
may then have been some thirty-two years old, and he was a
good organizer as well as a severe disciplinarian. I propose
to deal kindly with him; but, in point of fact, he was all-out-
side! There was no real stuff in him, and — he could n't help
drinking ! Brought up in the regular service, he did not under
stand our Massachusetts men, and his discipline was severe
to brutality. He had a set of us young Harvard fellows for
officers, who served him like dogs, who bowed before him in
blind, unquestioning obedience. Better material out of which
to make officers never existed; but we needed kindly, sym
pathetic instruction. We did n't get it! Still, Williams did
know his business, and was a good officer in camp; but in
the field he got speedily demoralized, and, in moments of
emergency, invariably drunk. Later, I was his personal aid,
and the adjutant of the regiment; and, first and last, I went
through incredible experiences with him. As an officer in
presence of the enemy or under the stress of campaign,
Williams was an utter failure; and so recognized. Prone to
quarrel, he never got any promotion; and, shortly after
Antietam, left the regiment, and returned to his adjutant-

War and Army Life 139
generalcy, in Washington. Still, from Williams I did learn
something. Williams, as I have said, was a Virginian and a West
Pointer; typically, both. I got along fairly well enough with
him; but in no single respect was he a man I took to, or who
took to me. He was far, very far, from my ideal of the head
of a military family. He lacked innate courtesy as well as'
stability; and, above all, he was wholly deficient in character
and in the sterling qualities. Still, I got on with him. My
trouble, curiously enough, came from Massachusetts men
— men I ought to have known all my life and been as of one
family. Leaving Massachusetts at the close of December, and
after a short stay in New York, we were shipped to South
Carolina, where we arrived about the middle of January.
Two battalions went into camp at Hilton Head. Company H
was in the Beaufort battalion; and there I remained four
months. It was my apprenticeship. I was starting in on a
new life; I had everything to learn. I look back on it now
with a shudder of disgust. Fortunately, I liked the life; and
the climate, after Boston, was delightful. I had, too, among
the officers many friends; but, in spite of all that, it was the
worst experience I ever had. Colonel Sargent was in local
command of the Battalion; Captain Sargent commanded H
Company. I was the only lieutenant of that company on
duty; Davis, the second, shrewdly getting himself detailed
as battalion adjutant. Lucius Manlius Sargent, their father,
was well known in Boston, a great antiquarian and news
paper writer ("Sigma" and "A Sexton of the Old School"
in the columns of the Evening Transcript) — a man of stand
ing and wealth. Horace and Manlius were children by dif-

140 Charles Francis Adams
ferent mothers. Both brothers were men of large figure and
great muscular strength; very proud of their physique and,
unquestionably, men of courage. Manlius, a graduate of
Harvard in the class of '48, had studied medicine, and, in
1862, must have been about thirty-five.
In May, Williams was made commander of the post at
Hilton Head; Sargent was transferred to the command of
the two battalions there stationed, and my old and life
long friend — before, then, and now — Henry L. Higginson,
recently made major, came up and assumed command at
Beaufort. I now in my diary described my life as "a very
pleasant and comfortable one." In early June, operations
began on James Island, and, by a fortunate combination
of circumstances which I at the time regarded as most
unlucky, I was sick in the hospital when H Company was
ordered off, and I never again rejoined it. For, when I was
well enough to report for duty, I was assigned as an aid to
Williams, then acting as brigade commander, and I continued
to serve in that capacity until, in early September, the regi
ment was ordered to Virginia. In that capacity, and under
Williams, I had what they are pleased to call "my baptism
of fire," or, in other words, took part in my first engage
ment. A day or two later came the James Island fight. We of
the staff knew that something was impending, and we were
called at I a.m. My record reminds me that, as we moved
forward in the grey of the early dawn, I felt in no way heroic.
Presently, Williams, whom we were following, " rode through
a hedge, along a road, and then over a wall into an open field;
and there we were directly in front of the enemy's works.
Here I saw my first shell fall. It did not explode. It fell a

War and Army Life 141
few yards to our right, bouncing, and then rolling along in a
very vicious way. It impressed me unpleasantly. Here we
stayed a long time." We of the staff were kept very busy
carrying orders, etc. "Though a heavy and incessant fire
of infantry was going on, the roar of the artillery and the
exploding of shells after they had hurtled and shrieked over
our heads, so completely drowned the musketry that I do
not think I heard the report of a small arm during the entire
engagement. Yet, when I was sent with an order to our
extreme left, I distinctly saw the puffs of dust raised by the
musket-balls dropping about me. But I now found I had
lost all sense of danger, and was thoroughly up to my work.
My little mare did beautifully. Nothing scared her; not
even the explosion of shells close by; and she carried me
handsomely through morasses and over ditches without end;.
and she alone of all the staff horses followed the colonel
wherever he went. After the action was well on, I began to
enjoy it." The affair was badly managed, and the single
attack was soon repulsed, our loss being heavy. We had some
queer experiences that day, and it was a wonder we were not
all killed. " Still, it was a pleasant feeling, that of riding out
of my first fight, having done well in it. I don't think I ever
experienced so genial a glow. As we rode out of the woods
we passed our regiment — the cavalry — drawn up behind
them, where they had been waiting the last four hours. We
had been engaged; they had not. We felt, or at least I did,
like a veteran of an hundred fights; and I got off my horse
with a new and exalted sense of my own importance. It was
very pleasant. In fact, it was not until I had dismounted
that I realized how much I had enjoyed myself that day.
But, honestly and unaffectedly, I do not think I ever passed

142 Charles Francis Adams
a more pleasurable morning in my life. The excitement of a
battle-field is grand."
Such was my contemporaneous record of my first engage
ment. Afterwards I was in many; and those I do not pro
pose to particularize, or to give any descriptions of my part
therein. I copy this, a part of the long record of my first
experience in that way, merely because it was written at
the time; also, as showing the extremely adverse and dis
heartening conditions under which I entered on army life.
That I never for a moment even was sickened of that life, or
looked back regretfully to my office and civilized existence
speaks well, it seems to me, for my robustness; as, also, it is
highly suggestive of my extreme distaste for the law and for
\ office routine. But, assuredly, I never at that juncture did
, look back regretfully. My only fear was that I might be
I forced to give the new life up.
Meanwhile, as usual in face of steady persistence, luck
slowly turned. In August, as a consequence of McClellan's
reverses in Virginia, the regiment was ordered up from South
Carolina; and, so far as I was concerned, it was high time.
There was in my destroyed record a rather curious entry
bearing on this subject. It was under the date of April 19,
1862; just a year from the fall of Sumter. When that
occurred, and the President's call for troops immediately
followed, the object of the muster was declared to be the
re-taking of the captured fort [Sumter]; and I well remember
the dread I felt of, possibly, being sent down to languish in
what I assumed to be those fever-smitten swamps. And now,
exactly one year from that time, I wrote thus: "A year ago
my great apprehension was lest I might be sent to rot on the
islands before Sumter; but now, here I am, just there, and

War and Army Life 143
the 'rotting' process has not yet begun. Again on picket '
duty at the Milne plantation; and it is beyond description j
beautiful. On my table are "three bouquets of magnolias, \
roses, and sweet-smelling flowers, a fresh, fragrant atmos
phere creeps in through the wide-open window, while be
yond is the soft green foliage, such as we at home see only in
early June. Altogether the spring here, though somewhat
warm, is a pleasant season, and one good to live in."
In June, we lay before Sumter. After the failure of the
expedition and our return to Hilton Head, I continued acting
as aid to Colonel Williams. My duties were nominal only;
but, in camp, my commander forswore sack and lived cleanly,
and I certainly had nothing to complain of. But Hilton Head
in July and August I found a wholly different place from
Port Royal Island in April. The heat was great; also, con
tinuous. I was young, and had never known what it was to \
take care of myself physically; so I neglected all precautions j
of diet and exposure; of course, with the usual result. The j
beach was directly in front of my quarters, and the bathing
was superb; but the heat was as great by night as by day;
and, gradually, I broke down under it. By the middle of
August, though fit for duty, I was in a bad way. The news
from home was, also, depressing; a succession of reverses;
and, on the 18th of August, I thus wrote, hearing of our
reverse at Cedar Mountain — when Banks came up against
"Stonewall" Jackson — "the Massachusetts Second has
been badly cut to pieces, and I have lost several old friends,
and, among them, one, the first of our old Fort Independence
mess, Harry Russell. More, and most of all, Stephen Perkins
is reported killed; and if that be true, the ablest man I ever
knew, the finest mind I ever met, is lost forever in the briefly

144 Charles Francis Adams
reported death of a second lieutenant of volunteer Infantry.
It is indeed bitter."
The news proved true of Perkins, but not of Russell. He
was captured, and did not die till 1905 — over forty years
afterwards; and I heard of his death at Assuan, in our second
} visit to Egypt. But in August, 1862, we did not have much
1 time to count losses or lament the dead; our turn had come!
For, only six days later I made the last diary record I was
to make for twenty-six years, while lying on the transport
McClellan, off Fort Monroe, on our way to Alexandria.
There was one portion of that final record which tends to
show that at the time I was at least in a recipient mood. It
was rather creditable. On the voyage up, time hanging
heavily on my hands, I chanced upon Tom Hughes's story
of Hodson, in his Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India. It
made a deep impression on me. We, too, were on our way to
the awful fighting ground, and Hodson's experience and let
ters seemed strangely applicable. I remember writing to my
people in London about it; and now I find this other record:
' "One lesson I wish I could learn from Hodson — that of
patience and subordination. He makes me ashamed of my-
! self. He, a captain at thirty-five and when he had long been
! the first soldier in the Indian army; and here am I, impatient
and reckless, with that same rank in my grasp at the close of
: seven months of service. I am a very ordinary man; he was
a most uncommon one : it would be well for me and my
happiness could I take many pages from his book. Is it not
: possible for me also to do my duty unrepiningly in the place
where I find myself, and, by doing it well, fit myself for
higher? Cannot I too take fortune's buffets and rewards
with equal grace? It does not seem so. Yet it is strange that

War and Army Life 145
one small feature in Hodson's army career in India should
produce such an effect on me here!"
This is the last quotation I have to make from my con
temporaneous records; and it is not my purpose to write a
book of war reminiscences. From this point, therefore, I go
on rapidly. The regiment was forced at once into the most
active of campaign work — the Antietam episode. We were
wholly unprepared, and Williams at once became completely
demoralized — went all to pieces ! I was now made the regi
mental adjutant; and a lovely time I had of it! Something
had happened at Washington, I never quite knew what.
But Williams disappeared altogether for two days, during
which he was very much wanted. The regiment meanwhile
was kicked about in a state of orphanage; and, when
Williams turned up, looking very shame-faced, his chance
of a higher command was gone. Consequently, he took the
field in a totally demoralized frame of mind. Then came
that awful campaign. Williams did not appear well, or do
well. I was wholly inexperienced. He then gave us the
benefit of his regular army jealousies; for he had a great
contempt as well as dislike for his commanding officer —
Pleas anton, in fact a decidedly poor stick — and an angry
flare-up took place, with a fine display of West Point
insubordination. Williams, very wisely, decided to resign his Massachusetts
commission, and return to his desk in the Adjutant-General's
office at Washington. He did so, and his career as a cavalry
officer, or in the field, then came to a close. It was well for him
it did. He was utterly unfitted for the stress and excitement
of active service; while, in his office, he acquitted himself
well. He rose to be Adjutant-General of the Army, and died

146 Charles Francis Adams
somewhere about 1902 or 1903, on the retired list, utterly
broken in health.1
Sargent succeeded Williams, I remaining adjutant. This,
j however, lasted only a few weeks, when I got my company.
' It was a happy day for me. Meanwhile, forced into active
campaign immediately on landing from South Carolina, the
regiment, naturally, went all to pieces. Of our original excel
lent mount, there was hardly a horse left. The officers were
disheartened; the men demoralized. So we went into camp
to await a new mount and reorganize. Greeley Curtis had
now become second in command, with Henry Higginson
next to him. Both good officers, though with no more experi
ence than I, strong personal friends, fearless and with some
sense; much trouble was soon lifted off my shoulders, and
assumed by them. As adjutant, I knew my duties fairly
well; and did them.
In his Memoir of Colonel Henry Lee, published in 1905,
John T. Morse, Jr., says that Harry Lee "said what others
knew and liked to have said by some one, though themselves
shirking responsibility"; and as illustrative of this he repeats
a terse characterization of Colonel Lee's, made to his kins
man, T. Wentworth Higginson, when editing the Harvard
Memorial Biographies. Harry Lee then said to Colonel
Higginson: "Put it down that it will always remain an
uncertainty whether it was the insane vanity of the elder
brother, or the drunken insanity of the younger, which
utterly ruined the finest regiment that ever left Massachu
setts." The two Sargents were the only superiors I had during my
entire army experience with whom I was wholly unable to
1 He died August 24, 1901.

War and Army Life 1 47
get on, or to whom I failed to give satisfaction. Subse-\
quently, I was urged for promotion, out of course, over the
head of Captain Sargent, by Curtis and Higginson; but I
refused to allow myself to be considered. I afterwards always (
had a good reputation as an officer; and, at the end of six
months of excellent opportunity for observation, General
Humphreys tendered me the highest position on his corps
staff. The winter following the Antietam campaign was passed
by the regiment in camp at Acquia Creek. Sargent, now
become colonel, was in command, and we learned nothing;
unless it were to carry insubordination to a fine art. I now j
got my captaincy; and I must do myself the justice to say ;
that, while my company was an excellent one, I took great
pride in it and devoted myself to my duties and its improve-;
ment. Between me and it the most friendly relations existed.!
The trouble, however, was that we were all so inexperienced;
we knew nothing of the laws of health and self-preservation,
and we thought those laws not worth knowing. Why any of
us survived, I cannot now see; but we were young and robust
as a rule; we lived in the open air; and we were at least tem
perate. On the other hand, we had no schools of instruction;
the regimental quarrels were incessant; the spirit of insub
ordination was rife and in the air. None the less, the material
was all there, and it would assert itself. When the Spring >
came, it was a superb regiment.
Then followed the long Gettysburg campaign in which we
were veterans — always, as I now see, self-taught. In the
very height of it Colonel Sargent somehow got a leave-of-
absence, and went to Europe. Curtis broke down, poisoned
by malaria; Higginson and Chamberlain, the two majors,

I

148 Charles Francis Adams
were both incapacitated by wounds; so also was Captain
Sargent. So a few of us, boy-captains, ran what remained of
the regiment. Curtis and Higginson — my old friends, with
whom my campaign life was happiness — never came back.
So, on the whole, this was my best period in the service.
Somehow, the life agreed with me; I actually enjoyed its
hardships, its adventure, its nearness to Nature and men.
I alone of the officers asked for no leave of absence; I desired
none. Perfectly well physically, I was in every way develop
ing. That dreary Court Street office seemed a disagreeable
dream; I was separated from it by a whole existence; I was
never going back to it; it was the only period of my life in
which I lived for the present, and took no thought of the
future. It was a truly glorious existence.
It was now autumn (November, 1863), and I had been
nearly two years in the service without a break. That
autumn campaign was continuous and very severe; and,
when we went into winter quarters at Warrenton — some
where in early December — the regiment was reduced to a
skeleton. Well do I now recall my tour of picket duty the
night the brigade arrived there. The days were the shortest
of the year, and a heavy freezing rain was falling. My line
of outposts covered a broken, unsheltered country, and my
reserve was stationed among the stumps of a recently felled
grove. It was dark as Egypt, and all was desolation; and
so the dreary hours wore themselves away. Late the next
morning I was relieved; but for what? The newly formed
camp was, I well remember, as comfortless and dreary as the
outpost. How we stood it, I do not now see; but, as I have
repeatedly said, we were young and strong, buoyant and full
of resource.

