Nothing good could
be hoped, for Hay's troubles had begun, and were quite as great
as he had foreseen. Adams saw as little encouragement as Hay
himself did, though he dared not say so. He doubted Hay's
endurance, the President's firmness in supporting him, and the
loyalty of his party friends; but all this worry on Hay's account
fretted him not nearly so much as the Boer War did on his own.
Here was a problem in his political education that passed all
experience since the Treason winter of 1860-61! Much to his
astonishment, very few Americans seemed to share his point of
view; their hostility to England seemed mere temper; but to Adams
the war became almost a personal outrage. He had been taught from
childhood, even in England, that his forbears and their
associates in 1776 had settled, once for all, the liberties of
the British free colonies, and he very strongly objected to being
thrown on the defensive again, and forced to sit down, a hundred
and fifty years after John Adams had begun the task, to prove, by
appeal to law and fact, that George Washington was not a felon,
whatever might be the case with George III. For reasons still
more personal, he declined peremptorily to entertain question of
the felony of John Adams. He felt obliged to go even further, and
avow the opinion that if at any time England should take towards
Canada the position she took towards her Boer colonies, the
United States would be bound, by their record, to interpose, and
to insist on the application of the principles of 1776.
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