nominally presided in the Infant Asylum on Fourteenth Street,
there had risen a Department of Foreign Relations over which
Senator Sumner ruled with a high hand at the Capitol; and,
finally, one clearly made out a third Foreign Office in the War
Department, with President Grant himself for chief, pressing a
policy of extension in the West Indies which no Northeastern man
ever approved. For his life, Adams could not learn where to place
himself among all these forces. Officially he would have followed
the responsible Secretary of State, but he could not find the
Secretary. Fish seemed to be friendly towards Sumner, and docile
towards Grant, but he asserted as yet no policy of his own. As
for Grant's policy, Adams never had a chance to know fully what
it was, but, as far as he did know, he was ready to give it
ardent support. The difficulty came only when he heard Sumner's
views, which, as he had reason to know, were always commands, to
be disregarded only by traitors.

Little by little, Sumner unfolded his foreign policy, and Adams
gasped with fresh astonishment at every new article of the creed.
To his profound regret he heard Sumner begin by imposing his veto
on all extension within the tropics; which cost the island of St.
Thomas to the United States, besides the Bay of Samana as an
alternative, and ruined Grant's policy. Then he listened with
incredulous stupor while Sumner unfolded his plan for
concentrating and pressing every possible American claim against
England, with a view of compelling the cession of Canada to the
United States.

Adams did not then know -- in fact, he never knew, or could
find any one to tell him -- what was going on behind the doors of