CHAPTER X
POLITICAL MORALITY (1862)
ON Moran's promotion to be Secretary, Mr. Seward inquired whether
Minister
Adams would like the place of Assistant Secretary for his son. It was the first and last
office ever offered him, if indeed he could claim what was offered in fact to his father. To them
both, the change seemed useless. Any young man could make some sort of Assistant Secretary;
only one, just at that moment, could make an Assistant Son. More than half his duties were
domestic; they sometimes required long absences; they always required independence of the
Government service. His position was abnormal. The British Government by courtesy allowed the
son to go to Court as Attach‚, though he was never attached, and after five or six years'
toleration, the decision was declared irregular. In the Legation, as private secretary, he was liable
to do Secretary's work. In society, when official, he was attached to the Minister; when unofficial,
he was a young man without any position at all. As the years went on, he began to find
advantages in having no position at all except that of young man. Gradually he aspired to become
a gentleman; just a member of society like the rest. The position was irregular; at that time many
positions were irregular; yet it lent itself to a sort of irregular education that seemed to be the only
sort of education the young man was ever to get.
Such as it was, few young men had more. The spring and summer of 1863 saw a great change
in Secretary Seward's management of foreign affairs. Under the stimulus of danger, he too got
education. He felt, at last, that his official representatives abroad needed support. Officially he
could give them nothing but despatches, which were of no great value to any one; and at best the
mere weight of an office had little to do with the public. Governments were made to deal with
Governments, not with private
146 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
individuals or with the opinions of foreign society. In order to affect European opinion, the
weight of American opinion had to be brought to bear personally, and had to be backed by the
weight of American interests. Mr. Seward set vigorously to work and sent over every important
American on whom he could lay his hands. All came to the Legation more or less intimately, and
Henry Adams had a chance to see them all, bankers or bishops, who did their work quietly and
well, though, to the outsider, the work seemed wasted and the "influential classes" more indurated
with prejudice than ever. The waste was only apparent; the work all told in the end, and
meanwhile it helped education.
Two or three of these gentlemen were sent over to aid the Minister and to cooperate with
him. The most interesting of these was Thurlow Weed, who came to do what the private secretary
himself had attempted two years before, with boyish ignorance of his own powers. Mr. Weed
took charge of the press, and began, to the amused astonishment of the secretaries, by making
what the Legation had learned to accept as the invariable mistake of every amateur diplomat; he
wrote letters to the London Times. Mistake or not, Mr. Weed soon got into his hands the threads
of management, and did quietly and smoothly all that was to be done. With his work the private
secretary had no connection; it was he that interested. Thurlow Weed was a complete American
education in himself. His mind was naturally strong and beautifully balanced; his temper never
seemed ruffled; his manners were carefully perfect in the style of benevolent simplicity, the
tradition of Benjamin Franklin. He was the model of political management and patient address;
but the trait that excited enthusiasm in a private secretary was his faculty of irresistibly conquering
confidence. Of all flowers in the garden of education, confidence was becoming the rarest; but
before Mr. Weed went away, young Adams followed him about not only obediently for obedience
had long since become a blind instinct but rather with sympathy and affection, much like a little
dog.
POLITICAL MORALITY 147
The sympathy was not due only to Mr. Weed's skill of management, although Adams never
met another such master, or any one who approached him; nor was the confidence due to any
display of professions, either moral or social, by Mr. Weed. The trait that astounded and
confounded cynicism was his apparent unselfishness. Never, in any man who wielded such power,
did Adams meet anything like it. The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation
of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies; a diseased appetite, like a
passion for drink or perverted tastes; one can scarcely use expressions too strong to describe the
violence of egotism it stimulates; and Thurlow Weed was one of the exceptions; a rare immune.
He thought apparently not of himself, but of the person he was talking with. He held himself
naturally in the background. He was not jealous. He grasped power, but not office. He distributed
offices by handfuls without caring to take them. He had the instinct of empire: he gave, but he did
not receive. This rare superiority to the politicians he controlled, a trait that private secretaries
never met in the politicians themselves, excited Adams's wonder and curiosity, but when he tried
to get behind it, and to educate himself from the stores of Mr. Weed's experience, he found the
study still more fascinating. Management was an instinct with Mr. Weed; an object to be pursued
for its own sake, as one plays cards; but he appeared to play with men as though they were only
cards; he seemed incapable of feeling himself one of them. He took them and played them for their
face-value; but once, when he had told, with his usual humor, some stories of his political
experience which were strong even for the Albany lobby, the private secretary made bold to ask
him outright: "Then, Mr. Weed, do you think that no politician can be trusted? " Mr. Weed
hesitated for a moment; then said in his mild manner: "I never advise a young man to begin by
thinking so."
