e Federal party in twain. Those
cracks upon the surface and subterraneous rumblings, which the
experienced observer could for some time have noted, had opened with
terrible uproar into a gaping chasm, when John Adams, still in the
Presidency, suddenly announced his determination to send a mission to
France at a crisis when nearly all his party were looking for war.
Perhaps this step was, as his admirers claim, an act of pure and
disinterested statesmanship. Certainly its result was fortunate for
the country at large. But for John Adams it was ruinous. At the moment
when he made the bold move, he doubtless expected to be followed by
his party. Extreme was his disappointment and boundless his wrath,
when he found that he had at his back only a fraction, not improbably
less than half, of that party. He learned with infinite chagrin that
he had only a divided empire with a private individual; that it was
not safe for him, the President of the United States, to originate
any important measure without first consulting a lawyer quietly (p. 027)
engaged in the practice of his profession in New York; that, in short,
at least a moiety, in which were to be found the most intelligent
members, of the great Federal party, when in search of guidance,
turned their faces toward Alexander Hamilton rather than toward John
Adams. These Hamiltonians by no means relished the French mission, so
that from this time forth a schism of intense bitterness kept the
Federal party asunder, and John Adams hated Alexander Hamilton with a
vigor not surpassed in the annals of human antipathies. His rage was
not assuaged by the conduct of this dreaded foe in the presidential
campaign; and the defeated candidate always preferred to charge his
failure to Hamilton's machinations rather than to the real will of the
people. This, however, was unfair; it was perfectly obvious that a
majority of the nation had embraced Jeffersonian tenets, and that
Federalism was moribund.

To this condition of affairs John Quincy Adams returned. Fortunately
he had been compelled to bear no part in the embroilments of the past,
and his sagacity must have led him, while listening with filial
sympathy to the interpretations placed upon events by his incensed
parent, yet to make liberal allowance for the distorting effects (p. 028)
of the old gentleman's rage. Still it was in the main only natural for
him to regard himself as a Federalist of the Adams faction. His
proclivitie