What he did there, no one knew. His colleagues
asked him in vain. Not a word could they get from him, either in
the Cabinet or out of it, of suggestion or information on matters
even of vital interest. The Treasury as an active influence
ceased to exist. Mr. Boutwell waited with confidence for society
to drag his department out of the mire, as it was sure to do if
he waited long enough.
Warned by his friends in the Cabinet as well as in the Treasury
that Mr. Boutwell meant to invite no support, and cared to
receive none, Adams had only the State and Interior Departments
left to serve. He wanted no better than to serve them. Opposition
was his horror; pure waste of energy; a union with Northern
Democrats and Southern rebels who never had much in common with
any Adams, and had never shown any warm interest about them
except to drive them from public life. If Mr. Boutwell turned him
out of the Treasury with the indifference or contempt that made
even a beetle helpless, Mr. Fish opened the State Department
freely, and seemed to talk with as much openness as any
newspaper-man could ask. At all events, Adams could cling to this
last plank of salvation, and make himself perhaps the recognized
champion of Mr. Fish in the New York press. He never once thought
of his disaster between Seward and Sumner in 1861. Such an
accident could not occur again.
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