TO CHAS. FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.
. . . I have read not only the pages relating to Sumner but the whole of your address[1] with the keenest interest and appreciation. Let me first give you a general impression. The unsophisticated reader having gone through your presentation of the conduct of England during our civil war—a presentation as strong as it is truthful—will be apt, when reading your account of the diplomatic negotiations leading to the Treaty of Washington, to conclude that those negotiations were carried on for the special purpose of helping England out of a hole dug by her own greed and ill-will towards this Republic, and that England was finally let off on terms altogether too easy.
As to Sumner, I find that a certain tone of contempt has crept into what you say of his character and abilities which you have probably not intended. His ideas with regard to the British neutrality-proclamation and, later, with regard to the “hemispheric flag-withdrawal” were at the time shared, the first by pretty much everybody connected with the Government and substantially by the whole North, and the second for some time by the Administration itself. To be sure, you say that yourself. But an impression is left as if he had been the main instigator of those notions, and as if he had been principally responsible for them. He was, indeed, stronger in his expressions than others, and he expressed only what a great many others thought, and what they would have thought had he not spoken.
His breach with Grant, as it stands very distinctly in my recollection, was caused by his refusal to [approve] the San Domingo business, as to which Sumner, as I think, was
- ↑ The Treaty of Washington, delivered before the N. Y. Hist. Society, Nov. 19, 1901; and published in Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers.
