Henry Adams could
rise to no such moral elevation. He was only a boy, and his
object in supporting the coalition was that of making his friend
a Senator. It was as personal as though he had helped to make his
friend a millionaire. He could never find a way of escaping
immoral conclusions, except by admitting that he and his father
and Sumner were wrong, and this he was never willing to do, for
the consequences of this admission were worse than those of the
other. Thus, before he was fifteen years old, he had managed to
get himself into a state of moral confusion from which he never
escaped. As a politician, he was already corrupt, and he never
could see how any practical politician could be less corrupt than
himself.
Apology, as he understood himself, was cant or cowardice. At
the time he never even dreamed that he needed to apologize,
though the press shouted it at him from every corner, and though
the Mount Vernon Street conclave agreed with the press; yet he
could not plead ignorance, and even in the heat of the conflict,
he never cared to defend the coalition. Boy as he was, he knew
enough to know that something was wrong, but his only interest
was the election. Day after day, the General Court balloted; and
the boy haunted the gallery, following the roll-call, and
wondered what Caleb Cushing meant by calling Mr.
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