This lesson, at the time, translated itself to Adams in a moral sense, as though Mr. Weed had
said: "Youth needs illusions !"
148 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
As he grew older he rather thought that Mr. Weed looked on it as a question of how the game
should be played. Young men most needed experience. They could not play well if they trusted to
a general rule. Every card had a relative value. Principles had better be left aside; values were
enough. Adams knew that he could never learn to play politics in so masterly a fashion as this: his
education and his nervous system equally forbade it, although he admired all the more the
impersonal faculty of the political master who could thus efface himself and his temper in the
game. He noticed that most of the greatest politicians in history had seemed to regard men as
counters. The lesson was the more interesting because another famous New Yorker came over at
the same time who liked to discuss the same problem. Secretary Seward sent William M. Evarts
to London as law counsel, and Henry began an acquaintance with Mr. Evarts that soon became
intimate. Evarts was as individual as Weed was impersonal; like most men, he cared little for the
game, or how it was played, and much for the stakes, but he played it in a large and liberal way,
like Daniel Webster, "a great advocate employed in politics." Evarts was also an economist of
morals, but with him the question was rather how much morality one could afford. "The world
can absorb only doses of truth," he said; "too much would kill it." One sought education in order
to adjust the dose.
The teachings of Weed and Evarts were practical, and the private secretary's life turned on
their value. England's power of absorbing truth was small. Englishmen, such as Palmerston,
Russell, Bethell, and the society represented by the Times and Morning Post, as well as the Tories
represented by Disraeli, Lord Robert Cecil, and the Standard, offered a study in education that
sickened a young student with anxiety. He had begun contrary to Mr. Weed's advice by taking
their bad faith for granted. Was he wrong? To settle this point became the main object of the
diplomatic education so laboriously pursued, at a cost already stupendous, and promising to
become ruinous. Life
POLITICAL MORALITY 149
changed front, according as one thought one's self dealing with honest men or with
rogues.
Thus far, the private secretary felt officially sure of dishonesty. The reasons that satisfied him
had not altogether satisfied his father, and of course his father's doubts gravely shook his own
convictions, but, in practice, if only for safety, the Legation put little or no confidence in
Ministers, and there the private secretary's diplomatic education began. The recognition of
belligerency, the management of the Declaration of Paris, the Trent Affair, all strengthened the
belief that Lord Russell had started in May, 1861, with the assumption that the Confederacy was
established; every step he had taken proved his persistence in the same idea; he never would
consent to put obstacles in the way of recognition; and he was waiting only for the proper
moment to interpose. All these points seemed so fixed so self-evident that no one in the Legation
would have doubted or even discussed them except that Lord Russell obstinately denied the
whole charge, and persisted in assuring Minister Adams of his honest and impartial neutrality.
With the insolence of youth and zeal, Henry Adams jumped at once to the conclusion that
Earl Russell like other statesmen lied; and, although the Minister thought differently, he had to
act as though Russell were false. Month by month the demonstration followed its mathematical
stages; one of the most perfect educational courses in politics and diplomacy that a young man
ever had a chance to pursue. The most costly tutors in the world were provided for him at public
expense Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, Lord Westbury, Lord Selborne, Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Granville, and their associates, paid by the British Government; William H. Seward, Charles
Francis Adams, William Maxwell Evarts, Thurlow Weed, and other considerable professors
employed by the American Government; but there was only one student to profit by this immense
staff of teachers. The private secretary alone sought education.
150 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
To the end of his life he labored over the lessons then taught. Never was demonstration more
tangled. Hegel's metaphysica1 doctrine of the identity of opposites was simpler and easier to
understand. Yet the stages of demonstration were clear. They began in June, 1862, after the
escape of one rebel cruiser, by the remonstrances of the Minister against the escape of "No. 290,"
which was imminent. Lord Russell declined to act on the evidence. New evidence was sent in
every few days, and with it, on July 24, was included Collier's legal opinion: "It appears difficult
to make out a stronger case of infringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which, if not enforced
on this occasion, is little better than a dead letter." Such language implied almost a charge of
collusion with the rebel agents an intent to aid the Confederacy. In spite of the warning, Earl
Russell let the ship, four days afterwards, escape.
Young Adams had nothing to do with law; that was business of his betters. His opinion of law
hung on his opinion of lawyers. In spite of Thurlow Weed's advice, could one afford to trust
human nature in politics ? History said not. Sir Robert Collier seemed to hold that Law agreed
with History. For education the point was vital. If one could not trust a dozen of the most
respected private characters in the world, composing the Queen's Ministry, one could trust no
mortal man.