War and Army Life 149
That winter I got a leave of absence; my company re-
enlisting and going home — the first in the regiment to do
so — while I, seeing them to Boston, went to Europe. This \
closed my severe military experience; and it was enough. \
Two full years of company life had completely exhausted it; ;
more would have been mere repetition. My letters, doubt
less, give a vivid enough picture of what that experience
was — and it was far and away the greatest of my life — nor
have I any disposition to indulge in reminiscence. Three
episodes I have since at different times set down, and they
are the most striking I recall.
The first describes the march of the Sixth Corps to Gettys
burg on the 2d of July, '63. That was the finest thing in a !
military way I ever saw. There was in it more of the spirit j
and splendor of war. I included it in the Fourth of July j
Address I delivered at Quincy, in 1869, and it has since been
reprinted in the papers frequently, even in the West. In
deed, I came across it somewhere, not long ago. The passage
is as follows, and I recall the scene now, after an interval of
close on fifty years, as if of yesterday: "It was late on the
evening of the first of July, that there came to us rumors of
heavy fighting at Gettysburg, near forty miles away. The
regiment happened then to be detached, and its orders for
the second were to move in the rear of Sedgwick's corps and
see that no man left the column. All that day we marched
to the sound of the cannon; Sedgwick, very grim and stern,
was pressing forward his tired men, and we soon saw that for
once there would be no stragglers from the ranks. As the
day grew old and as we passed rapidly up from the rear to
the head of the hurrying column, the roar of battle grew more
distinct, until at last we crowned a hill and the contest broke

150 Charles Francis Adams
upon us. Across the deep valley, some two miles away, we
could see the white smoke of the bursting shells, while below
the sharp incessant rattle of the musketry told of the fierce
struggle that was going on. Before us ran the straight, white,
dusty road, choked with artillery, ambulances, caissons, am
munition trains, all pressing forward to the field of battle,
while mixed among them, their bayonets gleaming through
the dust like wavelets on a river of steel, tired, foot-sore,
hungry, thirsty, begrimed with sweat and dust, the gallant
infantry of Sedgwick's corps hurried to the sound of the can
non as men might have flocked to a feast. Moving rapidly
forward, we crossed the brook which runs so prominently
across the map of the field of battle and halted on its further
side to await our orders. Hardly had I dismounted from my
horse when, looking back, I saw that the head of the column
had reached the brook, and deployed and halted on its other
bank, and already the stream was filled with naked men
shouting with pleasure as they washed off the sweat of their
long day's march. Even as I looked, the noise of the battle
grew louder, and soon the symptoms of movement were
evident. The rappel was heard, the bathers hurriedly clad
themselves, the ranks were formed, and the sharp, quick
snap of the percussion caps told us the men were preparing
their weapons for action. Almost immediately a general
officer rode rapidly to the front of the line, addressed to it a
few brief energetic words, the short, sharp order to move by
the flank was given, followed immediately by the 'double
quick,' the officer placed himself at the head of the column,
and that brave infantry which had marched almost forty
miles since the setting of yesterday's sun; which during that
day had hardly known either sleep, or food, or rest, or shelter

War and Army Life 151
from the July heat, now, as the shadows grew long, hurried
forward on the run to take its place in the front of battle and
to bear up the reeling fortunes of the day. . . .
"Twenty-four hours later we stood on that same ground.
Many dear friends had yielded up their young lives during
the hours which had elapsed; but, though twenty thousand
fellow creatures were wounded or dead around us, though'
the flood-gates of heaven seemed open and the torrents fell;
upon the quick and the dead, yet the elements seemed elec-;
trifled with a certain magnetic influence of victory, and, as
the great army sank down over-wearied in its tracks, it felt j
that the crisis and danger was passed — that Gettysburg ]
was immortal." \
The two other passages of war reminiscence are contained
in my "Fenway" Address of April 13, 1899, before the
Massachusetts Historical Society, and those, also, holding
the journalistic stage in the usual limited and transitory
fashion, were extensively printed at the time of delivery.
They are as follows :
"As I have already mentioned, it was my fortune at one
period to participate in a considerable number of battles —
among them none more famous, nor more fiercely contested,
than Antietam and Gettysburg. The mere utterance of
those names stirs the imagination — visions arise at once of
attack, repulse, hairbreadth escape, carnage and breathless
suspense. There was, indeed, on those occasions enough and
to spare of all these; but not, as it chanced, in my particular
case. Some here will doubtless remember that English fox
hunting squire, who has gained for himself a sort of immor
tality by following his hounds over Naseby's field, I think
it was, while the epoch-marking battle was going on. More

152 Charles Francis Adams
yet will recall that ploughman, twice referred to so dramati
cally by Zola, intent upon his uninterrupted day's work near
1 Sedan, when a dynasty was reeling to its fall. So my abiding
j recollection, as a participant in both Antietam and Gettys-
iburg, is, not of the fierce agony of battle at its height, but
the enjoyment of two exceedingly refreshing naps. As a
| statement, this, I am aware, is calculated to startle rather
I than to excite admiration; but, to the historian, truth is
| sacred; and the truth is — as I have said! Neither does the
I i statement imply any exceptional nerve or indifference to
j danger on my part: I make no claim to anything of the sort.
| It happened in this wise. In the campaigns of both Antietam
\ and Gettysburg I was an officer in a regiment of cavalry,
! a mere subordinate, responsible only for obedience to orders.
At Antietam, in the height of the engagement, the division
to which my regiment belonged was hurried across the narrow
stone bridge at the point where the little river intersects the
Sharpsburg road, and deployed on its further side. We were
then directly in front of Fitz-John Porter's corps, and between
it and the Confederate line, covering Sharpsburg. A furious
artillery duel was going on, to and fro, above our heads, be
tween the batteries of Porter's command and those of the
enemy, we being down in the valley of the river, they on the
higher ground. The Confederate batteries we could not see;
nor could they see us. When we first deployed on the further
side of Antietam Creek, it seemed as if we were doomed —
so deafening was the discharge of artillery on either side,
and so incessant the hurtling of projectiles as they passed
both ways over us. Every instant, too, we expected to be
ordered to advance on the Confederate batteries. The situa
tion was unmistakably trying. But no orders came; and no

War and Army Life 153
one was hurt. By degrees it grew monotonous. Presently,
to relieve our tired horses, we were ordered to dismount,
and, without breaking the ranks, we officers sat down on
the sloping hill-side. No one was being struck; I was very
tired; the noise was deadening; gradually it had on me a lull
ing effect; and so I dropped quietly asleep — asleep in the
height of the battle and between the contending armies!
They woke me up presently to look after my horse, who
was grazing somewhat wide; and, after a time, we were
withdrawn, and sent elsewhere. I believe that day our
regiment did not lose a man, scarcely a horse. Such is my
recollection of that veritable charnel-house, Antietam; —
and I was a participant — indeed in the fore-front of the
battle. "Gettysburg was different; and yet, as respects somno
lence, in my case much the same. During the days preceding
that momentous struggle, my command had been frequently
engaged, and suffered heavy loss. We who remained were
but a remnant. On the 3d of July the division to which we
belonged occupied the high, partially wooded ground on the
right of the line, covering the army's flank and rear. It was
a bright July day; hot, and with white clouds slowly rolling
across the sky, premonitory of a thunder-storm during the
later afternoon. From our position the eye ranged over a
wide expanse of uneven country, fields broken by woods,
showing nowhere any signs of an army movement, much
less of conflict. A quiet, midsummer, champaign country.
Neither our lines nor those of the enemy were visible to us;
and the sounds of battle were hushed. Waiting for orders \
and for action, we dismounted, out of regard for our horses
as well as ourselves, and sat or lay upon the turf. Inured to

154 Charles Francis Adams
danger by contact long and close, and thoroughly tired in
body as overwrought in mind, we listened for the battle to
begin; and, shortly after noon, the artillery opened. We did
not know it — we could see nothing in that direction — but
it covered the famous advance of Pickett's Virginia division
upon Meade's centre — that wonderful, that unsurpassed
feat of arms; and, just then, lulled by the incessant roar
of the cannon, while "the fate of the army and the nation
trembled in the balance, at the very crisis of the great con
flict, I dropped quietly asleep. It was not heroic; but it was,
I hold, essentially war, though by no means war as imagined
in the work-room of the theoretic historian."
Of my first trip to Europe — that delightful burst of sun
light from the midst of the awful storm-clouds of those years
— I have elsewhere made record; so here I pass on. The
change from home and office life was to me at that period so
thoroughly enjoyable that I never at all realized what line
and company life in war was until released from it. Once
released, and knowing another existence, a return to it
seemed unendurable. While on my English leave I shrank
from the thought. It so chanced that my college as well as
life-long friend, Theodore Lyman, was then attached to
Meade's Headquarters. He had no army rank, but, knowing
Meade personally, the matter had been arranged. He had
got Governor Andrew to appoint him on his military staff,
and then to detail him for service at the Headquarters of
the Army of the Potomac. It was an ingenious and to me
as well as to him a most useful arrangement; and Theodore
at least availed himself of it to the utmost. More than any
of us he rose to the magnitude of the occasion and derived
advantage from the opportunities of a great experience. I

War and Army Life 155
have elsewhere expressed my sense of this.1 He now by an
act of extreme friendliness got me out of the most disagree
able and trying position in which, on the whole, I ever found
myself involved, rendering me a service I never adequately
repaid; though subsequently I did write his Memoir — forty
years later, in 1906, for the Proceedings of the Historical
Society.2 It was a somewhat elaborate Memoir also, and
gave much satisfaction to his widow, an old friend of mine,
and a grand-daughter of that Jonathan Russell, whom J. Q.
Adams so victimized somewhere about 1822. The fact was,(
Theodore Lyman realized my position. In my great per-;
plexity I wrote to him, and he explained the situation to
Meade. So my squadron was by special order detached
from the regiment and directed to report to the Headquar
ters of the Army of the Potomac for escort duty. Taken
altogether, the most opportune act of friendship ever done
me, it saved my army life from utter failure; but I did not
know how to avail myself of my opportunities, and that
life was not what it should have been.
Thus, when I returned from England in April, 1864, just
in time for Grant's awful Wilderness campaign ¦ — full of
doubt and anxiety, determined somehow to get away from
the regiment — this order had preceded me, and I found my
squadron already transferred. Only once do I remember
going back to the regiment. Chamberlain was then in com
mand. A large, rough, self-made man, he had been wild and
adventurous in his youth, serving as a trooper in the Mexican
war. Wholly lacking in refinement and education, he was a
dashing fellow in his way; and on the whole, I fancy, the
best officer that regiment ever had. Knowing his business
1 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xu. 62. * lb., xx. 147.

156 Charles Francis Adams
fairly well, he was more in sympathy with the men. At
Kelly's Ford he had the year before been severely wounded
— two carbine bullets in his face. He was now lieutenant-
colonel in command; for the regiment was not full enough
to permit the mustering in of a full colonel. On my reporting
back for duty, I saw Chamberlain, and he urged me strongly
to get myself and the squadron returned to the regiment.
We sat on the grass there in that dreary Virginia camp,
discussing the matter, and he then offered me the place next
himself in command. I, however, was obdurate. I declined
even to consider the proposition — it involved a daily con
tact with the things I loathed. Chamberlain and I then
parted good friends, and afterwards remained such. He a
year later succeeded me in command of the Fifth Cavalry,
at last getting his colonelcy.
My experience at the Headquarters of the Army of the
Potomac continued about six months — from April to
October. The change was great, and a pleasant one. There,
and there only, did I see some of the large operations of war
fare, and find myself in contact with men high in command.
I went to the Headquarters a perfectly well man; but the
seeds of malarial disease were, I imagine, implanted, and
during the summer of 1864 I began slowly to break down.
I now know well enough what the trouble was. I was poi
soned by incessant feeding on hard-tack and meat freshly
killed and fried in pork-fat, and the inordinate drinking of
black coffee — quarts of it, each day. We all did so; we and
the medical men evincing an equal lack of either knowledge
of or regard for the most elementary rules of hygiene. My
present realizing sense of our ignorance and recklessness fills
me with a sort of disgusted surprise. We seem all round, at

War and Army Life 157
home as in the army, to have been little more than ignorant
and unobservant children. This disregard of ordinary pre
cautions I stood longer than most, living meanwhile during
the summer of 1864 on the river-banks of the Appomattox,
surrounded by decaying animal matter; but, with even the
most iron of constitutions, it was only a question of time.
I began to break down in August, 1864; and, in May, 1865,
was a mere physical wreck.
At Headquarters I came in contact with, or had a chance \
in a way to observe, all the men whose names were then f
famous in Army of Potomac circles, from Grant down. Here, '
as everywhere, my lack of savoir-faire — of natural objective-
ness — my utter deficiency in quick discernment and tact,
my inability to avail myself of opportunity, and to do or say 1
the right thing at the proper moment — all this, as I now /'
see, stood sadly in my way. I did not ingratiate myself to i
the degree that would have been easily possible with one
differently constituted. At the same time I must confess
that even now, looking back, the men I saw handling large
affairs in those military operations do not seem to me to
have been as a rule imposing. The truth of old Oxenstiern's
remark forced itself continually on me. General Meade was
a gentleman and man of high character; but he was irritable,
petulant and dyspeptic. He did not give the idea of calm,
reserved force. Grant did; but Grant was a man of coarse
fibre, and did not impress with a sense of character. Hancock
was a dashing field-marshal; a handsome, superb commander
of a corps. Warren left on me a sense of lightness. Hum
phreys and Sedgwick were the only two generals I ever met
who inspired me with an adequate sense of force and reli
ability. Officers, they were also quiet, unassuming gentlemen.

158 Charles Francis Adams
About them there was no pretence, no posing for effect, no
stage tricks. I felt for them a profound respect; and, could
I have been a staff officer on the corps commanded by either,
I should have found my proper army position. Sheridan I
never saw until long after the war was over, and then only
casually. He was essentially an Irish adventurer — a species
of brilliant Charles O'Malley; with a well-developed natural
aptitude for military life, he was not conspicuous for char
acter. Thomas, I never laid eyes on; but I imagine he was
a man of the Sedgwick type — solid and full of character.
Sherman, I only saw after the war was over; but he then
] impressed me much, more than any of those I have named,
|not even excepting Humphreys. He bore the stamp of true
igenius. Curiously natural, very fond of talking, there was
about him nothing of the poseur. He was a delightful dinner-
|. table companion, humorous, easy, striking, full of reminis-
Icence. He and Humphreys, very different, but each great,
iwere my two army ideals; under either, it would have been
j a delight and glory to serve. This satisfaction did not fall
to me, partly from that natural obtuseness which has ever
; stood between me and my opportunities, partly from a mis
taken adhesion to that narrow sense of obligation and duty
sto which I have made reference, both here and in my Memoir
of Theodore Lyman.1
I had joined the Headquarters a few days only before the
opening of Grant's terrible Wilderness campaign. I was then
in perfect health. I remember well the fine April morning
when my bugler blew "To Horse" just as Meade mounted,
and, followed by his staff, headed towards Richmond. He
did not go far that day; nor for many following days. I was
1 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xx. 160. '

War and Army Life 159
with the Headquarters from that time on, until we halted
before Petersburg, and the long siege of Richmond was well
advanced. At first, while the army was on its way to the
James, continually fighting and flanking, I was, owing to
the entire absence of cavalry, frequently called upon for
difficult and dangerous service. I had to skirmish, scout and \
cover the army's flank under the orders and eye of the com
manding general. I did my work fairly well, and when I was
leaving for another command Meade in a personal letter
mentioned all the occasions specifically, and kindly com
mended my conduct. While the army was in movement,
therefore, I could not have desired a better position. My \
only trouble was that I did not know how to magnify it.
Of this very memorable campaign and the impressions it
left on me at the time, I have little question my letters home
and to my friends would to-day tell the story so far as I was
concerned. That would be contemporaneous evidence; but
speaking of it as reminiscence, I can only say that the gen-*
eral impression left upon me is one of monotonous discour
agement. The heroic is not greatly in evidence. Looking'
back, the thing which stands prominently forth, writ very
large, is my sense of the utter incompetence of Major-
General Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, and the ter- )
rible disasters and loss of life that incompetence directly I
involved. The figure cut by Grouchy in the Waterloo cam
paign is heroic and almost innocuous compared with it. On
this point I have since expressed myself with such force and
emphasis as I can command. Grant's plan of campaign went
absolutely to pieces at the very outset because of Butler's
utter military incapacity, and his inability either to see an
opportunity, much more to seize it. At the beginning, as I

160 Charles Francis Adams
have shown in my recently published papers, the winning
card was in his hand, and the fact was pointed out to him
clearly by his subordinates. He did not know enough to
recognize it as the winning card, or to play it when pointed
out to him as such. The military element did not enter in
any degree into Butler's composition, and the Army of the
Potomac, including myself, paid the penalty. I think it not
too much to say that the loss of life and casualties thus
entailed were to be numbered by the tens of thousands. As
I remember that awful campaign and those months passed
in front of Petersburg, I entertain a very bitter feeling to
wards Major-General Benjamin F. Butler. Though I never
saw him while he was in command, yet I was very sensible
at the time of the disappointment and loss his being in com
mand entailed upon us. But I have borne my evidence on
all these points in print, and on more than one occasion. It
can be found, if any one is curious enough to look it up,
in my original paper on Mr. Rhodes's fifth volume, in the
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,1 in my
Memoir of Theodore Lyman in the next volume of those
Proceedings? and finally, in my published Studies: Military
and Diplomatic? It is needless here to repeat what I have
there said.
But here I would like to refer to a matter which has for
years been to me a constant annoyance. Never since it was
there placed have I passed by the front of the State House
without feeling a sense of wrong and insult at the presence,
opposite the head of Park Street, of the equestrian statue of
Hooker. That statue I look upon as an opprobrium cast on
every genuine Massachusetts man who served in the Civil
1 2 Proceedings, xix. 348. * lb., xx. 162. » Pages 267-81.

