Condition: Good: Good condition for a used book! Some wear. American Statesmen Series -Gilt-stamped dark olive green cloth; gilded top page edges and gilded spine lettering. Engraved frontispiece behind tissue guard, Corners bumped and show wear. See images for the condition of this book.
Blurb: Seeven years have now elapsed since Mr. Adams returned from Europe, after the Geneva arbitration of 1872, in which he ren dered his last considerable public service, asnd It lacks a few days only of thirteen years sine his death. No use whatever has hitherto been made of his papers. Though neither in bulk nor in interest equal to the accumulations left by John Adams or by John Quincy Adams, these have none the less a distinct value, shedding, as they do, much contemporaneous light on a period and a struggle which, not improbably, will hereafter be accounted the most momentous in American history. Mr. Adams was not an active letter writer, or systematic collector of material; but he preserved all his correspondence, together with copies of his own letters, and for over fifty years, from the time he entered Harvard, he kept a diary, in which there Is scarcely a break. The time has now come when this material may fairly be used. The following sketch is, therefore, in part a preliminary study, and in vi PREFACE part the condensed abstract of a larger and more detailed work already far advanced In preparation. If narrated by another than himself, no matter how skillfully, the career of Mr. Adams would offer not much of interest One brief volume would amply suffice to do full justice to it. It so chanced, however, that lie lias told his own story in his own way; the story of a life some of which was passed in a prominent position at a great centre and during a memorable period. This story he has told, too, very simply and directly; but, necessarily, in great detail. When a public character thus gives an account of himself, and what lie did and saw, and how he felt, not autobiographically, but jotting it all down from day to day as events developed, he must be given space. If space is not allowed, the biographer has to substitute himself for the man. In the case of Mr. Adams, however, no matter what latitude, within any reasonable limits, might in the larger proposed publication be allowed, only a small portion of the material he left could be used. The present sketch is chiefly biographical. In it only now and then does Mr. Adams speak for himself. The work hereafter forthcoming will be made up in a much greater degree of extracts from his diary, letters, and papers.