Lord Russell felt the force of this inference, and undertook to disprove it. His effort lasted till
his death. At first he excused himself by throwing the blame on the law officers. This was a
politician's practice, and the lawyers overruled it. Then he pleaded guilty to criminal negligence,
and said in his "Recollections": "I assent entirely to the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice of
England that the Alabama ought to have been detained during the four days I was waiting for the
opinion of the law officers. But I think that the fault was not that of the commissioners of
customs, it was my fault as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs." This concession brought all
parties on common ground. Of course
POLITICAL MORALITY 151
it was his fault! The true issue lay not in the question of his fault, but of his intent. To a young
man, getting an education in politics, there could be no sense in history unless a constant course
of faults implied a constant motive.
For his father the question was not so abstruse; it was a practical matter of business to be
handled as Weed or Evarts handled their bargains and jobs. Minister Adams held the convenient
belief that, in the main, Russell was true, and the theory answered his purposes so well that he
died still holding it. His son was seeking education, and wanted to know whether he could, in
politics, risk trusting any one. Unfortunately no one could then decide; no one knew the facts.
Minister Adams died without knowing them. Henry Adams was an older man than his father in
1862, before he learned a part of them. The most curious fact, even then, was that Russell
believed in his own good faith and that Argyll believed in it also.
Argyll betrayed a taste for throwing the blame on Bethell, Lord Westbury, then Lord
Chancellor, but this escape helped Adams not at all. On the contrary, it complicated the case of
Russell. In England, one half of society enjoyed throwing stones at Lord Palmerston, while the
other half delighted in flinging mud at Earl Russell, but every one of every party united in pelting
Westbury with every missile at hand. The private secretary had no doubts about him, for he never
professed to be moral. He was the head and heart of the whole rebel contention, and his opinions
on neutrality were as clear as they were on morality. The private secretary had nothing to do with
him, and regretted it, for Lord Westbury's wit and wisdom were great; but as far as his authority
went he affirmed the law that in politics no man should be trusted.
Russell alone insisted on his honesty of intention and persuaded both the Duke and the
Minister to believe him. Every one in the Legation accepted his assurances as the only assertions
they could venture to trust. They knew he expected the rebels to win in the end, but they believed
he would not actively interpose to
152 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
decide it. On that on nothing else they rested their frail hopes of remaining a day longer in
England. Minister Adams remained six years longer in England; then returned to America to lead
a busy life till he died in 1886 still holding the same faith in Earl Russell, who had died in 1878. In
1889, Spencer Walpole published the official life of Earl Russell, and told a part of the story
which had never been known to the Minister and which astounded his son, who burned with
curiosity to know what his father would have said of it.
The story was this: The Alabama escaped, by Russell's confessed negligence, on July 28,
1862. In America the Union armies had suffered great disasters before Richmond and at the
second Bull Run, August 29-30, followed by Lee's invasion of Maryland, September 7, the news
of which, arriving in England on September 14, roused the natural idea that the crisis was at hand.
The next news was expected by the Confederates to announce the fall of Washington or
Baltimore. Palmerston instantly, September 14, wrote to Russell: "If this should happen, would it
not be time for us to consider whether in such a state of things England and France might not
address the contending parties and recommend an arrangement on the basis of separation?"
This letter, quite in the line of Palmerston's supposed opinions, would have surprised no one,
if it had been communicated to the Legation; and indeed, if Lee had captured Washington, no one
could have blamed Palmerston for offering intervention. Not Palmerston's letter but Russell's
reply, merited the painful attention of a young man seeking a moral standard for judging
politicians:
GOTHA, September, 17, 1862
MY DEAR PALMERSTON:
Whether the Federal army is destroyed or not, it is clear that it is driven back to Washington
and has made no progress in subduing the insurgent States. Such being the case, I agree with you
that the time is come for offering mediation to the United States Government with a view to the
recognition of the independence of the Confederates.
POLITICAL MORALITY 153
I agree further that in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the Southern States as
an independent State. For the purpose of taking so important a step, I think we must have a
meeting of the Cabinet. The 23d or 30th would suit me for the meeting.
We ought then, if we agree on such a step, to propose it first to France' and then on the part
of England and France, to Russia and other powers, as a measure decided upon by us.
We ought to make ourselves safe in Canada, not by sending more troops there, but by
concentrating those we have in a few defensible posts before the winter sets in....