War and Army Life 1 6 1
War. Hooker in no way and in no degree represents the
typical soldiership of the Commonwealth. His record, either
as an officer or as a man, was not creditable. Chancing to be
born in Massachusetts, he was in 1861 and from that time
forward little better than a drunken, West Point military
adventurer. A showy officer, and one capable of fairly good
work in a limited command — that of a brigade or division
— he was altogether devoid of character; insubordinate and
intriguing when at the head of a corps, as a commander he
was in nearly every respect lacking. It is true that after
superseding Burnside he did some effective work towards
organizing the Army of the Potomac. Nevertheless, that
was a period in its history when, so far as character was con
cerned, the Army of the Potomac sank to its lowest point.
It was commanded by a trio, of each of whom the least said
the better. It consisted of "Joe" Hooker, "Dan" Sickles,
and "Dan" Butterfield. All three were men of blemished
character. During the winter (1862-63), when Hooker was
in command, I can say from personal knowledge and experi
ence, that the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac
was a place to which no self-respecting man liked to go, and
no decent woman could go. It was a combination of bar
room and brothel. Then, as if it was not sufficiently annoy
ing to any Massachusetts man who had borne a respectable
part in the Civil War, it was proposed to erect in front of
the State House a statue of Butler in addition to that of
Hooker. This may yet be done. If it is done, I can only hope
it will not be until after my death. That will be altogether
too much! Hooker on one side, and Butler on the other! —
two men in connection with neither of whom during the Civil
War a good word can be said. An equestrian statue of

1 62 Charles Francis Adams
Charles Lowell would have represented something typical
of Massachusetts, greatly to the credit of the Common
wealth. But Hooker and Butler! — as one who wore the uni
form my feeling would be much that of a Frenchman if, in
the most conspicuous place of Paris, he every day was forced
to contemplate statues of Grouchy and Bazaine, supposed
to be representative of the best soldier type France had to
offer. Returning to my individual experience at that time, after
the army crossed the James in June, 1864, and settled down
before Petersburg, the whole situation, so far as I was con
cerned, became changed. I was no longer called on for special
duties; I did not move with the staff; I became in fact a mere
commander of orderlies. Of this I soon wearied. We were,
too, encamped in low lands, for convenience of access to
water on account of the horses, and my health for the first
time manifestly began to fail. I had stood it two years and
eight months, and my turn had now come. It was a marvel
it had not come before, and my exemption up to this late
day spoke volumes for my constitutional strength. But, as I
look back, I wonder at my own obtuseness. I seem never to
have taken the trouble to observe or to draw inferences which
should have been obvious. With a suggestively growing sick-
list it never occurred to me to change my camp to higher
ground or dryer soil, to put my men in motion on some pre
text, or to alter my own diet. I stupidly blundered along,
myself sickening day by day.
In September, the monotony became terrible, and my
enteric troubles so pronounced that I went into hospital,
under care of my college friend, E. B. Dalton, then in com
mand of the Reserve Hospital of the Army. I shared his tent.

War and Army Life 163
Of him I cannot speak too highly. He was one of the few
absolutely first-class characters I ever knew. Gentle, manly,
refined, high-toned, courageous and self-respecting — to be
his friend was indeed an honor. He must now (191 2) have
been dead hard upon forty years. His picture still hangs in
my dressing-room, and I remember him as a man of the
loftiest order of character. His later history was awfully and
dramatically tragic — afflictions rained upon him and broke
him down. He was one of perhaps a dozen I have known,
the deaths of whom have left distinct vacancies in my life;
because of them the world has for me since been appreciably
poorer. Dalton soon saw the gravity of my case, and he advised
me to go home, and get well. Curiously enough, he did not
advise me to stop drinking coffee, to eat no fried food, and
to change my camp. These simple precautions never seemed
to suggest themselves to our army medical men. The fact
was my intestines were actually corroded with concentrated
nourishment. I needed to live on bread, vegetables and tea;
I did live on pork, coffee, spirits and tainted water. Un
doubtedly, also, I was suffering from malarial poison. I ;
needed active campaign work; but I was tired of the war \
and of army life. i
At just this time the unsought offer came to me of the
lieutenant-colonelcy of the Fifth Cavalry, a regiment at the
head of which was my old Fort Independence friend, Harry
Russell. I hesitated long; but, at last, determined to accept./
I did not care for the increased rank, still less for the pay;\
but I was tired of orderly duty; sick, I needed a change, and\
I felt, and felt rightly, that a colored regiment would prove \
an interesting study. I left my old command at Petersburg,

1 64 Charles Francis Adams
and never saw it again; in early October, I think it was, I
joined my new regiment, then not mounted and doing guard
duty at Point Lookout, Maryland, where was a camp of
Confederate prisoners of war. Here my disease grew rapidly
on me. I was now a thoroughly sick man; and, in November,
I got myself ordered home. I had then been three years away.
Getting somewhat better, I shortly returned to duty; but
only to break down again. Before the close of the year I was
back in Boston.
This was for me a memorable leave of absence, for, in it,
I became engaged. I had met the young lady a year before,
while staying at Newport with my sister, Mrs. Charles Kuhn,
just before sailing for Europe. Fresh from two whole years
of army life, I suppose I was then in a susceptible state. In
any event, I thought I had never met so charming and
attractive a person as she who, twenty-one months later,
became my wife. The second daughter of Edward Ogden,
originally of New York, then living at Newport, I had
thought much of her during the year which elapsed after my
flying visit to Newport in January, 1864, and now, invalided
in Boston, I found myself attracted to Newport. My sister
had gone to Europe; the Ogdens were in deepest affliction
over the death of the only son, killed in action in Virginia
six months before; and I had no excuse for going to Newport.
I went all the same ; and, in less than a week, we were engaged.
That last sick-leave was thus made a very pleasant as well as
memorable episode for me.
Things now came in rapid sequence. The war was mani
festly drawing to a close: for the capture of Fort Fisher fol
lowed hard on the battle of Nashville; and that seemed a
mere sequence to Sherman's march to the sea, and the fall of

War and Army Life 165
Savannah. During those winter weeks of 1864-65 the flags
were incessantly displayed in honor of some new victory.
I was engaged, and in a Newport dreamland. A letter from
Harry Russell next advised me that he had resigned, and
that I must take charge of the regiment; and, almost at the
same time, a message reached me from General Humphreys,
telling me that he was about to succeed Hancock in command
of the Second Corps, and inviting me to take the place of
inspector-general of his command. That was a very intoxi
cating period. Patience, and minding my own business had
carried me through my troubles, and I was rising surface-
ward, corklike.
Large and small, I have made many mistakes in my life;
not more perhaps than the average man, but still a sufficiency
— mistakes of judgment, mistakes of temper and utterance,
social mistakes, and, above all, mistakes due to lack of dis
cernment. One or two of these, mistakes of judgment, have
been vital, affecting my whole subsequent course of life;
mistakes like taking the wrong fork of the road to a destina
tion, when it was a mere turn of the hand which road was
taken. Other of my mistakes, though not vital, were impor-;
tant; matters for life-time regret. Among my half-dozen mis- '
takes of this sort, I now distinctly scored one. Acting, I will
do myself the justice to say, largely under a sense of obliga-;
tion and duty, I did not hesitate an instant; I elected to
remain with my regiment. From every point of view I de
cided wrong; for I did the regiment no good and myself much
harm. The whole experience afforded an excellent instance
of good intentions misdirected. In the first place, by an
ingenious move through my influential friends at the Head
quarters of the Army of the Potomac, I got the regiment

1 66 Charles Francis Adams
mounted. Mistake number one. The regiment was doing
very good service, dismounted, as a garrison and on guard
over the prisoners' camp at Point Lookout. To mount it,
meant only the waste of twelve hundred much-needed
horses. Then, having got it mounted, through the same
channels I worked it into active service. Mistake number
N two; as the only result of so doing was to afford myself con-
\vincing proof that the negro was wholly unfit for cavalry
1 service, lacking absolutely the essential qualities of alertness,
i individuality, reliability and self-reliance. He could not
scout; he could not take care of himself in unfamiliar posi
tions. That regiment was in exactly its proper place at Point
' Lookout. I merely took the negro out of it, and put him
where he was of no possible use. I did the service harm, the
regiment no good. As for myself, I sacrificed the whole ripe
i reward and happy culmination of my three years of service.
True, I had the satisfaction of leading my regiment into
burning Richmond, the day after Lee abandoned it. I did
have that satisfaction; and it was a great one. But it was
purchased at a great cost. And that was all I got. Then
came a few weeks of wretched breaking down, until I became
a confirmed invalid, and had to crawl ignominiously home,
leaving my regiment ordered to Texas and almost in a state
of mutiny. It was a bitter and humiliating termination of
nearly four years of faithful effort. And all from a sense of
duty! And I might have been in at the death with Hum
phreys and the Second Corps ! It was all very bitter and so
wholly unnecessary!
Forced to be content with the march into Richmond, a
few weeks later, about the 20th of May, I dragged myself on
to my horse, and left my command. I was then a mere wreck

War and Army Life 167
— pitiably reduced and weak. Eaten up with malarial poi
son, I weighed scarcely one hundred and thirty pounds,
while my knees would at night so ache from mere weakness
that sleep was out of the question. Intestinally corroded, I
was never free from the influence of opium, which acting on
my nerves drove me almost to insanity. Weeks later, a short
sea voyage brought me relief; the physicians were of no use.
Had they in May prescribed an ocean voyage to Europe and
back, I would have been convalescent in a month. As it was,
in June, I think, I was quietly mustered out of the service,
and became once more a civilian. A great experience was
over, and its close was for me a Dead Sea apple. But I
intended it well !

V
PUBLIC SERVICE AND HISTORY
Passing the summer in Newport, I was married in No
vember, and went immediately to Europe. The next eleven
months I passed — or rather we passed — in London, at
Rome and Paris, and finally in England, getting back to
America in the following October (1866). My going to
Europe was a wise move, for it enabled me to recover my
health. The process was a slow one, for my system was per
meated by disease. I had slowly to work the poison out. I
much fear I was far from an amiable or considerate husband
during those twelve months; more especially as I was weighed
down by the ever-present consciousness that I was now to go
back to civil life, and, somehow, while earning a living, work
out my destiny. The outlook was indeed dreary.
Still, I did enjoy Europe — after a fashion ! That I failed,
and failed woefully, to avail myself of my opportunities, goes
without saying; for it was I ! My father was then American
Minister to Great Britain, and, had I possessed the happy,
ingratiating, social faculty only in a moderate degree, I could
have seen much I never saw of things, and met many men I
now have only heard of. It was not so, and I have little to
record; for at that period I kept no diary. On the Continent,
it was the same; I failed to avail myself of my opportunities.
But those were at least the days of the temporal dominion
of the Pope, and Rome was mediaeval and unique. It had
not yet been at once modernized and vulgarized. It was old
Rome, under the Papacy. When we left it, we left it by car-

Public Service and History 169
riage, driving to Perugia. We also drove from Genoa to Nice
along the famous Cornice Road. France and Paris were very
different in 1866 from what they now (1912) are. It was in
the days of the Empire; the battle of Sadowa, ominous of the
fate of Napoleon III, was fought while we were at Paris. I
am free to confess that, for a foreigner, France of the Sec
ond Empire was an infinitely more attractive country than
France of the Republic. It may have been all sham and tin
sel; but Paris was then undeniably brilliant, gay and clean.
It is now a cheap caravansary — cheap in everything but its
prices. It has since grown common. Even the boulevards,
the theatres, the "garcons," and the police have deteriorated.
But on this head I expressed myself in full in my Memoir of
Robert C. Winthrop.1 Mutato nomine, etc.
We got back to America late in September, 1866, and I
confronted the world, so to speak, face to face. It bore a far
from inviting aspect. I had been away nearly five entire
years, and both I and the conditions were greatly changed.
Married, and thirty years of age, I was to begin anew; and
at the foot of the ladder. The change was something terrific;
nor did those around appreciate, I think, how great it was.
I had been a full colonel, in command of a regiment. Within
the beat of his sentries there is no one on earth more of
a despot than a colonel commanding a regiment. He is
supreme; he breathes a constant atmosphere of deference
and subordination. This I had been thoroughly accustomed
to; and, now, I found myself an office-boy — a mere tender-
out — a confessed applicant for — something! People, I
knew well enough and felt keenly, looked at me, half curi
ously, half sympathetically, waiting to see what I would find
1 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xx. 186-89.

170 Charles Francis Adams
to do. It was more, far more than merely discouraging — it
was humiliating.
I must do myself the justice to say that under these cir
cumstances I addressed myself to the ordeal before me, not
only with a good deal of courage, but promptly and in a large
way, evincing withal a somewhat surprising degree of good
sense. Nominally, I found I had to go back to a law office.
I had no choice. I had to do something; but I did it with a
sinking heart. I felt I had no aptitude that way. In my case
people have always been over-ready to talk of "family
influence" and all that sort of thing in an owlish way, so
accounting for about everything I ever accomplished. So
far as I have ever been able to see, however, "family influ
ence" never was of any assistance to me; and, in those ordeal
days, never I am sure was put forth in the faintest in my
behalf. Paraphrasing Pistol, the world was my oyster then,
which I with pen did open; and I did it, unaided.
But, curiously enough, I had meanwhile worked out my
problem in advance; and worked it out correctly. Surveying
the whole field — instinctively recognizing my unfitness for
the law — I fixed on the railroad system as the most develop
ing force and largest field of the day, and determined to
attach myself to it. I now stand amazed at my own inexperi
ence and audacity; but, having made up my mind, within a
fortnight of my dreary home-coming, and, in perfect good
faith, evolving my facts from my inner consciousness, I pro
ceeded to write an article on "Railroads" for the North
American Review! James Russell Lowell and Charles E.
Norton were then editing that periodical — trying to in
fuse new life into its aged system; for it was being slowly
but surely crowded out of existence by the newer and more

Public Service and History 171
superficial, but also more readable swarm of monthlies then
coming into vogue. Norton was kind enough to accept my
suggestion of an article; and, even now, I retain a profoundly
grateful feeling towards him for that helping hand in an
hour of submerged distress. I wrote the article — currente
calamo — at Newport, while wondering what I was going to
do for a winter shelter; and I hardly consulted a book, while,
certainly, I knew nothing of my subject. As I think of it, I
must say I decidedly admire my own energy and directness;
even if I have to confess to a considerable degree of simple-
minded assurance. The article appeared — "judiciously
edited," I am glad to say, by Norton — in the North Ameri
can for April, 1867, and it helped me much. I have not read
it for over forty years ; and I should be somewhat afraid to
read it now; but then it was a first step; undeniably ill-
considered and rash, it showed life.
Meanwhile, trying somehow to catch on to the railroad
interest, I did make an honest effort at the law. It simply
would not go! There was something inherently unsympa
thetic — antipatica — between it and me. Not only did I
feel it, but I was conscious, or thought I was conscious of
the fact, that, somehow, every one else realized it also. I
never had, to my recollection, a bona-fide client. The whole
experience was to the last degree humiliating; it may have
been healthy, but it certainly was not agreeable.
Again, time, patience and persistent pegging away worked
a salvation. Fortunately, I had enough to live on in a small
but sufficiently comfortable way, and the dreary clientless
months crept on. But my pen was always busy; I wrote
article on article, almost always on railroads, or railroad law,
for the North American or the magazines, law and other, and

