Note 7 — INDEX

Footnote 7: Mr. Mills, in writing of Mr. Adams's inauguration, expressed well what many felt. "This same President of ours is a man that I can never court nor be on very familiar terms with. There is a cold, repulsive atmosphere about him that is too chilling for my respiration, and I shall certainly keep at a distance from its influence. I wish him God-speed in his Administration, and am heartily disposed to lend him my feeble aid whenever he may need it in a correct course; but he cannot expect me to become his warm and devoted partisan." A like sentiment was expressed also much more vigorously by Ezekiel Webster to Daniel Webster, in a letter of February 15, 1829. The writer there attributes the defeat of Mr. Adams to personal dislike to him. People, he said, "always supported his cause from a cold sense of duty," and "we soon satisfy ourselves that we have discharged our duty to the cause of any man when we do not entertain for him one personal kind feeling, nor cannot unless we disembowel ourselves like a trussed turkey of all that is human nature within us." With a candidate "of popular character, like Mr. Clay," the result would have been different. "The measures of his [Adams's] Administration were just and wise and every honest man should have supported them, but many honest men did not for the reason I have mentioned."—Webster's Private Correspondence, vol. i. p. 469.(back)