Here, then, appeared in its fullest force, the practical difficulty in education which a mere
student could never overcome; a difficulty not in theory, or knowledge, or even want of
experience, but in the sheer chaos of human nature. Lord Russell's course had been consistent
from the first, and had all the look of rigid determination to recognize the Southern Confederacy
"with a view" to breaking up the Union. His letter of September 17 hung directly on his
encouragement of the Alabama and his protection of the rebel navy; while the whole of his plan
had its root in the Proclamation of Belligerency, May 13, 1861. The policy had every look of
persistent forethought, but it took for granted the deliberate dishonesty of three famous men:
Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone. This dishonesty, as concerned Russell, was denied by Russell
himself, and disbelieved by Argyll, Forster, and most of America's friends in England, as well as
by Minister Adams. What the Minister would have thought had he seen this letter of September
17, his son would have greatly liked to know, but he would have liked still more to know what
the Minister would have thought of Palmerston's answer, dated September 23:--
. . . It is evident that a great conflict is taking place to the northwest of
Washington, and its issue must have a great effect on the state of affairs. If the Federals sustain a
great defeat, they may be at once ready for mediation, and the iron should be struck while it is
hot. If, on the other hand, they should have the best of it, we may wait ? a while and see what may
follow...
154 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
The roles were reversed. Russell wrote what was expected from Palmerston, or even more
violently; while Palmerston wrote what was expected from Russell, or even more temperately.
The private secretary's view had been altogether wrong, which would not have much surprised
even him, but he would have been greatly astonished to learn that the most confidential associates
of these men knew little more about their intentions than was known in the Legation. I~he most
trusted member of the Cabinet was Lord Granville, and to him Russell next wrote. Granville
replied at once decidedly opposing recognition of the Confederacy, and Russell sent the reply to
Palmerston, who returned it October 2, with the mere suggestion of waiting for further news from
America. At the same time Granville wrote to another member of the Cabinet, Lord Stanley of
Alderley, a letter published forty years afterwards in Granville's "Life" (I, 442) to the private
secretary altogether the most curious and instructive relic of the whole lesson in politics:
. . . I have written to Johnny my reasons for thinking it decidedly premature. I,
however, suspect you will settle to do so. Pam., Johnny, and Gladstone would be in favor of it,
and probably Newcastle. I do not know about the others. It appears to me a great
mistake....
Out of a Cabinet of a dozen members, Granville, the best informed of them all, could pick
only three who would favor recognition. Even a private secretary thought he knew as much as
this, or more. Ignorance was not confined to the young and insignificant, nor were they the only
victims of blindness. Granville's letter made only one point clear. He knew of no fixed policy or
conspiracy. If any existed, it was confined to Palmerston, Russell, Gladstone, and perhaps
Newcastle. In truth, the Legation knew, then, all that was to be known, and the true fault of
education was to suspect too much.
By that time, October 3, news of Antietam and of Lee's retreat into Virginia had reached London.
The Emancipation Proclamation arrived.
POLITICAL MORALITY 155
Had the private secretary known all that Granville or Palmerston knew, he would surely have
thought the danger past, at least for a time, and any man of common sense would have told him to
stop worrying over phantoms. This healthy lesson would have been worth much for practical
education, but it was quite upset by the sudden rush of a new actor upon the stage with a
rhapsody that made Russell seem sane, and all education superfluous.
This new actor, as every one knows, was William Ewart Gladstone, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer. If, in the domain of the world's politics, one point was fixed, one value ascertained,
one element serious, it was the British Exchequer; and if one man lived who could be certainly
counted as sane by overwhelming interest, it was the man who had in charge the finances of
England. If education had the smallest value, it should have shown its force in Gladstone, who
was educated beyond all record of English training. From him, if from no one else, the poor
student could safely learn.
Here is what he learned! Palmerston notified Gladstone, September 24, of the proposed
intervention: "If I am not mistaken, you would be inclined to approve such a course." Gladstone
replied the next day: "He was glad to learn what the Prime Minister had told him; and for two
reasons especially he desired that the proceedings should be prompt: the first was the rapid
progress of the Southern arms and the extension of the area of Southern feeling; the second was
the risk of violent impatience in the cotton-towns of Lancashire such as would prejudice the
dignity and disinterestedness of the proffered mediation."