172 Charles Francis Adams
in that way identified my name with railroads ; but it was a
discouraging process. I never seemed to get anywhere; the
outlook did not brighten. Then, as is wont to be the case,
day suddenly broke. Up to that time, Massachusetts had
no department of government specially connected with its
growing but still wholly unregulated railroad system. I fixed
my mind on the great probability of such a department
being soon created, and determined to try for a place in it.
In this, I succeeded; nor, as things go in life, did I have long
to wait.
It was in October, 1866, that I began operations; in July,
1869, my purpose was accomplished. An act creating a State
Board of Railroad Commissioners was passed by the Legis
lature, in the spring of 1869, largely through my instrumen
tality; and, making a strike for the position, I was appointed
the third member of it. I had worked my problem success
fully out in two years and nine months; a very creditable
consummation. Again, as in February, 1865, everything, so to speak, flow
ered simultaneously, all my long efforts seemed to mature
together, wholly changing my position at once and perma
nently. I at last had my foot firmly on the lower rung of
the ladder, and was on the way up. My father had returned
from London in the spring of 1868. Leaving his house in
Boston, which until then I had occupied, we, in the autumn
of 1868, established ourselves on the Neponset turnpike, in
Quincy. It was a wise thing to do; though, at the time, I did
not so consider it. I went there most reluctantly; but in
Quincy I was known. There, during that Winter, I with
infinite pains, sparing no labor, wrote my Chapter of Erie.
That showed progress ; it was really a careful piece of literary

Public Service and History 173
work. In the spring also I was invited by the Grand Army
Post, at Quincy, to deliver a Fourth of July Address. I
agreed to do it; and on that, also, I spared no pains. I actu
ally memorized it; a thing I could not possibly now do.
When July came, my nomination as Railroad Commissioner,
my Fourth of July Address, and the Chapter of Erie all came
at once, and together. Careful preparation told. The suc
cess of each effort was considerable; my chance was secure.
That Fourth of July, 1869, was, distinctly, one of my life's
red-letter days. It stands out in memory as such. The pre
liminary struggle at last was over; the way was open before
me. fAt last I had worked myself into my proper position
and an environment natural to me."}
I served on the Massachusetts Board of Railroad Com
missioners exactly ten years, from July, 1869, to July, 1879;
for seven of the ten, I was chairman, and for the whole ten
by common consent the controlling mind of the Board. In
1879, my fourth commission expired, and I declined a re-
nomination. I had done all I could do in the position; and,
so far as I personally was concerned, I had got out of it all
it had to give. It was time I left, and looked elsewhere. But
certainly, those ten were prosperous, active, useful years for
me — years good to live, good to look back on. My two
colleagues on the original commission were very ordinary
men; both much older than I. But, all the same, they let
me do nearly all the work of the Board, and write all the
reports, and the reports were thought well of. When,
through the chapter of accidents, those two associates were
retired, I came to the chairmanship, and then my two col
leagues — Mr. Briggs, of Springfield, and Mr. Johnson, of
Newton — were^ as associates, all I could ask for. It was a

1 74 Charles Francis Adams
really excellent board, as good as such a board well could be,
able, honest, perfectly harmonious. It was a very pleasant
official life; and, as the initial Railroad Commission, the
success of the Board was pronounced and generally recog
nized. As for myself, looking back, I think, all things considered,
I did well. I made some mistakes of judgment, and bad
mistakes. Frequently, I proved unequal to the occasion.
More than once, I now see, I was lacking in firmness, and
even in courage. I did not take the position I should have
taken. On the other hand, on the one great occasion which
offered I did prove fully equal to it, and my success then
.more than counterbalanced all my shortcomings elsewhere.
I refer to our action and report on the strike of engineers on
the Boston & Maine Railroad, in February, 1877. On that
occasion our Board rendered a really considerable public
service, putting a sharp stop to a rapidly increasing epidemic,
and courageously laying down some very salutary doctrines
which were productive of lasting effects. That was twenty-
three years ago (1900) ; and there has not since been a strike
of railroad train operatives in New England. I wrote the
whole of the report, at. Quincy, during the evening which
followed the hearings. My associates adopted my draft the
next day, without the change of a word; it was immediately
published; and, as a leading member of the Legislature —
General Cogswell, of Ipswich — afterwards remarked to me:
" It cleared the air like a thunderclap." On the action then
taken, I now (1912) pride myself. In my judgment great
and unnecessary friction would have been since avoided and
industrial results of the utmost importance secured had the
precedent there established been since generally followed.

Public Service and History 175
The appeal in industrial difficulties was to an enlightened
public opinion, based on facts elicited by a fair-minded
public investigation. As labor conflicts have since occurred,
I have repeatedly called attention to that experience and
precedent; but it was a voice crying in the wilderness. Our
people as a community do not share in my faith in publicity;
but, all the same, public opinion and patience are the best
possible agents for successfully solving industrial, social and
economical problems. Twenty-five years subsequently (1902)
I told the story in a paper entitled Investigation and Publicity
as opposed to Compulsory Arbitration, read before the Ameri
can Civic Federation, and then printed by me in pamphlet
form. The Roosevelt Commission on the Pittsburg Anthra
cite Coal Strike of that year formally adopted my views,
and recommended accordingly; but nothing came of it.
That action and report of 1877, however, I still hold to have
been as creditable a piece of work as I ever did; it was also
courageous. Perhaps I ought to have followed it up; made
in fact the following of it up my work in life. Who knows ?
It is a supremely wise man who recognizes his mission when
the call comes and occasion offers. I certainly have in life
not been over-wise, much less supremely so.
On the other hand, not impossibly my turn of thought
is too philosophical for practical, every-day purposes; and,
being so, it fails to make proper allowance for the natural in
human nature — the desire of the man in the street to get
things done and, as he imagines, once-and-for-all disposed
of. Hence, as I see it, the growing tendency to excessive legis
lation — to the everlasting issuing of new legislative edicts
in which the supposed popular will is crystallized and penal
ized. For myself, I don't believe in it. I never have believed

1 7 6 Charles Francis Adams
in it; and for this reason, perhaps, have failed to be in sym
pathy with the sturdy champions of the "Dear Peepul."
But, after all, such are but the old-time courtier, the syco
phant and the parasite of the Tudor and Stuart periods
thinly disguised and in a slightly different role; and the lot
of the man who talks of Reason, Publicity and Patience now
differs not greatly from the lot of him who three centuries
ago questioned Divine Right, or gave open expression to a
doubt as to the infallibility of the British Solomon. And so
it goes! The potter's wheel has turned; the clay and the
potter remain the same.
So, as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Railroad
Commissioners, I for ten years consistently and persistently
preached my doctrine. It, too, proved in the outcome a
mere phase in a process of development along the old lines.
A stronger diet is called for; mine is pronounced a Milk-and-
Water Dispensation. Unquestionably the late Thomas Car
lyle would have so denominated and denounced it. Fortu
nately, however, the Strong-Arm Policy is restricted in its
application to the domain of Politics and cannot reach out
into those of Science, Art, Literature or Medicine. Hence,
the world does get oh; but, for all I see, industrial contro
versies still remain in the old chaotic stage, or a little more
so; while, as to the so-called transportation abuses, if any
real progress to more satisfactory conditions has been made,
a knowledge of the fact has not reached me. Whatever im
provement has been secured has been through the operation
of natural influences and not as a result of legislative edict.
But my activity during those ten years (i 869-1 879) was
by no means confined to railroads, or my official duties as a
commissioner. In other fields I did a great deal of work; and

Public Service and History 177
in my work I took pleasure. I was in every way prosperous;
successful in business, I was happy at home. They were
good years — those with me between thirty-four and forty-
four. I had, in 1870, found myself so well off in a worldly
way that I projected, and built, on land my father gave me,
the house on President's Hill in Quincy; where we lived from
1 87 1 to 1893. Four of my five children were born in that
house; and in it no death occurred during our occupancy.
We moved into it, a new house, when my wife was twenty-
nine and I was thirty-six; we moved out of it, when Quincy,
ceasing in the way already described to be a town, had
been metamorphosed into a most commonplace suburban
municipality; and, as such, was to me no longer bearable.
We then by a most fortunate cast in the dice of life, changed
environments, moving into a far better abode in much more
congenial surroundings.
Still, in Quincy, for more than a score of years I was very
active as a worker, and was an influential citizen. My record
too was creditable. I left a mark on the town government — •
on its schools, on its Public Library, on its Park system.
I have told the whole story, always leaving out my own
name and carefully suppressing reference to myself, in the
third of my Three Episodes of Massachusetts History. So far
as the producing of results was concerned, I was, also, be
tween 1870 and 1890, most fortunately placed. I worked
with and through my brother, J. Q. Adams. I never was
sympathetic or popular; he, somehow, was. He was in close
touch with the people of Quincy; me, they were disposed to
look at a bit askance. But he and I, in town matters,
always acted together. I was much the more active-minded;
he was inclined to indolence. But, when set in motion, pro-

178 Charles Francis Adams
vided he did not encounter too much opposition, he had a
really remarkable faculty of accomplishing results. He was,
however, by nature prone to be too easily discouraged. We
both delighted in town-meeting. Its atmosphere — in the
olfactory way pretty bad at times — came naturally to us;
we were bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh; and the mass
of those there knew it and felt it; and, for twenty years, we
together practically managed Quincy affairs. It was also
Quincy's golden age. The town-meetings were reduced from
a mob to a model; the finances were straightened out; the
school system was reorganized and made famous; the Public
Library building was erected and endowed; a system of
Parks was devised and developed; and, finally, Quincy was
actually freed from debt. The last fact stated is significant
— eloquent even. That was under a town government, and in
largest extent because of my steady urgency. The levy then
was ten dollars in the thousand of valuation. Now (1912),
twenty years later under a city government, Quincy has a
debt of two million dollars and is considering an annual
levy of twenty-five dollars on the thousand! Judging by the
balance-sheets of the respective periods, my brother John
and I certainly exercised a not unsanitary influence.
I have told the story in my Three Episodes, carefully, as
I have said, suppressing all claim for personal credit. But
the historic fact is that whatever was then accomplished our
town owed wholly and exclusively to us; and, moreover, I do
not hesitate here to add that, in so far as I was not, as in
the cases of the Library and Parks, the immediately active
force, I was the stimulating spirit. That record of local and
municipal activity and usefulness is one pleasant to look
back on. During those twenty years, I was a member of

Public Service and History 179
the School Committee, of the Trustees of the Public Library,
a Park Commissioner, and a Commissioner of the Sinking
Fund. There never was a time when I was not actively
engaged in town work; nor was I ever defeated when a can
didate for office. I never before reviewed that record; to do
it now (1912), after a lapse of twenty years, affords me sat
isfaction. It was eminently creditable — far more so than
I supposed. Out of pure public spirit I did a great deal of
work, and I did it well; and, though it nowhere so appears,
the Thomas Crane Library building and the Merrymount
Park remain in Quincy permanent memorials of that fact. ;
In my life I seem to be able to put my finger on two acci
dental epoch-marking incidents. One was the coming across
a certain book at a crucial period of mental development;
the other was being invited to deliver an occasional address.
When in England in November, 1865, shortly after my mar
riage, I one day chanced upon a copy of John Stuart Mill's
essay on Auguste Comte, at that time just published. My
intellectual faculties had then been lying fallow for nearly
four years, and I was in a most recipient condition; and that
essay of Mill's revolutionized in a single morning my whole
mental attitude. I emerged from the theological stage, in
which I had been nurtured, and passed into the scientific.
I had up to that time never even heard of Darwin. Inter
arma, etc. From reading that compact little volume of
Mill's at Brighton in November, 1865, I date a changed
intellectual and moral being.
The other individually epochal incident occurred eight
years afterwards. It was curious, and, though commonplace
enough at the moment, in remote consequences in its way
dramatic. Wholly unconsciously on my part and with no

1 80 Charles Francis Adams
sense of volition, I entered on a path which led far — for me
very far! Indeed, I then found my vocation — a call had
come! The incident occurred in 1874, and thirty years later
I gave in another address 1 delivered at Weymouth a some
what autobiographical account of it. It is only needful to
premise that the James Humphrey referred to was typical of
the old New England stock. A man then advanced in life,
plain in dress and aspect, he was very lame — walking always
with the aid of two canes, one in each hand; but his whole
presence was somehow suggestive of honest shrewdness.
The "Judge" was a man of a stamp common enough for
merly, but now rarely found within a radius of twenty miles
of Boston, if not indeed in that region extinct. For example,
since I went to Lincoln to live in 1893, the type, then fa
miliar enough there, has disappeared — it was the going of
theMassachusetts village squire, the town-meeting stand-by,
the traditional moderator and selectman.
Getting back to my story, the 1904 account of the incident
was as follows: "Just thirty years ago last spring, on a day
in April, if my memory serves me right, your old-time select
man, James Humphrey — remembered by you as 'Judge'
Humphrey — called at my office, then in Pemberton Square,
Boston. Taking a chair by my desk, he next occasioned
wide-eyed surprise on my part by inviting me, on behalf of
a committee of the town of Weymouth, to deliver an his
torical address at the coming two hundred and fiftieth anni
versary of the permanent settlement of the place. Recently re
turned to civil life from four years of active military service,
and nominally a lawyer, I was at that time, as chairman of
x Weymouth Thirty Years Later, Weymouth Historical Society, no. 3, 115-
16.

Public Service and History 1 8 1
the State Board of Railroad Commissioners, devoting my
attention to questions connected with the growth and de
velopment of transportation. To independent historical in
vestigation I had never given a thought. As to Weymouth,
I very honestly confess I hardly knew where the town so
called was, much less anything of its story; having a some
what vague impression only that my great-grandmother,
Parson William Smith's daughter, Abigail, had been born
there, and there lived her girlhood. Such was my surprise,
I remember, that I suggested to Mr. Humphrey he must be
acting under a misapprehension, intending to invite some
other member of my family, possibly my father. He, how
ever, at once assured me such was not the case, satisfying
me finally that, a man sober and in his right mind, he knew
what he was about, and whom he was talking to. Subse
quently, I learned that he did indeed act as the representa
tive of a committee appointed at the last annual Weymouth
town-meeting; for an explanation of the choice appeared —
as ' a great-grandson of Abigail (Smith) Adams, a native of
Weymouth,' I had been selected for the task. Overcoming
my surprise, I told Mr. Humphrey I would take the matter
under consideration. Doing so, I finally concluded to ac
cept. Though I had not the faintest idea of it at the time,
that acceptance marked for me an epoch; I had, in fact,
come to a turning-point in life. That, instinctively, if some
what unadvisedly and blindly, I followed the path thus
unexpectedly opened has been to me ever since cause of
gratitude to Weymouth. For thirty years it has led me
through pastures green and pleasant places. But at the
moment, so little did I know of the earlier history of Mas
sachusetts, I was not aware that any settlement had been

1 8 2 Charles Francis Adams
effected hereabouts immediately after that at Plymouth, or
that the first name of the place was Wessagusset; nor,
finally, that Thomas Morton had, at about the same time,
erected the famous May-pole at Merrymount, on the hill
opposite where I dwelt. Thus the field into which I was
invited was one wholly new to me, and unwittingly I entered
on it; but, for once, fortune builded for me better than I
knew. I began on a study which has since lasted continu
ously." I prepared that Address, and delivered it on King-Oak
Hill on the Fourth of July, 1874. The morning of that day
was propitious, and the meeting, an open-air one, passed off
well enough. Taken by surprise, I had to convert what was
meant for a discourse from manuscript into an oral ex tempore
address, but I acquitted myself fairly; and, after the thing
was over, went home without attending the other features
of the occasion. I felt tired, and a storm was plainly gather
ing; that afternoon how it did rain! The flood-gates were
opened. That, and the afternoon rain of the third day at
Gettysburg, well do I recall them.
But returning once more to the 1874 performance, the
historical investigation preliminary thereto interested me;
and though a somewhat crude and 'prentice-like piece of
historical work, the address itself brought me a certain de
gree of notice as well as credit, leading among other things
to my election in the following year (1875) as a member
of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Step by step, as
leisure and occasion offered and called, I was led further
and yet further in the investigation upon which I then
entered, and it occupied me, on and off, twenty years. It
was not until November, 1892, that, in my Three Episodes

