Part 4 (2/2)

As for Henry Adaed at once into a lurid atmosphere of politics, quite heedless of any education or forethought His past al elcomed home, but not even his father asked a malicious question about the Pandects At the utality by quietly inviting his son to act as private secretary during the winter in Washi+ngton, as though any young man who could afford to throo winters on the Civil Law could afford to read Blackstone for another winter without aall education to the east wind November at best is sad, and Noveay of seasons Nowhere else does the uncharitable auturasshopper summer; yet even a Quincy November seemed temperate before the chill of a Boston January

This was saying much, for the November of 1860 at Quincy stood apart froh no one believed in civil war, the air reeked of it, and the Republicans organized their clubs and parades as Wide-Awakes in a fors except weapons Henry reached ho in ranks of torches along the hillside, file down through the Noveht; to the Old House, where Mr Adaress, received them, and, let them pretend what they liked, their air was not that of innocence

Profoundly ignorant, anxious, and curious, the young ain, which had not yet titon with his family Ten years had passed since his last visit, but very little had changed As in 1800 and 1850, so in 1860, the same rude colony was camped in the same forest, with the sahs for roads The Government had an air of social instability and incoht of secession in theory as in fact; but right or wrong, secession was likely to be easy where there was so little to secede from The Union was a sentiment, but not much more, and in December, 1860, the sentiment about the Capitol was chiefly hostile, so far as it made itself felt John Adarandson Henry in 1860 in Washi+ngton

Patriotisress, but over the close of the Thirty-sixth Congress in 1860-61, no halo could be thrown by any one who saw it Of all the croar Adanorant and helpless, but he saw plainly that the knowledge possessed by everybody about hi life did he seek toafter Oxenstiern: ”Quantula sapientia itur!” Oxenstiern talked of a world that wanted wisdo education in a world that seenorant The Southern secessionists were certainly unbalanced in mind--fit for medical treatment, like other victims of hallucination--haunted by suspicion, by idees fixes, by violent morbid excitenorant of the world As a class, the cotton-planters were ree rarely known They were a close society on whom the new fountains of power had poured a stream of wealth and slaves that acted like oil on fla student his first object-lesson of the way in which excess of poorked when held by inadequate hands

This ht be a commonplace of 1900, but in 1860 it was paradox The Southern statesarded as standards of statesmanshi+p, and such standards barred education Charles Sunorance, and he stood a living proof of it To this school, Henry Adams had come for a new education, and the school was seriously, honestly, taken byEurope, as proper for the purpose, although the Sioux Indians would have taught less ent people, as a youngbut cross-purpose The old and typical Southern gentleive, except warning Even as exa in his defiance of reason, to help the education of a reasonable being No one learned a useful lesson from the Confederate school except to keep away from it Thus, at one sweep, the whole field of instruction south of the Potomac was shut off; it was overshadowed by the cotton planters, fro but bad temper, bad manners, poker, and treason

Perforce, the student was thrown back on Northern precept and exas Republican houses were few in Washi+ngton, and Mr and Mrs Adalanders They took a house on I Street, looking over Pennsylvania Avenue, well out towards Georgetown--the Markoe house--and there the private secretary began to learn his social duties, for the political were confined to committee-rooms and lobbies of the Capitol He had little to do, and knew not how to do it rightly, but he knew of no one who knew more

The Southern type was one to be avoided; the New England type was one's self It had nothing to show except one's own features

Setting aside Charles Sumner, who stood quite alone and was the boy's oldest friend, all the New Englanders were sane and steady ue--raduates or not, bore the staame was one exception, and perhaps Israel Washburn another; but as a rule the New Englander's strength was his poise which alet for love than for hate; he attracted as little as he repelled; even as a machine, his motion seemed never accelerated The character, with its force or feebleness, was familiar; one knew it to the core; one was it--had been run in the same mould

There remained the Central and Western States, but there the choice of teachers was not large and in the end narrowed itself to Preston King, Henry Winter Davis, Owen Lovejoy, and a few other men born with social faculty Adams took most kindly to Henry J Raymond, who came to view the field for the New York Tiress to ask except offices, and nothing to offer but the views of his district

The average Senator wasalways excepting one or two genial natures, handicapped by his own iht, the hope of education, till the arrival of the President-elect, narrowed itself to the possible influence of only two men--Sumner and Seward

Sumner was then fifty years old Since his election as Senator in 1851 he had passed beyond the reach of his boy friend, and, after his Brooks injuries, his nervous systeht or ten years of solitary existence as Senator had , can serve ten years as school else All the dog a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they rees in dogmatism, from the frank South Carolinian brutality, to that of Webster, Benton, Clay, or Su, it became Shakespearian and bouffe--as Godkin used to call it--like Malvolio

Sumatic like the rest, but he had at least the ht, as Webster had thought before hireat services and sacrifices, his superiority in education, his oratorical power, his political experience, his representative character at the head of the whole New England contingent, and, above all, his knowledge of the world, made him the most important member of the Senate; and no Senator had ever saturated hihly with the spirit and teiven to ad in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still reatest Senators seemed to inspire little personal affection in each other, and betrayed none at all

Suh esteem, and one of these was Senator Seward The two men would have disliked each other by instinct had they lived in different planets Each was created only for exasperating the other; the virtues of one were the faults of his rival, until no good quality seemed to remain of either