Had the puzzled student seen this letter, he must have concluded from it that the best
educated statesman England ever produced did not know what he was talking about, an
assumption which all the world would think quite inadmissible from a private secretary but this
was a trifle. Gladstone having thus arranged, with Palmerston and Russell, for intervention in the
American
156 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
war, reflected on the subject for a fortnight from September 25 to October 7, when he was to
speak on the occasion of a great dinner at Newcastle. He decided to announce the Government's
policy with all the force his personal and official authority could give it. This decision was no
sudden impulse; it was the result of deep reflection pursued to the last moment. On the morning
of October 7, he entered in his diary: "Reflected further on what I should say about Lancashire
and America, for both these subjects are critical." That evening at dinner, as the mature fruit of his
long study, he deliberately pronounced the famous phrase:
. . . We know quite well that the people of the Northern States have not yet drunk of the cup
they are still trying to hold it far from their lips which all the rest of the world see they
nevertheless must drink of. We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or
against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have
made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made, what is more than either,
they have made a nation....
Looking back, forty years afterwards, on this episode, one asked one's self painfully whet sort
of a lesson a young man should have drawn, for the purposes of his education, from this
world-famous teaching of a very great master. In the heat of passion at the moment, one drew
some harsh moral conclusions: Were they incorrect? Posed bluntly as rules of conduct, they led to
the worst possible practices. As morals, one could detect no shade of difference between
Gladstone and Napoleon except to the advantage of Napoleon. The private secretary saw none;
he accepted the teacher in that sense; he took his lesson of political morality as learned, his notice
to quit as duly served, and supposed his education to be finished.
Every one thought so, and the whole City was in a turmoil. Any intelligent education ought to
end when it is complete. One would then feel fewer hesitations and would handle a surer world.
The old-fashioned logical drama required unity and sense; the
POLITICAL MORALITY 157
actual drama is a pointless puzzle, without even an intrigue. When the curtain fell on
Gladstone's speech, any student had the right to suppose the drama ended; none could have
affirmed that it was about to begin; that one's painful lesson was thrown away.
Even after forty years, most people would refuse to believe it; they would still insist that
Gladstone, Russell, and Palmerston were true villains of melodrama. The evidence against
Gladstone in special seemed overwhelming. The word "must" can never be used by a responsible
Minister of one Government towards another, as Gladstone used it. No one knew so well as he
that he and his own officials and friends at Liverpool were alone "making" a rebel navy, and that
Jefferson Davis had next to nothing to do with it. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he was the
Minister most interested in knowing that Palmerston, Russell, and himself were banded together
by mutual pledge to make the Confederacy a nation the next week, and that the Southern leaders
had as yet no hope of "making a nation" but in them. Such thoughts occurred to every one at the
moment and time only added to their force. Never in the history of political turpitude had any
brigand of modern civilization offered a worse example. The proof of it was that it outraged even
Palmerston, who immediately put up Sir George Cornewall Lewis to repudiate the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, against whom he turned his press at the same time. Palmerston had no notion of
letting his hand be forced by Gladstone.
Russell did nothing of the kind; if he agreed with Palmerston, he followed Gladstone.
Although he had just created a new evangel of non-intervention for Italy, and preached it like an
apostle, he preached the gospel of intervention in America as though he were a mouthpiece of the
Congress of Vienna. On October 13, he issued his call for the Cabinet to meet, on October 23, for
discussion of the "duty of Europe to ask both parties, in the most friendly and conciliatory terms,
to agree to a suspension of arms." Meanwhile Minister Adams, deeply perturbed and
profoundly
158 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
anxious, would betray no sign of alarm, and purposely delayed to ask explanation. The howl
of anger against Gladstone became louder every day, for every one knew that the Cabinet was
called for October 23, and then could not fail to decide its policy about the United States. Lord
Lyons put off his departure for America till October 25 expressly to share in the conclusions to be
discussed on October 23. When Minister Adams at last requested an interview, Russell named
October 23 as the day. To the last moment every act of Russell showed that, in his mind, the
intervention was still in doubt.
When Minister Adams, at the interview, suggested that an explanation was due him, he
watched Russell with natural interest, and reported thus:
. . . His lordship took my allusion at once, though not without a slight indication of
embarrassment. He said that Mr. Gladstone had been evidently much misunderstood. I must have
seen in the newspapers the letters which contained his later explanations. That he had certain
opinions in regard to the nature of the struggle in America, as on all public questions, just as other
Englishmen had, was natural enough. And it was the fashion here for public men to express such
as they held in their public addresses. Of course it was not for him to disavow anything on the part
of Mr. Gladstone; but he had no idea that in saying what he had, there was a serious intention to
justify any of the inferences that had been drawn from it of a disposition in the Government now
to adopt a new policy....