Public Service and History 183
of Massachusetts History, I finished and published the story
I first got acquainted with while preparing my Address of
June, 1874.
Returning to my narrative, the year before this for me
epochal episode — that is, in 1873 — I was concerned in
the earliest of the many outside commissions to which I
have first and last been appointed, and upon which I have
done some of the work I shall ever do of most lasting value.
My father-in-law, Edward Ogden, had died in Paris, in
June, 1872, and his wife — one of the most lovable characters
I ever knew, affectionate, unselfish and immensely capable —
had followed her husband suddenly, dying of heart disease
in the railroad station at Lyons, while on her way from
Geneva to Paris, in November following". Her three daugh
ters had remained in Europe. I thought of going out, to
arrange certain business matters and bring them home, when
Governor Washburn suddenly appointed me chairman of a
commission provided for by the Massachusetts Legislature
to attend the Vienna Exposition and report thereon. I went
out in April, and returned in September. My experience was
pleasant enough, and in a way instructive; though I was
generally quite unqualified for the task. Of course, as I al
ways have, I failed fully to avail myself of my opportunities,
and the experience left on my own mind a distinct sense of
self-insufficiency; but, passing all that, it was my supreme
good fortune on this occasion to have associated with me
Frank D. Millet, who was appointed Secretary of the Com
mission, and met me as such in Vienna. He and I, at any
rate, were sympathetic. Coming together at once, we re
mained together ever after; and until his terrible death
in the frightful Titanic disaster of April, 1912. I then gave

184 Charles Francis Adams
public expression a to the value I put upon his friendship,
and the more than esteem I felt for him. He was a very rare
character, and his unaffected friendship I held more than
the equivalent of a diploma — it was a decoration. Through
nearly forty years correspondents, we were also in the earlier
and the better period companions in numerous vacation
trips. I have had more days on the water with him, in close
touch with Nature — days of good companionship and keen
yachting enjoyment, days a delight to look back upon — •
than with all other persons I have ever met put together;
for Millet was incomparably the most perfect holiday com
panion it was ever my fortune to encounter. So I reckon his
and my chance association that Vienna summer, one of the
bits of supreme good fortune which in all my life have come
my way. Millet was one of perhaps a half-dozen in all whose
going left for me a void and permanent sense of loss not
again to be made good — and the void and sense of loss thus
in his case left were the largest and most sensible of all.
In 1877, I think it was, I was again appointed a member
of a special commission created to report a plan for utilizing
the Troy & Greenfield Railroad — that Hoosac Tunnel ele
phant then a problem on the hands of the Commonwealth;
and I prepared its report. Nothing came of it immediately;
but that report foreshadowed the course subsequently pur
sued. Once more, in 1878, I was made the Chairman of the
Board of Government Directors of the Union Pacific Rail
road Company, and, for the first time, visited the Pacific
Coast. This was through the influence of Carl Schurz, then
Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes Cabinet. I prepared
1 Art and Progress, vol. in, no. 9, July, 1912.

Public Service and History 185
the report; but, though at the time it was merely put in the
Department files, much to me a little later on resulted from
that experience.
In 1892 I was appointed chairman of the preliminary and
advisory commission provided for by the Legislature of
Massachusetts to devise a system of Parks and Public Res
ervations in the vicinity of Boston; and, a year later, when,
to my utter surprise, our recommendations had been ap
proved and adopted, I became chairman of the permanent
commission organized to carry the system we had outlined
and recommended into effect. I served on this Board until
June, 1895. I then resigned, feeling that my task was accom
plished, and I had best quit betimes. Wholly opposed to the
policy of rapid growth and what I could not but regard as
premature development, I found myself powerless to check
it. I was, in fact, frightened at our success in the work we
had to do, and the expenditure step by step involved in it.
A few years later, however, I again served (1903) as chairman
of a special commission appointed to apportion the cost of
maintenance of the system of reservations among the several
cities and towns responsible therefor. Eleven years had
elapsed since I first got concerned in the development. My
connection with it then at last ceased. And yet I greatly
doubt whether at any period of my life, or in any way, I
have done work more useful or so permanent in character,
as that I did in this connection; for I was largely instru
mental in saving to the people of Massachusetts the Blue
Hills and the Middlesex Fells. In one more year the for
mer, at least, would have been gone beyond the possibility
of redemption. The granite-quarry man had obtained a
footing in it, and the work of exploitation was actually in

1 86 Charles Francis Adams
process. The Blue Hills were, so to speak, in my special baili
wick — the region of my Three Episodes. To their inclusion
in the Reservation I especially devoted my efforts. Thus I
may also not unfairly claim the Blue Hill Park Reservation
as in part my monument.
In 1897 I was appointed chairman of a Massachusetts
commission provided to inquire into the relations between
street railways and municipalities. In this connection I
visited Europe, inquiring into systems in use there; and,
subsequently, prepared the report of that commission also,
which became the basis of comprehensive general legislation.
On all these commissions my relations with my colleagues
and associates were perfectly harmonious, and generally
more than merely friendly. Never in any case was there se
rious friction in any one of them, or any considerable differ
ence in our conclusions and recommendations. Uniformly the
drawing-up of the reports was entrusted to me. It has, there
fore, always been a rather curious subject of reflection in my
mind, how it chanced that in the early days of my army expe
rience alone — the period and position in which harmonious
relations with my superiors were most important — I found
myself in an utterly impossible position. Still vaguely im
pressed with the idea that it must have been largely my fault,
in subsequent relations of life I have never proved a person
difficult to get on with. I am, therefore, forced to the con
clusion that it was simply a case of infernal bad luck. The
fault was mine in no respect; and the only possible alterna
tive to the course I took would have been an unseemly
regimental quarrel, followed by my resignation. I could not
but have come out of the affair irremediably discredited.
It was better as it was. And yet, looking at it in all coolness

Public Service and History 187
through the vista of fifty years, I am not sure I would not
now feel better satisfied had I shown myself a fighting man
of the old duelling school.
Again, however, returning to my narrative, apart from
these minor public functions, my trouble all my recent life —
that is, since I got my foot firmly on the rungs of the ladder
in July, 1869 — has been a too active mind. I have con
tinually attempted too much — always had too many irons
in the fire. Besides my official and my literary life, for over
forty years I led a very active business life. I managed a
variety of considerable interests; was concerned in many
enterprises. There is an old saying that the unsuccessful
man is he who is wrong three times out of five; the successful
man, he who is right in the same proportion. As I now look
back on experiences stretching through more than a gen
eration, my respect for my own judgment is the reverse of
inflated. I have throughout dealt with large affairs; several
times, I have made decided successes; but, as a rule, the
fallibility of my judgment has been noticeable. A few suc
cesses, however, more than made good, in my case, almost
innumerable blunders, the very thought of which is now
most unpleasant to dwell upon. One great business success
I did achieve; and it is the only one on which I can fairly
plume myself. Going into it at its inception, in 1869, 1 have
for over forty years been at the head of the Kansas City
Stock Yards Company, directing its policy and development.
When I became President, it was a concern of $100,000 cap
ital, earning, perhaps, $20,000 a year gross. From this I
stage by stage have built it up, always its President, until
to-day it is capitalized at above ten millions, and earns
annually over $1,200,000 gross. The second largest institu-

1 8 8 Charles Francis Adams
tion of the kind in the world in all these years it has missed
but a single quarterly dividend; and that owing to a cata
clysm — the Kaw Valley flood of 1903, which in three days
swept away at least $600,000 of the values of enterprises of
which I was the originator, and in which I was personally
most largely interested. Financially, it was for me as a brick
falling on the head as I walked along a familiar street. The
loss was never recouped. Managed in a broad, liberal spirit,
the Kansas City yards have been a great public benefit as
well as a considerable commercial success. The success of
the company drew down on it, of course, a populistic political
attack of the most dangerous character about 1907; and
this too it survived. I take much pride in its record; and
feel I have a right so to do. That, I did.
I also early foresaw the future commercial importance, and
consequent rapid growth, of Kansas City, arguing the propo
sition out fairly and from first principles; and I acted on
my convictions, making there large purchases of real estate.
Here I reasoned soundly, and acted boldly and with judg
ment. One of the enterprises I there organized and had a
large interest in made in one year twelve dividends of ten
per cent each (1886), has divided over four hundred per
cent on its capital, and is now (1912) being closed out.
Another investment there, long since having reimbursed its
entire outlay several times over, represents still several-fold
what I put into it.
While, therefore, in view of the opportunities I have had
— the chances that have fallen in my way, not less numerous
than superb — I have little to pride myself on on the score
of sagacity or business judgment; yet, considering that my
real thought has all the time been occupied in other direc-

Public Service and History 189
tions, I cannot accuse myself of any glaring lack of discern
ment. The result speaks in a way for itself. In 1878, when
I had been engaged in my operations for eight years and
carrying what was for me a heavy load incident to the
financial collapse of 1873, my liabilities exceeded my as
sets, as I then figured their value, by about fifteen thousand
dollars. In 1879, with the return of the country to a gold
basis, the tide turned. That thereafter for a season I was
simply floating with the stream — a piece of flotsam borne
along by the flooding tide — I realized at the time; but that
I had in a degree foreseen the tide, and the channel in which
it would flow, should to a certain extent be put down to my
credit. On the other hand, I in no degree foresaw the almost
unprecedented readjustment of values involved in the de
monetization of silver, and the subsequent increase in the
output of gold; and I further plead guilty to the fact that
I allowed my head to be turned by the rush of my own
prosperity. The mistakes I then made affected markedly
the whole tenor as well as ease of my subsequent life — that
after fifty-five. They turned the current awry.
On the other hand, looking back, I wonder at my own
lack of insight and foresight. It seems to have required a
certain degree of skill on my part to escape the opportunities,
the great opportunities, fortune flung in my way; as, also,
a certain perverseness seems to have been necessary to cause
me to wallow, as it were, into the misadventures in which I
from time to time involved myself. For instance, a partici
pation in the great success of the Calumet and Hecla — the
bonanza mine on record — was in 1868 almost thrust upon
me; but I preferred to "invest" in some wretched Michigan
lumber railroads, which I long ago dropped as hopeless.

1 90 Charles Francis Adams
None the less, however, I did get through; and got through
better than I had any right to expect — indeed, successfully,
as success in such things goes. That, in place of my suffering
financial shipwreck, it so fell out was the result partly of
persistence, partly of judgment, largely of luck.
Indeed, as I approach the end, I am more than a little
puzzled to account for the instances I have seen of business
success — money-getting. It comes from a rather low in
stinct. Certainly, so far as my observation goes, it is rarely
met with in combination with the finer or more interesting
traits of character. I have known, and known tolerably well,
a good many "successful" men — "big" financially — men
famous during the last half-century; and a less interesting
crowd I do not care to encounter. Not one that I have ever
known would I care to meet again, either in this world or
the next; nor is one of them associated in my mind with the
idea of humor, thought or refinement. A set of mere money-
getters and traders, they were essentially unattractive and
uninteresting. The fact is that money-getting, like every
thing else, calls for a special aptitude and great concentra
tion; and for it, I did not have the first in any marked degree,
while to it I never gave the last. So, in now summing up, I
may account myself fortunate in having got out of my
ventures as well as I did. Running at times great risks, I
emerged, not ruined.
Taken as a whole, my life has not been the success it
ought to have been. Where did the fault come in? I think
I can put my finger on it. I began with a scheme of life;
nor was it a bad one. It was to establish myself, at fifty; so
that, after fifty, I would be free to exert myself in such way
as I might then desire. Life, also, I regarded as a sequence

Public Service and History 191
— one thing, accident apart, leading to another. I followed
this scheme rather successfully, and for a long time. I got
well under way in 1869, being then thirty-four. I had been
through my early experiences, nor had they been lacking in
variety. I had enjoyed college and society, and got a glimpse
of early professional life; a glimpse of that sufficed! Then
came the army, an exceptional break. After that, I was
married at thirty, and, by the time I was thirty-four, I had
caught the step. At forty-four, I resigned from the railroad
commissionership, having achieved a success, to become,
first, the Chairman of the Board of Arbitration of the Trunk
Line Railroads, and then, immediately afterwards, the Presi
dent of the Union Pacific. These were both natural sequences
from what had preceded. The Trunk Line Arbitration was
not a success. The time for it had clearly not come. Just
the right man in the position held by me might possibly
have worked out very considerable results; but I doubt;
and, certainly, I was not the man to do it. The whole thing
depended on Colonel Albert Fink. I was merely his instru
ment; and I gravely question whether conditions were at
that time ripe for a successful development on the lines
Colonel Fink contemplated. Nevertheless, that I was ten
dered, and for three years held the position I then did, was
a sufficient proof of the standing I had attained. Uncon
sciously I had now come to the parting of the ways. I knew
it, thoughtfully pondered it — and took the wrong road !
In 1882 I became a member of the Board of Direction of
the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and, in the spring of
1884, that company found itself in financial trouble. I went
out to Omaha, with F. L. Ames, to look into its affairs;
and they certainly were then in a shocking bad way. The

192 Charles Francis Adams
concern was threatened with summary proceedings on behalf
of the United States Government, its service was demoral
ized, it had just backed down before its employees in face
of a threatened strike, and it was on the verge of bankruptcy,
with a heavy floating debt. Sidney Dillon, then its presi
dent, was old, and had lost his nerve. He was involved with
the company, and alarmed lest he should be compelled to
suspend. He insisted, therefore, on being relieved. Every
thing pointed to me as the person to succeed him. I was at
once sent on to Washington to avert the threatened action
of the Government, which would have sent the company
into the hands of a receiver; and then and there I had my
first experience in the most hopeless and repulsive work in
which I ever was engaged — transacting business with the
United States Government, and trying to accomplish some
thing through Congressional action. My initial episode was
with a prominent member of the United States Senate. This
Senator is still (1912) alive, though long retired; he has a
great reputation for ability, and a certain reputation, some
what fly-blown, it is true, for rugged honesty. I can only say
that I found him an ill-mannered bully, and by all odds
the most covertly and dangerously corrupt man I ever had
opportunity and occasion carefully to observe in public life.
His grudge against the Union Pacific was that it had not
retained him — he was not, as a counsel, in its pay. While
he took excellent care of those competing concerns which
had been wiser in this respect, he never lost an opportunity
of posing as the fearless antagonist of corporations when the
Union Pacific came to the front. For that man, on good and
sufficient grounds, I entertained a deep dislike. He was dis
tinctly dishonest — a senatorial bribe-taker.

