FROM CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.

BOSTON, Feb. 7, 1902.

Thanks for your favor of the 3d, which has reached me at just the right time. I am even now engaged in putting the address you refer to through the press, as part of a volume.

I am greatly obliged to you for calling my attention so frankly to the more important point touched upon in your letter. If my statement in regard to Sumner left the impression of "contempt," or dislike, upon your mind, it certainly conveyed something wholly apart from my design. It is, however, very difficult, in dealing with the foibles of a public man, to do it in such a way as not to give prominence to that part of your [one's] portrayal. Sumner's foibles were very pronounced. I came in forcible contact with them more than once in dealing with him myself; and my father and mother came in such very forcible contact with them as to sever their relations [with him]. From personal experience, I think there was great truth in George William Curtis's incisive remark, that, with Sumner, difference of opinion, on a question in which he was deeply interested, assumed in his mind the aspect of moral turpitude. This it was which led to his break with my father. He actually had the impertinence gravely to inform my mother one day that he believed "Mr. Adams meant to be honest." I imagine he was infinitely surprised when he was practically thereupon turned out of the house. Certainly, he never entered it again. It was exactly the same in his treatment of Dr. Palfrey. It was the same in his relations with Dana.

Now, as respects General Grant, I believe that, owing to these foibles, as we will call them, on Sumner's part, the antagonism between them was radical. It would have broken out at any time when they chanced to be brought together in close contact. The two men were by nature different, and a clash was inevitable.

It was not so with Fish. If I understand Fish's character correctly, he had a good deal of that Dutch element in him which is now cropping out so strongly in South Africa. He was a quiet and easy-going man; but, when aroused, by being, as he

thought, "put upon," he became very formidable. Neither was it possible to placate him.

This play of character in Grant, Fish, Sumner and Motley, I found immensely interesting in the preparation of my address. It was the thing which gave life and individuality to it. Meanwhile, I certainly had no thought of leaving the impression of a feeling of "contempt" for Sumner. His foibles were more pronounced than those of any other one of the quartette, unless, perchance, Motley. Motley, however, was a much less interesting character. He cut no considerable figure.

I shall, however, in passing the paper through the press now enlarge and qualify in such a way as to remove, if possible, the impression to which you refer. It is not easy; but I admit at once it should be done.

As to the matter of the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the propriety of the occupant thereof being in accord with the Administration, we do not in reality disagree. It is always easy to state an extreme case. You do it in this instance. Of course, a reasonable difference of opinion is always permissible, and especially in such a case as that in question, between members of the same party. They may occasionally disagree on matters of even first-class moment, and yet that afford no sufficient ground for a change. Therefore, when you speak as you do in your letter, I merely say that those are ordinary cases, not to be taken into consideration. They arise under all conditions.

Meanwhile, I will suggest an extreme case on the other side, and you will at once agree with me. Supposing the Chairman of that Committee was not on speaking terms with either the President or Secretary. Though belonging to the same party, he had a personal feeling, resulting, perhaps, from his being a rival candidate for the Presidency, which led him to desire to thwart the Administration policy at every point, and that he lost no occasion for denouncing it. Matters of foreign policy of the first importance were then sent by the Department of State to the Senate, and there immediately pigeonholed, or so amended as to defeat the purpose for which they were designed. All this is supposable.

Surely, you do not mean to imply that, under such circumstances, if the supporters of the Administration controlled a majority in the Senate, the President could not properly urge on his friends that the Committee in question be so changed as to admit of public business being transacted, and to cause the Administration to have a fair chance to carry out a policy!

The correct rule, of course, lies midway between extremes. It is, as I take it, that, in this particular case above all others, the Administration has a right to ask of its friends, when in control of the Senate, that the Committee in question shall be so constituted as to enable relations consistent with the reasonable transaction of business to exist between the President, the Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Committee, to the end that, on crucial questions of policy at least, public interests may not be prejudiced, and the Administration may have a fair show.

I am confident you will concur in this proposition. The alternative is obvious. Public business could not be carried on. Meanwhile, so far as Sumner is concerned, if he had not been deposed just when he was, the country would have witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of the Chairman of the Committee in question openly going over to the opposition in face of a Senate friendly to the Administration. The case would then have become clear. In any event Sumner was not entitled to be at the head of the Committee after the election of 1872. He had joined the opposition. He belonged, not below the gangway, but on the other side of the House.

He had practically done this at the time he was deposed; and the fact was notorious.

In accordance with your request, I return you a typewritten copy of your letter.

TO J. G. SCHURMAN

NEW YORK, May 8, 1902.

Accept my sincere thanks for the kind sentiments expressed in your letter of the 3d. Be assured, I appreci

ate them very highly. All the more do I deplore your unwillingness to serve as a member of the committee of which Mr. Charles Francis Adams is the chairman.'

I am probably not wrong in supposing the main reason for your refusal to be that we should trust President Roosevelt's determination to have a full and unsparing inquiry, and that therefore investigations by private and voluntary agencies are superfluous and will not bring forth results of value.

Now, the committee has not at all been instituted for the purpose of impeaching President Roosevelt's sincerity, or upon the assumption that he will not honestly try to accomplish the proclaimed object. On the contrary, it will rather stand by him and help his efforts. There is reason for supposing that the President has not been well served by his subordinates and that many important things have for a long time been withheld from his knowledge which he ought to have known; and it is very probable that those who thus have misled him in the past, will, for their own salvation, try to do so in the future.

It is a fact, of which I have the best evidence in my hands, that of the things which have startled the country, not a few have actually been brought out by those voluntary private agencies which you seem to consider unnecessary and valueless. Without those agencies the members of the Senate Investigating Committee, who really want to investigate, would have groped about in the dark, and those members will declare to you to-day that the services thus rendered are "inestimable.' The President in pursuit of the real truth may have occasion to say the same

The purpose of this committee of anti-imperialists was to bring about a thorough official investigation of the alleged cruelties and barbaritiesespecially such as the "water-cure" torture and "taking no prisoners' (killing all the vanquished)-believed to have been practised by our soldiers. See Schurz to Carnegie, Aug. 2, 1902.

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thing. He is, indeed, in great danger of becoming involved in the concealments and falsifications of unscrupulous friends.

To me this work is at this time exceedingly unwelcome. I am old and sometimes feel tired. I wish to devote the rest of my days and of my working strength to the writing of my memoirs, and I am impatient at anything that diverts me from that task. But this is a great and solemn crisis. It calls with a stern and irresistible voice. Recent events have touched me perhaps more keenly than they have touched others. Can you imagine the feelings of a man who all his life has struggled for human liberty and popular government, who for that reason had to flee from his native country, who believed he had found what he sought in this Republic, and thus came to love this Republic even more than the land of his birth, and who at last, at the close of his life, sees that beloved Republic in the clutches of sinister powers which seduce and betray it into an abandonment of its most sacred principles and traditions and push it into policies and practices even worse than those which once he had to flee from?

In such a crisis, I think, we have to do what service we can. The first thing necessary is that we should discover the truth and let the people know it. I cannot give up the hope that when the American people know the truth, they will do what is right and vindicate the true principles and the character of the Republic. To make them know and mind the truth, no effort should be spared.

I am not the leader in this committee business. Mr. Adams conceived the plan and he stands at the head of it as the moving spirit. As you are aware, he is not a reckless enthusiast but rather a very conservative and cautious man. We may be sure that under his guidance nothing rash or sensational will be done. The committee will steadily keep its object in view and serve it in a quiet,