A student trying to learn the processes of politics in a free government could not but ponder
long on the moral to be drawn from this "explanation" of Mr. Gladstone by Earl Russell. The
point set for study as the first condition of political life, was whether any politician could be
believed or trusted. The question which a private secretary asked himself, in copying this despatch
of October 24, 1862, was whether his father believed, or should believe, one word of Lord
Russell's "embarrassment." The "truth" was not known for thirty years, but when published,
seemed to be the reverse of Earl Russell's statement. Mr. Gladstone's speech had
POLITICAL MORALITY 159
been drawn out by Russell's own policy of intervention and had no sense except to declare the
"disposition in the Government now to adopt" that new policy. Earl Russell never disavowed
Gladstone, although Lord Palmerston and Sir George Cornewall Lewis instantly did so. As far as
the curious student could penetrate the mystery, Gladstone exactly expressed Earl Russell's
intent.
As political education, this lesson was to be crucial; it would~ decide the law of life. All these
gentlemen were superlatively honorable; if one could not believe them, Truth in politics might be
ignored as a delusion. Therefore the student felt compelled to reach some sort of idea that should
serve to bring the case within a general law. Minister Adams felt the same compulsion. He bluntly
told Russell that while he was "willing to acquit" Gladstone of "any deliberate intention to bring
on the worst effects,"~ he was bound to say that Gladstone was doing it quite as certainly as if he
had one; and to this charge, which struck more sharply at Russell's secret policy than at
Gladstone's public defence of it, Russell replied as well as he could:
. . . His lordship intimated as guardedly as possible that Lord Palmerston and other members
of the Government regretted the speech, and`Mr. Gladstone himself was not disinclined to
correct, as far as he could, the misinterpretation which had been made of it. It was still their
intention to adhere to the rule of perfect neutrality in the struggle, and to let it come to its natural
end without the smallest interference, direct or otherwise. But he could not say what
circumstances might happen from month to month in the future. I observed that the policy he
mentioned was satisfactory to us, and asked if I was to understand him as saying that no change
of it was now proposed. To which he gave his assent....
Minister Adams never knew more. He retained his belief that Russell could be trusted, but
that Palmerston could not. This was the diplomatic tradition, especially held by the Russian
diplomats. Possibly it was sound, but it helped in no way the education of a private secretary. The
cat's-paw theory offered no safer clue,
160 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
than the frank, old-fashioned, honest theory of villainy. Neither the one nor the other was
reasonable.
No one ever told the Minister that Earl Russell, only a few hours before, had asked the
Cabinet to intervene, and that the Cabinet had refused. The Minister was led to believe that the
Cabinet meeting was not held, and that its decision was informal. Russell's biographer said that,
"with this memorandum [of Russell's, dated October ~3] the Cabinet assembled from all parts of
the country on October 23; but . . . members of the Cabinet doubted the policy of moving, or
moving at that time." The Duke of Newcastle and Sir George Grey joined Granville in opposition.
As far as known, Russell and Gladstone stood alone. " Considerations such as these prevented the
matter being pursued any further."
Still no one has distinctly said that this decision was formal; perhaps the unanimity of
opposition made the formal Cabinet unnecessary; but it is certain that, within an hour or two
before or after this decision, "his lordship said [to the United States Minister] that the policy of
the Government was to adhere to a strict neutrality and to leave this struggle to settle itself."
When Mr. Adams, not satisfied even with this positive assurance, pressed for a categorical
answer: "I asked him if I was to understand that policy as not now to be changed; he said:
Yes!"
John Morley's comment on this matter, in the "Life of Gladstone," forty years afterwards,
would have interested the Minister, as well as his private secretary: " If this relation be accurate,"
said Morley of a relation officially published at the time, and never questioned, "then the Foreign
Secretary did not construe strict neutrality as excluding what diplomatists call good offices." For a
vital lesson in politics, Earl Russell's construction of neutrality mattered little to the student, who
asked only Russell's intent, and cared only to know whether his construction had any other object
than to deceive the Minister.
In the grave one can afford to be lavish of charity, and possibly
POLITICAL MORALITY 161
Earl Russell may have been honestly glad to reassure his personal friend Mr. Adams; but to
one who is still in the world even if not of it, doubts are as plenty as days. Earl Russell totally
deceived the private secretary, whatever he may have done to the Minister. The policy of
abstention was not settled on October 23. Only the next day, October 24, Gladstone circulated a
rejoinder to G. C. Lewis, insisting on the duty of England, France, and Russia to intervene by
representing, "with moral authority and force, the opinion of the civilized world upon the
conditions of the case."
Nothing had been decided. By some means, scarcely accidental, the French Emperor was led
to think that his influence might turn the scale, and only ten days after Russell's categorical "Yes!"
Napoleon officially invited him to say "No!" He was more than ready to do so. Another Cabinet
meeting was called for November 11, and this time Gladstone himself reports the debate:
Nov. 11. We have had our Cabinet to-day and meet again tomorrow. I am afraid we shall do
little or nothing in the business of America. But I will send you definite intelligence. Both Lords
Palmerston and Russell are right.