Public Service and History 193
However, when I went to Washington in May, 1884, to
look after the Union Pacific interests, I succeeded, after a
fashion, in effecting a settlement; and, when I got back to
New York, I was duly made President of the company in
place of Dillon, resigned. I remained its President six and
a half years, until November, 1890, and of my experience
in that position, and its outcome, I do not propose to say
much. I took the position advisedly, and from purely selfish
considerations. I was then only forty-nine, and ambitious.
With a good deal of natural confidence in myself, I looked
upon assuming the management of a great railway system,
and correctly enough, as the legitimate outcome of what had,
in my case, gone before. I was simply playing my game to
a finish. I was not yet fifty, and I did not want to break
off, and go into retirement, in mid-career. So I assumed
charge of the Union Pacific, quite regardless of the fact that,
in so doing, I took the chances heavily against myself; for
the concern was in bad repute, heavily loaded with obliga
tions, odious in the territory it served; and, moreover,
though I had no realizing sense of the fact, a day of general
financial reckoning was at hand.
And yet, with all these chances against me, my scheme,
so far as my future was concerned, was, as I now see, well-
conceived, entirely practicable, and even it justified itself in
the result. Unfortunately for myself, I lacked the clean-cut
firmness to adhere to it. Had I only done so, I should have
achieved a great success, and been reputed among the ablest
men of my time. The trouble was — and a very common
trouble it is — I did not know when to lay down my hand,
and leave the game. My original plan was perfectly defined.
It was to retain the railroad presidency for five years, and

1 94 Charles Francis Adams
then to retire, being at that time fifty-four. My first five
years in control of the affairs of the company were most
successful. I got its finances in order; greatly improved the
service; reestablished its credit; paid off the whole of its
floating debt; improved its relations with the communities
it served. I did not, however, succeed in effecting a settle
ment between it and the United States Government. Thus,
when I ought, upon every possible consideration, to have
resigned the presidency and retired from active manage
ment — for I was tired of it and had grown to long for other
pursuits and more congenial associates — I went lumbering
on, chasing the ignis fatuus of a government settlement; and,
at last, absolutely a victim to the duty delusion, laboring
under the foolish idea that I owed some sort of obligation
to my company, and that my services could not well be
spared. I paid the penalty!
During the last eighteen months of my connection with
the Union Pacific I was — there is no use denying it, or
attempting to explain it away — wholly demoralized. I
hated my position and its duties, and yearned to be free of
it and from them. My office had become a prison-house.
Loathing it, I was anxious, involved, hopeless. I had ac
cordingly become a plunger; rapidly getting beyond my
depth. I have nothing to say in extenuation. I displayed
indecision and weakness — almost as much as Napoleon
showed in his Russian campaign. Comparing little things
with big, and a small man with a great one, the one situation
had become as impossible for me as was the other for him.
I simply now rode for a fall; nor did I really care when or
how I got it. Taken altogether, this was, I think, my least
creditable experience; and certainly that upon which I look

Public Service and History 195

back with the most dissatisfaction. Though ultimately I
purchased my freedom at a great price, it was worth to me
all it cost; and though I have deeply regretted the folly and
lack of will-power which got me into such a wretched posi
tion, I have never for a moment grudged the price exacted
of me in leaving it.' In the course of my railroad experiences
I made no friends, apart from those in the Boston direction;
nor among those I met was there any man whose acquaint
ance I valued. They were a coarse, realistic, bargaining
crowd. Railroads, and the railroad connection, thus occupied over
twenty years of my life; and, when at last, in December,
1890, 1 got rid of them, it was with a consciousness of failure,
but a deep breath of relief. I was emancipated; and, from
that day to this, I have eschewed the subject. I had a sur
feit; and the surfeit super-induced disgust? The equivalent
to a professional life on my part ended, therefore, in Decem
ber, 1890; it was then as if, being a lawyer, I had left my
office, and closed my connection forever with legal affairs
or problems. But, in my case, that meant merely an appli
cation to what had all along been those activities and pur
suits which appealed to me — for which I felt a call, and in
which I found my pleasure. Except when at the head of
the Union Pacific I had never wholly given them up; and
even then only at times. I must admit they were rather
multifarious, those activities, and it does not speak highly
for my judgment and controlling good sense that I allowed
myself to be drawn off in so many directions. The fact is, as
I have just said, not understanding well myself or my own
limitations, I was cursed with a dangerous mental activity;
and, physically, I was not less mobile. Accordingly for

196 Charles Francis Adams
twenty years and more I was travelling incessantly; a large
proportion of my nights were passed in sleeping-cars — and,
curiously enough, I slept more soundly there than at home
and in my own bed; while, on the intellectual side, an array
of bound volumes — ten in number — and two volumes of
occasional newspaper contributions, bear evidence to my
intellectual restlessness. Creditable in a way, they constitute
a record in which it is not possible for a man to take any
considerable or real satisfaction; for it is a record of dissi
pation and of quantity rather than one of quality and con
centration. But the fact is I worked in the way natural to
me; and I did take pleasure in my activity. Undoubtedly I
overdid it at times, and life was made temporarily some
what of a burden; but the thing never ran into a dangerous
excess. The two forms of activity, the professional and the extra-
professional, that which I carried on for the enjoyment and
satisfaction, or interest, I got out of it or felt in it, ran along
side by side. The professional life began in July, 1869, and
ended, abruptly, in December, 1890. The extra-professional
life — business, political, educational and literary — began
earlier — about 1868 — and is not yet (1912) closed. It ran
in many directions, naturally, under the circumstances, ac
complishing large results in none. My Chapter of Erie was
published in July, 1869. In the years that immediately fol
lowed I got interested in historical and educational work, as
my Weymouth Address (1874) and my papers on the Quincy
School System bore evidence. In 1875, 1 was elected a mem
ber of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a recognition
which I at the time took somewhat lightly, but which after
wards implied much. All through those years I was, in-

Public Service and History 197

stinctively but unconsciously, gravitating to my vocation;
for I was engaged at odd moments — as a recreation and
because I liked it — in historical research. The local records
and traditions of the region in which I lived had an attrac
tion for me, I found a real and great fascination in re-creat
ing the past — the Wessagusset settlement at Weymouth,
"Tom" Morton and his May-pole, at Merrymount, John
Wheelwright and his Chapel of Ease, in Braintree, the early
settlement and church, the highways, the training-field, the
town-meetings and the schools. Out of this I got enjoyment;
and, now, I feel a sense of satisfaction in having put on
permanent record the past of that region. That, I did; and
the record is there, and will remain. It may not be great,
and certainly has not, nor will it obtain a recognized place
in general literature; but, locally, it is a classic; and, when
you come to classics, "local" and "world" are relative
terms. The great reading public never took note of my
Three Episodes; but in the Quincy community, it will be
more read as time goes on. Even two centuries hence it will
there be referred to and quoted. In 1880 this work was
practically completed. Between that year and 1884, I was
very active. It was a period of intermission. I delivered the
Phi Beta Kappa oration — A College Fetich; I edited the
New English Canaan; I wrote the Sir Christopher Gardiner.
I was on the verge of my vocation. It was a fruitful and
satisfactory period. My privately printed volume, Episodes
in New England History, bears the date 1883; and I recall
the enjoyment with which, in the comparative leisure and
quiet repose of Quincy, I then put those pages through the
press. Nearly seven years of waste followed — the years
devoted to the Union Pacific — and, during them, I had

198 Charles Francis Adams
small leisure for historical investigation. Those years I
passed in my office, largely in the society of stenographers.
But in June, 1882, I was chosen one of the Board of Over
seers of Harvard University, and on that Board, and a very
active worker on it, continued through four terms of six
years each; and my papers and reports on the English De
partment, representing a really large amount of work, were
not without results of a more or less permanent character.
In 1890 I was at last thrown forcibly out of the utterly
false position from which, I am obliged to confess, I did not
have the will-power to extricate myself. Ejected by Jay
Gould from the presidency of the Union Pacific, I at last,
and instantly, fell back on my proper vocation. I was then
fifty-five; but it was not too late. Though forced back into
it by a kindly Providence, my scheme of life was being
carried out with a greater degree of consistency than is
usual with life-schemes. In spite of myself, I was working a
way out. Disgust and discontent for and with my position
had already produced results; and, for more than a year
previous to my railroad downfall, I had been occupied with
my biography of R. H. Dana. When the blessed crisis came,
and the catastrophe occurred, the book was ready for pub
lication. Somewhere in my Memorabilia I remember philoso
phizing over the fact — it was literally on two successive
days that I ceased to be a railroad man and appeared as
an author. A case of out of the darkness and into the light
— it could not have been better arranged !
Finding my calling in December, 1890, I should then
have been in good time to achieve such results in it as I was
capable of, had it not been for the awful and inexcusable
plunging of which I had been guilty during my final period

Public Service and History 199
of demoralization, towards the close of my business activity.
I only just escaped utter shipwreck. It was in May, 1893,
that the long-impending, plainly gathering financial storm
broke — the most deep-seated and far-reaching in the his
tory of the country. That I, placed as I then was, could
have avoided it, would not have been possible. My whole
scheme of life, and theory of the material situation and
course of development of the country made it impossible.
It was something of which I had no preconception — a re
adjustment necessitated by a change in the measures of
value, a change such as had never occurred before. One
of the precious metals was demonetized. For anything so
world-wide and far-reaching, I was not prepared. I had
always looked forward to a depreciation of values, especially
in real estate; and for that I had made some degree of prepa
ration; but I had not expected to see the bottom tumble
out, and values become purely nominal. This, however, was
what happened. As the spokesman of Tennyson's Maud
expressed it, "a vast speculation had fail'd," and I had
excellent cause to "mutter" and "madden" as the "flying
gold" of a series of autumns "drove thro' the air." When
in those June days of 1893 the collapse came, I was then
carrying a large amount of sail — far more than was pru
dent; for, my head turned by long and considerable success,
I had become reckless. But, after my sudden railroad de
thronement, to reduce sail was impossible; and, at the same
time, I had to assume heavy additional burdens on account
of liabilities I had incautiously entered upon on account of
the Union Pacific; but which now I had to shoulder myself.
Thus, with much canvas spread, I was loaded down with a
cargo I had never intended to take on.

200 Charles Francis Adams
The storm broke! There was the misadventure of my life.
I was fifty-eight when the crash came. The fury of the
gale was weathered; but its results were felt continuously
through five long, precious years. They were for me years
of simple Hell — years during which I had to throw every
thing aside, and devote myself to rehabilitating a wreck..
It made no sort of difference that the wreck was the result
of my own improvidence; there it was right under me, and
the question of again reaching a port was the only one to
consider. The dislocation this event caused — coming just
when it did — shattered my whole scheme of life. Breaking
in upon it, it broke it up. I was sixty-three years old, and
a tired man, when at last the effects of the 1893 convulsion
wore themselves out, and my mind was once more at ease
so that I could return to my calling.
The mercury in the financial barometer touched its lowest
point in the spring and summer of 1897 — the dead ebb of
a tide steadily receding through four entire years. That
winter we had passed at Florence, living, not unpleasantly,
in a villa there — the Boutilene — I immersed in my father's
diary and papers, and a very elaborate report I was drawing
up as head of a committee of Overseers on written English
at Harvard. I had an immense mass of material on this
topic to work up; and I fear it was to a large extent a dis
sipation of force. At any rate, I cannot now — fifteen years
later — see that any perceptible effect was produced —
nothing appreciable; but I suppose it all went into the grand
result, and is present somewhere. The University, however,
I must say I found a hard and distinctly ungrateful subject
on which to expend force. I was at it, on and off, and with
a fair degree of steadiness, through twenty-five years, and

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201

I might, I now think, have been more profitably employed.
However, on that point I am on record; for, when my fourth
term as Overseer came to a close in 1906, I said my say in
the Columbia Phi Beta Kappa address Some Modern College
Tendencies, and, so far as I am concerned, that tells the
story. The world is very full of institutions calling loudly
for a readjustment to bring about conformity with changed
conditions — changed socially, morally, politically, finan
cially, materially and, above all, educationally — and, of
these institutions Harvard College — and, note — I say
College and not University — is, to my mind, distinctly
one. Indeed, I would say of it as Hamlet of Denmark, the
world's a prison — "a goodly one, in which there are many
confines, wards and dungeons; Harvard being one o' the
worst." Like Gertrude's married life, it, in my judgment,
needs to be reformed altogether. But this is a digression.
My evidence as respects Harvard is on record in the little
volume entitled Three Phi Beta Kappa Addresses (pp. 134-
47) ; and I refer to the matter now only in connection with
what was for me an episode occupying much time and
thought on my part through twenty-five years.
Recurring to 1897, the tide, as I have said, then turned;
the young flood began to make its influence felt. But it
was still a very anxious period; the movement was slow,
and I had reached the climacteric — I was in my 63 d year.
So, as my record shortly after (1900) made still tells, I took
up the broken thread, conning to myself as I did so the
lines from Tennyson's Ulysses, since college days a favorite
among poems :
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days

202 Charles Francis Adams
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
That, and these other lines from Browning's Paracelsus,
since 1853 a favorite:
I will fight the battle out; a little spent
Perhaps, but still an able combatant.
Meanwhile the great disturbance of that long and troubled
period had been productive of two memorable changes in
my way of life. I left Quincy and gave up my winter resi
dence in Boston; in the closing days of 1893 I moved from
Quincy to Lincoln, there thenceforth making my home, and
a dozen years later (1905) I bought a house in Washington
and fixed our winter abiding-place. In both cases, at the
time of making it a wrench and a severe one, each proved a
blessing in the end. The worst wrench, and by far the most
painful one, was in the case of Quincy. That was awful!
Quincy was bone of my bone — flesh of the Adams flesh.
There I had lived vicariously or in person since 1640; there
on my return from the war I had made my home, and
later (1870) built my house; there I had fought my fight,
not unsuccessfully, through the best years of life; there my
children were born; in fact, I felt as if I owned the town,
for every part of it was familiar to me, and it was I who had
recounted its history. I felt about it exactly as Hawthorne
felt about Salem. In his inimitable introductory chapter to
the Scarlet Letter, he says: "This old town — my native
place [I, by the way, was born not in Quincy but in Boston;
but Quincy, none the less, ought to have been my birthplace,
as it was my race-place] though I have dwelt much away

Public Service and History 203
from it, both in boyhood and mature years — possesses, or
did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of which I
have never realized during my seasons of actual residence
there. ... It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since
the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made
his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement,
which has since become a city. And here his descendants
have been born and died, and have mingled their earthy
substance with the soil; until no small portion of it must
necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a
little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the at
tachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy
of dust for dust. ... So has it been in my case. I felt it
almost as a destiny to make Salem my home. . . . Never
theless, this very sentiment is evidence that the connection,
which has become an unhealthy one, should at least be sev
ered. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a po
tato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of
generations, in the same worn-out soil."
It was in my case much as Hawthorne here describes in
his; and so it came about that the storm and stress of 1893
— and it was an awful storm, and a period for me as for
many others of severest stress — the storm and stress of
1893, I say, in the matter of my continuing at Quincy,
only precipitated the inevitable. It simply had to come;
nor had I failed to realize the fact.
During the spring of 1893 I had accordingly taken the
preliminary steps, and, when the financial troubles broke
out, what had been before merely contemplated became a
condition to be immediately dealt with. In May, just before
the 1893 crisis came, by great good luck I had committed

204 Charles Francis Adams
myself to the purchase of the place at Lincoln where I have
since lived, intending to occupy it at some indefinite, if not
remote, future time when Quincy should have become im
possible. Then came the crash, necessitating immediate
action; and this I took. Early one Monday morning in the
latter part of November, 1893, I mounted my horse at the
door of my house on the hill at Quincy — the sun being
hardly above the horizon of the distant sea-line in the nip
ping atmosphere — and rode over to Lincoln. I have not
passed a night at Quincy since.
As things resulted, the change was timely and most for
tunate. I have never seen occasion to regret it; and, long
since, the place on President's Hill, on which I dwelt, and
the development of which between the years 1870 and 1893
was one of the leading interests of my life, passed into other
hands. It has been cut up, and " improved," as the expres
sion goes, by the building of well-nigh innumerable houses.
I have never set foot on President's Hill since 1895, when I
parted with the property. I never mean to again. The
Quincy I knew has ceased to exist; and, with the present
Quincy, I have neither ties nor sympathy. In fact, I never
now go there without, as I come away, drawing a breath of
deep relief. When I enter it, I seem going into a tomb; when
I leave it, getting back to Lincoln, it is a return to the sun
light and living air.
As to Boston, as a place in which to live and have one's
being, it is much the same. There, however, I passed my
winters from '84 to '96, building and occupying the house
at the corner of Gloucester Street and Commonwealth
Avenue. As a place for social life, long before I parted with
my house in 1896 the resources were exhausted. When I

Public Service and History 205
first went back to Boston as a winter residence in 1884, it
was enjoyable enough, and made more so by my official
connection with the Massachusetts Historical Society. As
time passed, however, I was made to realize that my whole
Boston social existence consisted of the annual exchange of
dinners with a rather narrow circle, rapidly changing and
perceptibly contracting. This is the trouble with Boston —
it is provincial. Including Cambridge, one finds there what
might be called a very good society stock company — an
exceptional number, in fact, of agreeable people, intimate
acquaintance with whom is rarely formed except in youth,
unless subsequently by chance encounter in Europe. When
thus casually met, they are apt to emerge from their social
shells in curiously attractive shapes and phases. Socially,
however, the trouble with Boston is that there is no current
of fresh outside life everlastingly flowing in and passing out.
It is, so to speak, stationary — a world, a Boston world,
unto itself; and, like all things stationary, there is in it, as
the years pass, a very perceptible lack of that variety and
change which are the essence and spice of life; it tends to
stagnate. I, accordingly, rate it as one of the fortunate ac
cidents of my life that the long and disheartening financial
depression which followed the crisis of 1893 finally decided
me, if indeed it did not seem to compel me, to dispose of my
Commonwealth Avenue house, and sever my residence con
nection with Boston. The winter climate of Boston is dis
tinctly Arctic, and society life, from sympathy, perhaps,
seems then to pass through a long period of cold storage.
Nevertheless, the change of life, whether from summers at
Quincy or winters in Boston, has seriously affected continu
ous and successful application to the task I for years have