That the public service s of the public service coto buzz admiration in the ears of each, and unaware that each would i to the other? Innocent and unsuspicious beyond as permitted even in a nursery, the private secretary courted both

Private secretaries are servants of a rather low order, whose business is to serve sources of power The first news of a professional kind, iton, was that the President-elect, Abraham Lincoln, had selected Mr Seward for his Secretary of State, and that Seas to be thehis wishes to his followers Every young man naturally accepted the wishes of Mr Lincoln as orders, the more because he could see that the new President was likely to need all the help that several ive, if they counted on having any President at all to serve Naturally one waited i with the new Secretary of State

Governor Seas an old friend of the family He professed to be a disciple and follower of John Quincy Adams He had been Senator since 1849, when his responsibilities as leader had separated hiht of the first Free Soil faith, the ways of New York politics Thurlow Weed had not won favor; but the fierce heat which welded the Republican Party in 1856 ress in December, 1859, Governor Seward instantly renewed his attitude of family friend, became a daily inti his fresh ally to the front

A few days after their arrival in December, 1860, the Governor, as he was always called, came to dinner, alone, as one of the family, and the private secretary had the chance he wanted to watch hienerally watches ure; a head like a wise y eyebrows; unorderly hair and clothes; hoarse voice; offhand ar, offered a new type--of western New York--to fathom; a type in one way simple because it was only double--political and personal; but complex because the political had become nature, and no one could tell which was thefriends, Mr Seward threw off restraint, or seemed to throw it off, in reality, while in the world he threw it off, like a politician, for effect In both cases he chose to appear as a free talker, who loathed pomposity and enjoyed a joke; but how much was nature and how much was mask, he was himself too simple a nature to know Underneath the surface he was conventional after the conventions of western New York and Albany Politicians thought it unconventionality Bostonians thought it provincial Henry Adaht, he loved the Governor, who, though sixty years old, had the youth of his sympathies He noticed that Mr Seas never petty or personal; his talk was large; he generalized; he never seemed to pose for statesmanshi+p; he did not require an attitude of prayer What was ular and quite eccentric--he had so the effect of unselfishness

Superficially Mr Seward and Mr Adams were contrasts; essentially they were id, but the Puritan character in all its forh when it chose; and in Massachusetts all the Adamses had been attacked in succession as no better than political mercenaries Mr Hildreth, in his standard history, went so far as to echo with approval the charge that treachery was hereditary in the family Any Adams had at least to be thick-skinned, hardened to every contradictory epithet that virtue could supply, and, on the whole, armed to return such attentions; but all must have admitted that they had invariably subordinated local to national interests, and would continue to do so, whenever forced to choose C F Adams was sure to do what his father had done, as his father had followed the steps of John Adams, and no doubt thereby earned his epithets

The inevitable followed, as a child fresh from the nursery should have had the instinct to foresee, but the young e of life never dreamed What motives or emotions drove his ; even at that age he preferred to ad norance, before which he stood aood-faith, always matter of simple-minded surprise Critics who know ultiment on history; all that Henry Adanorance, and he never saw quite so much of it as in the winter of 1860-61 Every one knows the story; every one drahat conclusion suits his teh it concerned the merits of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; but in 1861 the conclusion made the sharpest lesson of life; it was condensed and concentrated education

Rightly or wrongly the new President and his chief advisers in Washi+ngton decided that, before they could adovernment to adinia The whole ascendancy of the winter wavered between the effort of the cotton States to drag Virginia out, and the effort of the new President to keep Virginia in Governor Seward representing the Administration in the Senate took the lead; Mr

Adams took the lead in the House; and as far as a private secretary knew, the party united on its tactics In offering concessions to the border States, they had to run the risk, or incur the certainty, of dividing their own party, and they took this risk with open eyes As Seward hiruff way, said at dinner, after Mr Adams and he had made their speeches: ”If there's no secession now, you and I are ruined”

They won their game; this was their affair and the affair of the historians who tell their story; their private secretaries had nothing to do with it except to follow their orders On that side a secretary learned nothing and had nothing to learn The sudden arrival of Mr Lincoln in Washi+ngton on February 23, and the language of his inaugural address, were the final term of the winter's tactics, and closed the private secretary's interest in the ood deal more interest in the appearance of another private secretary, of his own age, a young hted on LaFayette Square at the same moment Friends are born, not made, and Henry never ht nized Hay as a friend, and never lost sight of hi of their paths; but, for the an The winter's anxieties were shi+fted upon new shoulders, and Henry gladly turned back to Blackstone He had tried to y that see in secret as newspaper correspondent, cultivating a large acquaintance and even haunting ballrooms where the simple, old-fashi+oned, Southern tone was pleasant even in the atmosphere of conspiracy and treason The su for education, because no one could teach; all were as ignorant as himself; none knehat should be done, or how to do it; all were trying to learn and werequestions The hted up by no ray of knowledge Society, from top to bottom, broke down

From this law there was no exception, unless, perhaps, that of old General Winfield Scott, who happened to be the only ure that looked equal to the crisis No one else either looked it, or was it, or could be it, by nature or training Had young Ada on the correctness of his estimate of the new President, he would have lost He saw Mr Lincoln but once; at the ural Ball Of course he looked anxiously for a sign of character He saw a long, aard figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar A educated and of needing education that tormented a private secretary; above all a lack of apparent force Any private secretary in the least fit for his business would have thought, as Ada needed so much education as the new President but that all the education he could get would not be enough