Note 176 — Chapter I

From the first, devotion to the French cause had not been quite unanimous. Here and there, scattered through the country, a man might be found who from the beginning of the Revolution had cherished misgivings as to the essential soundness of the principles of the French in the conflict they were waging with despotism. Occasionally a man had ventured to speak out, voicing apprehension and doubt, although usually preferring to adopt the device of pseudonymity. Conspicuous in this by no means large group were the elder and the younger Adams, the former declaring himself in his “Discourses on Davila” (Cf. The Life and Works of John Adams, vol. vi, pp. 223–403), and the latter in the “Publicola” letters, written in 1791, in response to Paine’s treatise on “The Rights of Man”. Morse, John Quincy Adams, p. 18. But events, much more than political treatises, were to break the spell which the Revolution in its earlier stages cast over the people of America.