206 Charles Francis Adams
had in hand. That is the working up of raw material of
history — of the papers, etc., of my father. My plan of a
magnum opus was to write what would have been a diplo
matic history of the Civil War. A rough draft of this I com
pleted some ten years ago (1890), and since then it has re
mained unfinished. During the intervening time I have been
absorbed in other things, largely correspondence, and the
preparation of numerous papers for the Historical Society,
all of which appear in its Proceedings. Incidentally, the work
thus done at times related to incidents and episodes con
nected with my chief subject. These, however, though pre
liminary "Studies," have never been worked up into a con
tinuous narrative. In the mean time what in this way I
have been able to do has undergone incessant interruption,
through literary forays and excursions — demands on me to
prepare "occasional" addresses, etc., etc. Of work of this
sort I have done altogether too much; and, looking back on
it, it seems to have been singularly resultless and barren.
Indeed, of all these performances, involving an immense
amount of labor, there is but one I recall with pure gratifi
cation. This was the address entitled Lee's Centennial, de
livered before the Washington and Lee University at Lex
ington, Virginia, on the 19th of January, 1907. In every
way satisfactory, that occasion and effort left no bitter
after-taste lurking in the mouth. I had then been in Europe,
and it was on my return that I received the invitation. My
selection was, for obvious reasons which at once suggest
themselves, a very pronounced compliment, due to the
memory, on the part of those composing the faculty of
Washington and Lee, of an address I had delivered five years
previously, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the Uni-

Public Service and History 207

versity of Chicago — an address entitled Shall Cromwell
have a Statue ? The earlier address can be found in the little
volume published by me in 1907, entitled Three Phi Beta
Kappa Addresses — the other two being A College Fetich,
delivered before the Harvard chapter in 1883, and that to
which I have just referred, entitled Some Modern College
Tendencies before the Columbia chapter in 1906. The ad
dress I am now referring to — Lee's Centennial — may be
found printed in its final form, in the volume of my Studies:
Military and Diplomatic, published in 191 1.
As I have just said, the Lee's Centennial is my one effort in
that line which I now regard as having been somewhat
better than a mere waste of time and force. Indeed, from
the literary point of view, I should put it in the forefront
of anything I may have done. When I first received the
invitation, I gave it scant consideration. As respects General
Lee, the risk incurred by an acceptance loomed in my case
large. I at once, therefore, wrote, stating that it would not
be in my power to accept. Shortly after, I received another
and more urgent letter from President Denny, of Washington
and Lee, begging me to reconsider my determination, and
expressing in warm language the desire of all concerned that
I should undertake the task, and the disappointment that
would be felt should I decline so to do. I then, with great
reluctance, came to the conclusion that for me, with my
family connection with Massachusetts, and the relations
Massachusetts and Virginia had from first to last borne
with each other — for me, I say, to decline a second time an
invitation thus emphasized, would be distinctly ungracious.
I felt I had to accept, and do the best I could; and take my
chances. I accordingly did so. And that I did so has ever

208 Charles Francis Adams
since been for me one of the pleasant things in life to look
back on. I went to Virginia, accompanied by my friend
F. D. Millet, in the following January, and there, on Satur
day, the 19th of the month, delivered my address, standing
on the platform of the College Chapel with Lee's tomb, and
recumbent image upon it, directly behind me. As I have
said, the occasion was in every way a success, and consti
tuted a very grateful incident in life — good and altogether
pleasant to look back on. It was not marred, as I after
wards realized, by a single untoward incident. The weather
was perfect; my audience was packed and sympathetic; and
what I offered was received with a warmth of applause
which I have never elsewhere or on any other occasion had
equalled. Most of all, I gratified a large number of most
excellent people. Altogether pleasant at the time, it was in
retrospect an occasion yet more pleasant.
The story of my life is told — here and in the pages of my
Memorabilia. I became a Vice-President of the Massachu
setts Historical Society in April, 1890, with a view to succeed
ing old George E. Ellis in the Presidency. My consent was
not asked; nor did I think it a matter of sufficient importance
to decline the position. I just drifted. In 1895 I became its
President, and am so still (1912).
Finally, I want to say that preparing this resume has been
for me a decidedly profitable use of time. It has caused me
to review, to weigh and to measure. As a result of that pro
cess, I feel I have no cause of complaint with the world. I
have been a remarkably, an exceptionally, fortunate man.
I have had health, absence of death, of dissipation and worth-
lessness in my family, with no overwhelming calamity to face

Public Service and History 209
and subside under; and the world has taken me for all I was
fairly worth. Looking back, and above all, in reading that
destroyed diary of mine, I see with tolerable clearness my
own limitations. I was by no means what I in youth sup
posed myself to be. As to opportunity, mine seems to have
been infinite. No man could ask for better chances. In a lit
erary way, financially, politically, I might have been any
thing, had being it only been in me. The capacity, not the
occasion, has been wanting. It was so in the army; it was so
in railroads, in politics and in business; it was so in literature
and history. In one and all my limitations made themselves
felt; most of all, in the Law. On the other hand my abilities,
as ability goes in this world, have been considerable; never
first-rate, but more than respectable. They have enabled me
to accomplish what I have accomplished; and I have accom
plished something.
Six years ago, on its fiftieth year from graduation, my
class delegated me to speak for them at the Commencement
dinner. I did so, and then gave expression to something
autobiographic in a way, and from which now I am not
disposed greatly to dissent. I had said that Dr. Jacob
Bigelow, of the class of 1806, whom, I well remembered, had
in his life accomplished the greatest feat given any man to
accomplish, in that he left his chosen calling other and better
than he found it — elevated through him. And I then went
on : " So now, looking back over these fifty years — their vic
tories and their defeats, their accomplishments and their fail
ures to accomplish— I have of late often thought how I would
have had it go could I have shaped events in my own case
so as now to please me most. As the shadows grow long,
the forms things assume are very different from those once

2IO

Charles Francis Adams

imagined. The dreams of ambition are transformed. It so
chances I have had to do with varied callings; but now,
looking back, I find I would not have greatly cared for su
preme professional success, to have been a great physician,
or divine, or judge. I served in the army once; but military
rank and fame now seem to me a little empty. As to politics,
it is a game; art, science, literature — we know how fashions
change! None of the prizes to be won in those fields now
tempt me greatly; nor do I feel much regret at my failure
to win them. What I now find I would really have liked
is something quite different. I would like to have accumu
lated — and ample and frequent opportunity for so doing
was offered me — one of those vast fortunes of the present
day rising up into the tens and scores of millions — what is
vulgarly known as 'money to burn.' But I do not want it for
myself; for my personal needs I have all I crave, and for my
children I know, without being reminded of the fact, that
excessive wealth is a curse. What I would now like the sur-
"plus tens of millions for would be to give them to Harvard.
Could I then at this moment — and I say it reflectively —
select for myself the result of the life I have lived which I
would most desire, it would be to find myself in position to
use my remaining years in perfecting, and developing to an
equality with all modern requirements the institution John
Harvard founded. I would like to be the nineteenth-century
John Harvard — the John Harvard-of-the-Money-Bags, if
you will. I would rather be that than be Historian or
General or President." To be this, and to do this, was not
given to me. In other directions also I have, perhaps, accom
plished nothing considerable, compared with what my three
immediate ancestors accomplished; but, on the other hand,

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211

I have done some things better than they ever did; and, what
is more and most of all, I have had a much better time in
life — got more enjoyment out of it. In this respect I would
not change with any of them.
As long ago as my college days I came across the closet
memorandum of the Calif Abdalrahman, in Gibbon's Decline
and Fall, and it made an impression upon me — an impres
sion so deep, that, since, I have not, wearied of referring
to it. It is in Gibbon's fifty-second chapter, and reads as
follows: "I have now reigned above fifty years in victory
or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies,
and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and
pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly
blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this
situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and
genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot : they amount
to Fourteen: — O man! place not thy confidence in this
present world!" I cannot undertake to number my days of
"pure and genuine happiness"; and such days vary greatly
with mortals. Obviously, they are a matter largely of indi
vidual disposition and temperament, much affected in their
greater or less frequency by the very commonplace factor
of digestion, or the presence or absence in one's system of
uric acid. Were I, however, to undertake, in my own case,
to guess whether the number of those days had been more
or less than "fourteen," I might hesitate in so doing; but,
more or less, I am very confident they exceed in number
those of any one of my forbears.
Finished, at Washington, Wednesday, March 27, 1912;
8.45 A.M.

212

Charles Francis Adams

The story of the last years is soon told. Much occupied
by a desire to complete the Life of his father, which had been
begun more than fifteen years before, and was practically in
definite shape up to the time of his appointment as United
States Minister to Great Britain, Mr. Adams seriously bent
himself to preparing this, the most important, portion of
the work. A series of preliminary studies on the more
vital incidents of the father's service in England was pre
pared and printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts
Historical Society. The Trent Affair appeared in November,
1912,1 with a number of letters and papers drawn from the
papers of Charles Francis Adams, Sr.; and the Negotiation
of 1861 relating to the Declaration of Paris of 1856, in October,
19 14. 2 Seward's foreign policy was described more at large,
and in doing this Mr. Adams came, somewhat reluctantly,
to the conclusion that his earlier estimate of Seward's
measure for the situation in which he was placed required
some modification not favorable to the Secretary of State.
The reluctance arose from Seward's known admiration for
and open imitation of the grandfather, John Quincy Adams,
and from his long friendship for the father, Charles Francis
Adams. The deeper he went in his investigation of this
period the stronger became his conviction that no relation
would be complete or even satisfactory without a knowledge
of what the records, public and private, in England and
France contained. Never having approached such an inves
tigation of the foreign or European side of the questions in
volved in his father's diplomatic career, he came to realize
that in spite of the abundance of material collected from
American sources the story would be told in a one-sided
1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlv. 35-148. 2 lb., xlvi. 23-81.

Public Service and History 213
and partial manner. The broader aspects, and the full
extent of the great victories won in England by his father,
could only be developed by a study of the documents in the
foreign office archives and in the carefully guarded private
correspondence of ministers of foreign affairs and their agents
in France and Great Britain. Without such a study he felt
that the accomplishment of his task could result only in a
conclusion unsatisfying to his own ideas of the possible
and inherently defective from the standpoint of history. In
printing the lives and correspondence of their public char
acters Englishmen passed over the American connection as
of secondary interest, giving only a glimpse of what a col
lection contained on American questions. It was to develop
this wealth that Mr. Adams desired to go abroad.
An opportunity came to accomplish in part this desire.
Invited to deliver a course of lectures on American institu
tions at Oxford University, in succession to Mr. James Ford
Rhodes, he accepted and sailed for England in March, 1913.
He has given an account of his experience at Oxford, and
the impressions left upon his mind by that experience. The
conferences then being held in London on the situation in
the Balkan States naturally overshadowed all other political
interests. They emphasized the fact that historically Great
Britain turned towards the East, and the history of America
was not looked upon as a profitable field for study.1 He
framed his four lectures to meet this condition, selecting
certain dramatic features in the War of Secession which
might awaken interest and further investigation. He wished
to "impress such as may study my Oxford course with a
sense not only of the importance of our American history in
1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlvi. 435.

214 Charles Francis Adams
connection with that of Europe, but of the far-reaching
world-wide influence it both has exerted and is hereafter
destined to exert, from which Great Britain as a community
has perhaps not least of all been exempt." This resulted in
a volume containing the lectures in a somewhat expanded
form, Transatlantic Historical Solidarity (Clarendon Press,
1913), and a renewal of his association with many of his
English friends and correspondents.
In the second object of his journey he attained a great,
yet, as it seemed to him, a partial success. To break through
strict regulations, and to enjoy privileges refused to all
others, offered no mean difficulties in a land where bureau
methods prevail. But Mr. Adams had a special right as well
as reason in his favor, and this was recognized by the state
officials. With courtesy his application for access to special
records was considered, and with generosity the rules were
suspended. The Public Records, however, contained only a
part of what was necessary; for it has long been the practice
in the British diplomatic service to employ a private or
personal correspondence between the ambassador and the
Foreign Secretary in addition to the official dispatches. The
greater freedom employed in this personal correspondence
gives it a distinct historical value, for it includes many
rumors, interpretations, conversations and incidents, trivial
at the time, but later of value in illustrating characters and
influences. These letters are looked upon as personal to the
Foreign Secretary, and do not become part of the official
records. To secure access to family papers of so recent a
period offered even greater difficulties than to obtain privi
leges in the public records. The first approach, however,
was fortunate. Hon. Rollo Russell, son of Earl Russell, the

Public Service and History 215
holder of the Russell Papers, met his request with singular
generosity; not only showing great interest in his under
taking, but placing at his disposal whatever in the Russell
Papers could serve his purpose. An examination of the
American correspondence proved the richness of the ma
terial. Returning to the United States in June, Mr. Adams, on
receiving a part of the Russell transcripts, saw more clearly
than ever that his English researches must be extended, so
as to include other collections like that of Earl Russell. He
determined upon a second visit to England, and in August
was again in London. He had in mind also locating hitherto
unknown Winthrop material, in view of the Society's pro
posed re-issue of the History. The search, no longer confined
to London, took him far afield, and he visited many houses
where papers were to be found, going twice over the Win
throp region in the neighborhood of Groton. He had the
aid of friends, like Viscount Bryce, who were thoroughly in
sympathy with his objects, and everywhere he was success
ful in overcoming the reticence natural to possessors of
papers believed still to possess diplomatic possibilities. A
welcome guest, rarely informed on public questions, and
vital in his opinions, his tact, social qualities and intelligent
inquiries were recognized, and his success should offer at
least some moderation of the severe self-judgment he records
in this "autobiography."
He visited Hardwick House, where his host, Mr. George
Milner-Gibson Cullom, told him of traces of Winthrop ma
terial, and gave him the opportunity to meet the Suffolk
Archaeological Society, then assembled for one of its historical
pilgrimages. There resulted the appeal sent out to that

2 1 6 Charles Francis Adams
Society for aid in the Winthrop problems.1 Oxford Univer
sity conferred upon him the degree of Litt.D. He renewed
his friendly relations with Hon. Rollo Russell, who again
gave him what he wanted from his father's papers.2 One
after another of the more important collections were thrown
open to him, and he gained, under certain perfectly justi
fiable restrictions, more than he had deemed possible, and
at last became himself somewhat impressed by the great
mass of material to be digested for his volumes. The field
seemed without limit, and he resolved to cut short the accu
mulation and, returning to Washington, to await another
opportunity to complete his English research, and to plan a
similar visit to French archives.
He now confidently expected to take up the Life of his
father and complete it within two years, and in this expecta
tion he called in the aid of others to reduce the new material
to usable proportion, and to direct the study of printed
sources. But other undertakings crowded upon him, which
he did not feel inclined to set aside. At the urgent request
of Johns Hopkins University he repeated in Baltimore his
Oxford lectures, but rewritten in a much amplified form. He
prepared an elaborate study of one incident in his father's
career — the final defeat in the British Cabinet of foreign
mediation between North and South in 1862 3 — and in
tended to proceed in further studies as rapidly as his occa
sions would permit. The outbreak of the great European war
aroused such interest in him and so engrossed his thoughts
as to make concentration on the events of the past irksome
1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlvii. 56.
2 Mr. Russell has since died.
3 A Crisis in Downing Street, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlvii. 372.