Nov. 12. The United States affair has ended and not well. Lord Russell rather turned tail. He
gave way without resolutely fighting out his battle. However, though we decline for the moment,
the answer is put upon grounds and in terms which leave the matter very open for the future.
Nov. 13. I think the French will make our answer about America public; at least it is very
possible. But I hope they may not take it as a positive refusal, or at any rate that they may
themselves act in the matter. It will be clear that we concur with them, that the war should cease.
Palmerston gave to Russell's proposal a feeble and half-hearted support.
Forty years afterwards, when every one except himself, who looked on at this scene, was
dead, the private secretary of 1862 read these lines with stupor, and hurried to discuss them with
John Hay, who was more astounded than himself. All the world
162 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
had been at cross-purposes, had misunderstood themselves and the situation, had followed
wrong paths, drawn wrong conclusions, had known none of the facts. One would have done
better to draw no conclusions at all. One's diplomatic education was a long mistake.
These were the terms of this singular problem as they presented themselves to the student of
diplomacy in 1862: Palmerston, on September 14, under the impression that the President was
about to be driven from Washington and the Army of the Potomac dis-
persed, suggested to Russell that in such a case, intervention might be feasible. Russell instantly
answered that, in any case, he wanted to intervene and should call a Cabinet for the purpose.
Palmerston hesitated; Russell insisted; Granville protested. Meanwhile the rebel army was
defeated at Antietam, September 17, and driven out of Maryland. Then Gladstone, October 7,
tried to force Palmerston's hand by treating the intervention as a fait accompli. Russell assented,
but Palmerston put up Sir George Cornewall Lewis to contradict Gladstone and treated him
sharply in the press, at the very moment when Russell was calling a Cabinet to make Gladstone's
words good. On October 23, Russell assured Adams that no change in policy was now proposed.
On the same day he had proposed it, and was voted down. Instantly Napoleon III appeared as the
ally of Russell and Gladstone with a proposition which had no sense except as a bribe to
Palmerston to replace America, from pole to pole, in her old dependence on Europe, and to
replace England in her old sovereignty of the seas, if Palmerston would support France in Mexico.
The young student of diplomacy, knowing Palmerston, must have taken for granted that
Palmerston inspired this motion and would support it; knowing Russell and his Whig antecedents,
he would conceive that Russell must oppose it; knowing Gladstone and his lofty principles, he
would not doubt that Gladstone violently denounced the scheme. If education was worth a straw,
this was the only arrangement of persons that a trained student would imagine
POLITICAL MORALITY 163
possible, and it was the arrangement actually assumed by nine men out of ten, as history. In
truth, each valuation was false. Palmerston never showed favor to the scheme and gave it only "a
feeble and half-hearted support." Russell gave way without resolutely fighting out "his battle."
The only resolute, vehement, conscientious champion of Russell, Napoleon, and Jefferson Davis
was Gladstone.
Other people could afford to laugh at a young man's blunders, but to him the best part of life
was thrown away if he learned such a lesson wrong. Henry James had not yet taught the world to
read a volume for the pleasure of seeing the lights of his burning-glass turned on alternate sides of
the same figure. Psychological study was still simple, and at worst or at best English character
was never subtile. Surely no one would believe that complexity was the trait that confused the
student of Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone. Under a very strong light human nature will
always appear complex and full of contradictions, but the British statesman would appear, on the
whole, among the least complex of men.
Complex these gentlemen were not. Disraeli alone might, by contrast, be called complex, but
Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone deceived only by their simplicity. Russell was the most
interesting to a young man because his conduct seemed most states-
manlike. Every act of Russell, from April, 1861, to November, 1862, showed the clearest
determination to break up the Union. The only point in Russell's character about which the
student thought no doubt to be possible was its want of good faith. It was thoroughly dishonest,
but strong. Habitually Russell said one thing and did another. He seemed unconscious of his own
contradictions even when his opponents pointed them out, as they were much in the habit of
doing, in the strongest language. As the student watched him deal with the Civil War in America,
Russell alone showed persistence, even obstinacy, in a definite determination' which he supported,
as was necessary, by the usual definite falsehoods. The young man did not complain of the
false-
164 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
hoods; on the contrary, he was vain of his own insight in detecting them; but he was wholly
upset by the idea that Russell should think himself true.
