The career of Charles Francis Adams in England will be read for the
first time in the life which forms a part of this series. It has been
written by his son, of course with every possible advantage, and it is
one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the civil war. Of
him, too, it may be said that he seems to have been specially raised up
for precisely the duty which he had to fulfill. A blunder on the part
of our envoy to Great Britain would have possibly led to consequences
which one trembles to contemplate even in imagination. The services of
Franklin in France and the positive good of the French alliance in the
Revolution, may be compared with the services of Mr. Adams in England
and the negative advantage of non-interference by England on behalf of
the South in the civil war. Mr. Adams's coolness, his unerring judgment,
and the prestige of his name, in combination, made him the one man in
the United States who ought by fitness to have held his post. That he
did hold it was, perhaps, one of the two or three essential facts which
together made Northern success possible, by the elimination of unfair
and extrinsic causes of defeat.

One part only of the picture remains to be drawn, the House of
Representatives. It is by no means conducive to a cheerful patriotic
pride to contemplate the general throng of the politicians of the
country during the war. In plain truth, they did themselves little
credit. Amid the excitement of the times they utterly failed to
appreciate their true position, their personal and official limitations.
They could not let military matters alone; they did not often recognize
the boundaries of their own knowledge, and the proper scope of their
usefulness. They intermeddled ceaselessly, embroiled everything, and as
a consequence they obstructed success in the field almost as much as if
they had been another Confederate army. It has been with some difficulty
that any one from among them has been found whose life it was desirable