The Civil War: Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams Jr.

December 18, 1860

Washington, D.C., as ever, was the site of negotiations that would change the direction of the country. A month after Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the election of 1860, the national dialogue was rife with talk of secession. However, there had not yet been any state that had made good on its threats and seceded. There was even talk of ratifying an amendment to the Constitution that would protect the institution of slavery—but it would not amount to anything more than talk.

There, witnessing the action in Washington, was Henry Adams. He wrote a letter to his older brother, Charles Francis Adams Jr., who was then serving his first time in the House of Representatives as a Republican. These two Adamses were the great-grandsons of John Adams and the grandsons of John Quincy Adams, and although Henry would not follow his family and formally enter the political arena, he was an astute observer of the goings-on in Washington in December 1860 and would later become a prolific writer.

He wrote of the scene that month: “[P]olitical matters are slow. There are no fights. Everyone is good-natured except those who are so frightened that they can’t breathe in more than a whisper, still keep their temper.” “The President [James Buchanan] divides his time between crying and praying; the Cabinet has resigned or else is occupied in committing treason,” he continued. “Some of them have done both.”

“The people of Washington are firmly convinced that there is to be an attack on Washington by the southerners or else a slave insurrection, and in either case or in any contingency they feel sure of being ruined and murdered,” he wrote of the impending belief that, with Washington so close to the states then preparing to secede, it would be the primary target of an attack.

Henry took heart in the moment though: “It is merely the last convulsion of the slave-power, and only makes me glad that the beast is so near his end. I have no fear for the result at all. It must come out right. But what a piece of meanness and rascality, of braggadocio and nonsense the whole affair is. What insolence in the South and what cowardice and vileness at the North.”

Regardless, with tension building and rhetoric escalating as Lincoln’s inauguration approached, Henry saw that the chance was diminishing for either side to achieve anything resembling a victory. Solemnly—but accurately describing the stakes of the last days of antebellum America—, he closed his letter to his brother: “The heroism of this struggle is over.”