Page:Americans (1922).djvu/322

 Harvard, and studied law and observed public men from the White House in the administration of his father and in the palmy days of Jackson, Clay, and Webster. Possibly if the father had retired after his defeat for reëlection in 1828, Charles Francis might have felt more distinctly called to advance the Adams banner; but the almost immediate return of the ex-president, plunging into his long Congressional career, preëmpted the field. Charles went to Boston, engaged in business, served for several years in the legislature, was elected to Congress in 1859, and crowned his achievements in the period of the Civil War by staunchly and successfully representing the Union in his ministry to Great Britain.

Coming now to the representatives of the fourth generation, who made their careers after the Civil War, we confront once more the three Adonises who more or less darkly despair of the Republic and of the future of the Adams line—Henry, Brooks, and Charles Francis II. All three were bred in the traditions of the great family, inherited its culture and social advantages, became conscious of an obligation to distinguish themselves, strove to keep pace with the new nation which the war had created, and all three, rendering an account of their adventures, intimate a degree of failure and rail at their