McCulloch, though they thought him a stop-gap rather
than a force. Had they known what sort of forces the Treasury was
to offer them for support in the generation to come, they might
have reflected a long while on their estimate of McCulloch. Adams
was fated to watch the flittings of many more Secretaries than he
ever cared to know, and he rather came back in the end to the
idea that McCulloch was the best of them, although he seemed to
represent everything that one liked least. He was no politician,
he had no party, and no power. He was not fashionable or
decorative. He was a banker, and towards bankers Adams felt the
narrow prejudice which the serf feels to his overerseer; for he
knew he must obey, and he knew that the helpless showed only
their helplessness when they tempered obedience by mockery. The
world, after 1865, became a bankers' world, and no banker would
ever trust one who had deserted State Street, and had gone to
Washington with purposes of doubtful credit, or of no credit at
all, for he could not have put up enough collateral to borrow
five thousand dollars of any bank in America. The banker never
would trust him, and he would never trust the banker. To him, the
banking mind was obnoxious; and this antipathy caused him the
more surprise at finding McCulloch the broadest, most liberal,
most genial, and most practical public man in Washington.
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