Young Adams thought Earl Russell a statesman of the old school, clear about his objects and
unscrupulous in his methods dishonest but strong. Russell ardently asserted that he had no
objects, and that though he might be weak he was above all else honest. Minister Adams leaned to
Russell personally and thought him true, but officially, in practice, treated him as false. Punch,
before 1862, commonly drew Russell as a schoolboy telling lies' and afterwards as prematurely
senile, at seventy. Education stopped there. No one, either in or out of England, ever offered a
rational explanation of Earl Russell.
Palmerston was simple so simple as to mislead the student altogether but scarcely more
consistent. The world thought him positive, decided, reckless; the record proved him to be
cautious, careful, vacillating. Minister Adams took him for pugnacious and quarrelsome; the
"Lives" of Russell, Gladstone, and Granville show him to have been good-tempered, conciliatory,
avoiding quarrels. He surprised the Minister by refusing to pursue his attack on General Butler.
He tried to check Russell. He scolded Gladstone. He discouraged Napoleon. Except Disraeli none
of the English statesmen were so cautious as he in talking of America. Palmerston told no
falsehoods; made no professions; concealed no opinions; was detected in no double-dealing. The
most mortifying failure in Henry Adams's long education was that, after forty years of confirmed
dislike, distrust, and detraction of Lord Palmerston, he was obliged at last to admit himself in
error, and to consent in spirit for by that time he was nearly as dead as any of them to beg his
pardon. .
Gladstone was quite another story, but with him a student's difficulties were less because they
were shared by all the world including Gladstone himself. He was the sum of contradictions. The
highest education could reach, in this analysis, only a reduction
POLITICAL MORALITY 165
to the absurd, but no absurdity that a young man could reach in 1862 would have approached
the level that Mr. Gladstone admitted, avowed, proclaimed, in his confessions of 1896, which
brought all reason and all hope of education to a still-stand:
I have yet to record an undoubted error, the most singular and palpable, I may add the least
excusable of them all, especially since it was committed so late as in the year 1862 when I had
outlived half a century . . . I declared in the heat of the American struggle that Jefferson Davis had
made a nation.... Strange to say, this declaration, most unwarrantable to be made by a Minister of
the Crown with no authority other than his own, was not due to any feeling of partisanship for the
South or hostility to the North.... I really, though most strangely, believed that it was an act of
friendliness to all America to recognize that the struggle was virtually at an end.... That my
opinion was founded upon a false estimate of the facts was the very least part of my fault. I did
not perceive the gross impropriety of such an utterance from a Cabinet Minister of a power allied
in blood and language, and bound to loyal neutrality; the case being further exaggerated by the
fact that we were already, so to speak, under indictment before the world for not (as was alleged)
having strictly enforced the laws of neutrality in the matter of the cruisers. My offence was indeed
only a mistake, but one of incredible grossness, and with such consequences of offence and alarm
attached to it, that my failing to perceive them justly exposed me to very severe blame. It
illustrates vividly that incapacity which my mind so long retained, and perhaps still exhibits, an
incapacity of viewing subjects all round....
Long and patiently more than patiently sympathetically, did the private secretary, forty years
afterwards in the twilight of a life of study, read and re-read and reflect upon this confession.
Then, it seemed, he had seen nothing correctly at the time. His whole theory of conspiracy of
policy of logic and connection in the affairs of man, resolved itself into "incredible grossness." He
felt no rancor, for he had won the game; he forgave, since he must admit, the "incapacity of
viewing subjects all round" which had so nearly cost him life and fortune; he was willing
166 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
even to believe. He noted, without irritation, that Mr. Gladstone, in his confession, had not
alluded to the understanding between Russell, Palmerston, and himself; had even wholly left out
his most "incredible" act, his ardent support of Napoleon's policy, a policy which even
Palmerston and Russell had supported feebly, with only half a heart. All this was indifferent.
Granting, in spite of evidence, that Gladstone had no set plan of breaking up the Union; that he
was party to no conspiracy; that he saw none of the results of his acts which were clear to every
one else; granting in short what the English themselves seemed at last to conclude-that Gladstone
was not quite sane; that Russell was verging on senility; and that Palmerston had lost his nerve
-what sort of education should have been the result of it? How should it have affected one's
future opinions and acts?
Politics cannot stop to study psychology. Its methods are rough; its judgments rougher still. All
this knowledge would not have affected either the Minister or his son in 1862. The sum of the
individuals would still have seemed, to the young man, one individual-a single will or
intention-bent on breaking up the Union "as a diminution of a dangerous power." The Minister
would still have found his interest in thinking Russell friendly and Palmerston hostile. The
individual would still have been identical with the mass. The problem would have been the same;
the answer equally obscure. Every student would, like the private secretary, answer for himself
alone.
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