"1607 H STREET, WASHINGTON, _24 Jan., 1883_.
"DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter of the 12th, acknowledging the
receipt at some past time of a copy of _New England Federalism_,
reached me yesterday. I am forced to confess that I have equally
forgotten sending you the book, and can recall nothing except
the fact that I sent you my _Life of Gallatin_ in consequence of
assistance which you rendered me in regard to it. Probably the other
book was sent in the same connection. I am quite sure that while in
Europe, where I went for papers after the _Gallatin_ appeared, I
received a letter of acknowledgment from you for the volume.
"To do justice to Gallatin was a labor of love. After long study
of the prominent figures in our history, I am more than ever
convinced that for combination of ability, integrity, knowledge,
unselfishness, and social fitness Mr. Gallatin has no equal. He was
the most fully and perfectly equipped statesman we can show. Other
men, as I take hold of them, are soft in some spots and rough in
others. Gallatin never gave way in my hand or seemed unfinished.
That he made mistakes I can see, but even in his blunders he was
respectable.
"I cannot say as much for his friends Jefferson, Madison, and
Monroe, about whom I have been for years hard at work. In regard
to them I am incessantly forced to devise excuses and apologies
or to admit that no excuse will avail. I am at times almost sorry
that I ever undertook to write their history, for they appear like
mere grasshoppers kicking and gesticulating on the middle of the
Mississippi River. There is no possibility of reconciling their
theories with their acts, or their extraordinary foreign policy with
dignity. They were carried along on a stream which floated them,
after a fashion, without much regard to themselves.
"This I take to be the result that students of history generally
reach in regard to modern times. The element of individuality is
the free-will dogma of the science, if it is a science. My own
conclusion is that history is simply social development along the
lines of weakest resistance, and that in most cases the line of
weakest resistance is found as unconsciously by society as by water.
"I am very truly y'rs,
"HENRY ADAMS."