Public Service and History 2 1 7
to him. In view of what was passing before him, the War
of Secession became of secondary importance, and he con
fessed to a sense of weariness in dealing with a subject which
had lost so much of its moment in the world's history. He
did complete a paper on the British Proclamation [of Neu
trality] of May, 1861, largely based upon his English ma
terial, and printed it in January, 1915,1 but this formed his
last contribution in the long series of historical studies he
had made since 1876, a series as notable for its variety of
topic as for its originality in presentation. Each consti
tuted a study of a certain event or problem in the diplomatic
history of the War of Secession; but it was "thinking aloud"
and did not give that final conclusion which would have
made a chapter in his book. To the last he was working
over his material, recasting his sentences and moulding his
opinion, and thus to the last his mind remained active,
potent and creative. Exposure to cold overtaxed his body,
and after a few days of illness the end came on March 20,
1915, in Washington.2 W. C. F.
» A Crisis in Downing Street, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlviii. 190.
2 Tributes to his memory are given in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlviii.
383-423-

THE END

Index

Index

Abdalrahman, Calif, on happy days, 211.
Adams family, unique quality, xiii; inherit
ance, xvi; Lowell on, 30.
Adams, Abigail (Brooks), xvii; death of, 9.
Adams, Abigail (Smith), 9, 181.-
Adams, Brooks, 9.
Adams, Charles Francis, Sr., xv; out
door sports, xx, 1 1 ; Puritan quality, xx,
IO, 11; measure of, xxi; Lodge on, xxii;
policy in i860, xxviii; in Boston, 5; at
Quincy, 10; nomination to Vice-Presi
dency, 32; Seward's recognition of, 52;
policy in 1861, 73, 87, 90, 109; on Lin
coln, 77; English mission, 107; delay in
reaching post, 1 1 1 ; biography of, 206.
Adams, Charles Francis (1835-1915),
hereditary element, xiii; birth, xvii, 3;
early dislike of Boston, xviii; outdoor
sports, xix, 10; schooling and errors of
education, xxii, 13; Harvard College,
xxiv, 24; aptitude, xxv, xiii, 25; writing,
26; diary, 27, no; associates, 28; shy
ness, 30; first vote, 32; law study, xxvi,
38, 171; Atlantic article, 41; admitted to
Bar, 41; militia service, xxix, 43, 114; on
House of Representatives, 44; campaign
ing with Seward, 52, 60; J. Q. Adams's
speeches, 55; meets Lincoln, 64; on
Southern unrest, 70; Washington, 1861,
72; on Sumner's attitude, 83; at Fort
Independence, 114, 116; on outbreak of
war, 115; on Bull Run, 122; hesitation,
123; applies for commission, 125; first
lieutenant, xxx, 128; service, xxxi, 130;
want of training, 130; leaves for the
front, 132, 139; war letters, 134; trying
experience, 136, 186; first engagement,
140; before Sumter, 143; ill health, xxxii,
143, 157, 162, 166; visits Europe, 149,
168; at Gettysburg, 149, 153; Antietam,
151; at headquarters, 156; Wilderness
campaign, 158; commended by Meade,
159; before Petersburg, 162; engagement
and marriage, 164, 168; an error of judg
ment, 165; return to private life, 169;
railroad problem, xxxiii, 107; commis
sioner, 172; at Quincy, xxxvi, 6, 172;

town government, 177; Mill on Comte,
179; Weymouth address, 180; Three
Episodes, 182, 197; Vienna exposition,
xl, 183; Union Pacific R.R, xxxviii, 184,
91; parks and reservations, 185; busi
ness ventures, 187; history, xiii, 195;
Massachusetts Historical Society, xlvi,
196, 208; Harvard Overseer, xii, 198,
200; crisis of 1893, 199; removes from
Quincy, 202; in Boston, 204; Life of
C. F. Adams, 206, 212; Lee's centennial,
206; last years, xlviii, 212; summary
of life, 208; investigations in England,
212, 214; Oxford lectures, 213; self-crit
icism, 1; wide activities, li; not in public
life, li; individualism, liii, 17; political
parties, liv; questioning spirit, lvii.
Adams, Henry, 76, 90; Education of, xvi,
xix, 46; estimate of father, xxi; at Har
vard, 24; letter from London, 119.
Adams, John, 9.
Adams, John (1 803-1 834), 9.
Adams, John Quincy, 48; marriage of,
xvi; recollections of, 9; death, 31; Davis
on, 48; Calhoun and, 52, 58; speeches,
55; diary, 68; Russell, 155.
Adams, John Quincy (1833-1894), 12, 39,
40, 42, 58, 133; town of Quincy, xxxvii,
177; at Hingham, 16; Boston Latin
School, 22; popularity, 29; marriage,
III, 117.
Adams, Louisa Catherine (1831-1870), n,
164.
Adams, Louisa Catherine (Johnson), 9.
Adams, Mary (Hellen), 9.
Adams, Mary Louisa, 9.
Adams, Mary (Ogden), xxxii, 164.
Ames, Frederick Lothrop, 191.
Ancestry, xii.
Antietam campaign, 145, 151.
Aptitudes, 20.
Astor House columns, 4.
Bancroft, George, 16.
Bancroft, George, Jr., 16 n.
Bancroft, John Chandler, 16 n.
Bar, admission to, 41.

222

Index

Barlow, Francis Channing,. 29.
Beaufort, S. C, 139.
Belligerency, recognition of Southern, III.
Benjamin, Judah Philip, 94.
Benton, Thomas Hart, 58.
Bigelow, George Tyler, xxvii, 41.
Bigelow, Jacob, 209.
Bigelow, John, 45.
Biography and history, x.
Blair, Montgomery, 101.
Blue Hills reservation, 185.
Boarding-schools, xxii, 16.
Boston, xviii; First Church, 14; society,
39, 2°5- _
Boston Latin School, xxiii, 21.
Boston & Maine R.R., strike, 174.
Breckenridge, John Cabell, 94.
Briggs, Albert D., 173.
Brooks, Peter Chardon, 4, 5.
Brooks, Phillips, 29.
Buchanan, James, 96.
Buffalo convention, 1848, 32.
Bull Run, battle of, 122.
Butler, Benjamin Franklin, misconduct,
159; proposed statue, 161.
Butterfield, Daniel, 161.
Calhoun, John Caldwell, 59; J. Q. Adams
and, 54, 58; disappointment, 58.
Campaign, presidential, i860, xxviii, 69.
Carlyle, Thomas, on history, x.
Chamberlain, Samuel Emery, 147, 155.
Chapters of Erie, xxxv, xliii, 172, 196.
Chase, Samuel Portland; 74.
Chess, advantages of, 34.
Clay, Cassius Marcellus, 78.
Clay, Henry, 58, 59.
Cogswell, Aaron, 174.
College Fetich, 197.
Comet of 1861, 120.
Concord muster, 43.
Cotton and the South, 41, 91.
Crane, Thomas, library, Quincy, xxxvii.
Crisis, financial, 1893, 199.
Crittenden, John Jordan, 88, 91.
Crowninshield, Caspar, 122, 124, 133, 138.
Cullom, George Milner-Gibson, 215.
Curtis, Greeley, 146, 147.
Dalton, Edward Barry, 29; character of,
162.
Dana, Richard Henry, 38; position at bar,

xxvi; life of, xiv, 198; voyage round the
world, 56; on Bull Run defeat, 122; on
Trent affair, 127.
Davis, Henry Winter, 46, 98.
Davis, Jefferson, 48, 105.
Davis,  , 139.
Dayton, William Lewis, 107.
Denny, George Hucheson, 207.
Dexter, Arthur, 40, 78, 82, 99.
Dexter, Samuel, 78.
Dillon, Sidney, 192.
Dixwell, Epes Sargent, 22.
Douglas, Stephen Arnold, 47, 100; calls on
Seward, 65.
Eames, Fanny (Campbell), 91, 103.
Education, defect of system, 20.
Eliot, Charles William, 36.
Ellis, George Edward, 208.
Emancipation under war power, 56.
Equality, social, 15.
Europe, influence of, 19.
Families, generations of distinction, xiii.
Family influence, 170.
Felton, Cornelius Conway, 26.
Fessenden, William Pitt, 47.
Fink, Albert, 191.
Fish, Hamilton, 58.
Fort Independence, garrison service, 114,
116.
Fort Sumter, Seward on, 106.
France in 1866, 169.
Frothingham, Nathaniel Langdon, 14.
Furness, Horace Howard, 29.
Gardiner, Sir Christopher, 197.
Gettysburg campaign, 147, 153; Sedg
wick's march, 149.
Giddings, Joshua Reed, 48, 55.
Gordon, George Henry, 121.
Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 21.
Grant, Ulysses Simpson, 157.
Greek, teaching of, 26.
Greenleaf, Daniel, 12.
Hancock, Winfield Scott, 157.
Harvard University, class of '57, 24; elec
tive, 34; defect of system, 35, 200; am
bition for, 210.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 51; on Salem, 202.
Heritage, burden of, xv.
Hicks, Thomas Holliday, 78.

Index

223

Higginson, Henry Lee, 140, 146, 147.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 38, 146.
Hilton Head, S. C, 139, 143.
Hingham, school days, 16.
History, beginnings of, ix.
Hodson, William Stephen Raikes, 144.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on education, xiii.
Hooker, Joseph, 160.
House of Representatives, national, in
1859, 43-
Hughes, Thomas, Hodson, 144.
Humphreys, Andrew Atkinson, xxxi, 136,
165; character, 157.
Humphreys, James, 180.
Hunter, Robert Mercer Taliaferro, 106.
James Island, 140.
Johnson, Andrew, 78; impressions of, 79;
conversation with, 92.
Johnson, Francis M., 173.
Johnston, Harriet (Lane), 49.
Kansas, visit to, 63.
Kansas City development, 187.
Kimball, David Pulsifer, 22.
King, Austin Augustus, 95.
Kuhn Louisa Catherine (Adams), 164.
Lamar, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, 46.
Lane, Harriet, 49.
Lane, Joseph, 94.
La Tremoille, family of, xiv.
Lee, Agnes, 91.
Lee, Henry, on cavalry regiment, 146.
Lee, Robert Edward, 90; centennial ad
dress, 206.
Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh, 91 n.
Legislation, excessive, 175.
Life of R. H. Dana, xiv.
Lincoln, Abraham, 73; campaign of i860,
xxviii, 61; meeting with Seward, 63; in
1861, 75; vein of sentiment, 96; inau
guration, 1861, 96; reception by, 100;
Seward and, 104.
Lincoln, Mary (Todd), 103.
Lodge, Henry Cabot, memorial address,
ix; on C. F. Adams, Sr., xxii.
Lowell, Charles, 162.
Lowell, James Russell, on the Adams fam
ily, 30; editor Atlantic, 41.
Lunt, William Parsons, 14, 32.
Lyman, Theodore, 135, 154.

Macaulay's History, 25.
Mason, James Murray, 47, 106; seized by
Wilkes, 127.
Massachusetts; railroad commission,
xxxiv, 172; park system, xl; cavalry, ist
regiment, 137, 146; parks and reserva
tions, 185; street railways, 186.
Massachusetts Historical Society, Mr.
Adams's services, xlvi, 196, 208.
Meade, George Gordon, 154, 157, 158.
Memory, Montaigne on, 20.
Mendelian law of heredity, xvi.
Merrymount Park, Quincy, xxxvii.
Middlesex Fells, 185.
Milford (Mass.) Gazette, 44.
Mill, John Stuart, Comte, 179.
Millet, Frank Davis, 183, 208.
Money-getting, instinct of, 190.
Montaigne, Michel, birth of, 3 ; memory, 20.
Morehead, James Turner, 91.
Morse, John Torrey, Jr., 146.
Mt. Wollaston, 40.
Muscles, slowness of, 18.
Negro, as cavalry, 166.
Nicholson, Alfred Osborn Pope, 93.
Norton, Charles Eliot, 30; North American
Review, 170.
Nye, James Warren, 61.
Ogden, Edward, xxxii, 164, 183.
Ogden, Mary, xxxii, 164.
Orange-Nassau, house of, xiii.
Otis, Alleyne, 19.
Palfrey, Francis Winthrop, 23, 40, 124. '
Palfrey, John Gorham, 23, 57, 59; post
master at Boston, 100, 109.
Palmerston, Lord. See Temple.
Parker, Francis Edward, character, xxvi,
38, 42-
Parties, political, liv.
Pennington, William, incompetency as
Speaker, 44, 92.
Pepys, Samuel, 68.
Perkins, Stephen George, 28, 37, 121, 143.
Phi Beta Kappa addresses, xii, 201, 207.
Plantagenets, abilities in the, xiii.
Pleasanton, Alfred, 145.
Politics, association with, 31.
Pryor, Roger Atkinson, 44.
Publicity, 175.

224

Index

Quincy school system, xxxvii; Crane li
brary, xxxvii; Merrymount Park, xxxvii;
life in, 6; granite quarries, 6; leaving,
202.
Railroads, problems of, xxxiii, 171.
Randolph, John, 23.
Revere, Paul Joseph, 124.
Rhodes, James Ford, 160, 213.
Ritchie, Harrison, 129.
Rives, William Cabell, 78.
Rome, visited, 168.
Russell, Henry Sturgis, xxxi, 117, 143,
163, 165.
Russell, Jonathan, 155.
Russell, Hon. Rollo, 214.
Russell, William Howard, 76, 104, 112; on
Sumner, 86.
Sargent, Horace Binney, 125; 139, 146,
147.
Sargent, Lucius Manlius, Sr., 139.
Sargent, Lucius Manlius, 139, 147.
Schurz, Carl, 103, 184.
Scott, Winfield, 98.
Sedgwick, John, march to Gettysburg, of
corps, 149; character, 157.
Seward, William Henry, 47, 79, 92, 95;
campaign of i860, xxviii, 52, 60; visits
Quincy, 52, 57; republican leader, 57;
on public life, 58, 60; appearance, 59;
free liver, 62; meets Lincoln, 63; Doug
las and, 65; at home, 67; policy, 1861,
73,87,105,212; Sumner on, 81; calm of,
82; foreign war panacea, 89, 1 19; on Lin
coln, 96, 104; Secretary of State, 104;
instructions to Adams, 112.
Sheridan, Philip Henry, 158.
Sherman, John, 46.
Sherman, William Tecumseh, 158.
Sickles, Daniel Edgar, 161.
Sleeping car, 65.
Slidell, John, seized by Wilkes, 1 27.
Smelting, 12.
Smith, Abigail, 9, 181.
Smith, William, 181.
Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides, 26.
South, unrest in the, 70; after Lincoln's
inauguration, 99.
Sports, outdoor, xix, 10.
Staff service, 135.
Stetson, Caleb, 14.

Stetson, ¦

- 14-
Sumner, Charles, 37, 74, 79; early associa
tion, 32; appearance, 47, 59; speech on
' Barbarism of Slavery,' 53 ; Calhoun and
J. Q. Adams, 54; on Adams's speeches,
55; excited utterances, 80; on Seward,
81; explanation of attitude, 83; estimate
of, 89; on Lincoln's inaugural, 97; Pal
frey's appointment, 101; unforgiving,
102; change in attitude, 102.
Sunday, observance of, 13.
Swimming, 18.
Temple, Henry John, Viscount Palmer
ston, 58.
Thomas, George Henry, 158.
Three Episodes of Massachusetts History,
xliv, 182, 197.
Three Phi Beta Addresses, 201, 207.
Tower, David Bates, 21.
Transatlantic Historical Solidarity, 214.
Trent affair, 127.
Trout streams on Cape, xix.
Troy & Greenfield R.R., 184.
Trumbull, Lyman, 61, 64.
Trunk Line arbitration, 191.
Union Pacific Railroad, xxxix, 184, 191.
Vane, Sir Henry, execution of, 68.
Vienna exposition, xl, 183.
Virginia, described, 92.
Warren, Gouverneur Kemble, 157.
Washburn, William Barrett, 183.
Washington, in 1859, 48; 1861, 72.
Webb, James Watson, 95.
Webster, Daniel, 59; fisher, xix; opposed to
J. Q. Adams, 32.
West, the, 62.
Weymouth, address at, 180.
White House reception, 1861, 99.
Wigfall, Louis Trezevant, 95.
Wilder,  , 16.
Wilderness campaign, 158.
Wilkes, Charles, Trent affair, 127.
Wilkinson, Morton Smith, 79, 84.
Williams, Robert, 138, 140, 143, 145.
Winthrop, John, material on, 215.
Yarnell, Ellis, 86.
Yulee, David Levy, 94.

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