The most troublesome task of
a reform President was that of bringing the Senate back to
decency.
Therefore no one, and Henry Adams less than most, felt hope
that any President chosen from the ranks of politics or
politicians would raise the character of government; and by
instinct if not by reason, all the world united on Grant. The
Senate understood what the world expected, and waited in silence
for a struggle with Grant more serious than that with Andrew
Johnson. Newspaper-men were alive with eagerness to support the
President against the Senate. The newspaper-man is, more than
most men, a double personality; and his person feels best
satisfied in its double instincts when writing in one sense and
thinking in another. All newspaper-men, whatever they wrote, felt
alike about the Senate. Adams floated with the stream. He was
eager to join in the fight which he foresaw as sooner or later
inevitable. He meant to support the Executive in attacking the
Senate and taking away its two-thirds vote and power of
confirmation, nor did he much care how it should be done, for he
thought it safer to effect the revolution in 1870 than to wait
till 1920..
With this thought in his mind, he went to the Capitol to hear
the names announced which should reveal the carefully guarded
secret of Grant's Cabinet. To the end of his life, he wondered at
the suddenness of the revolution which actually, within five
minutes, changed his intended future into an absurdity so
laughable as to make him ashamed of it.
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