John Quincy Adams Autograph Letter Signed on War of 1812: "Europe is passively submitting to be reshackled with the manacles of feudal and papal tyranny" ALS, three pages on two adjoining sheets, 8 x 9.75, April 14, 1816. Lengthy handwritten letter to Samuel Dexter, who had been Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of John Quincy Adams' father, John Adams. In this intimate and personal letter, Adams offers his view on the War of 1812, its effects on American and European character, opposition to the war efforts, his negotiations to end the war, and the future of Europe. During this period, Adams was serving as United States Minister to the United Kingdom, and had been a part of the American delegation that negotiated the end to the War of 1812. In part: "Nothing could be more gratifying to me than your obliging suffrage to the usefulness of my services since my present residence in Europe...My path of duty has been clear. Whatever success has attended it must be attributed, first to a wiser disposer of human affairs, than any of us; secondly, to the glorious energy of our countrymen, upon the ocean and upon the Land—An energy, which neither our foreign enemy, nor those 'Wise Men of the East,' who built their system of politics upon contempt for the American character, had taken into their account—thirdly to the wisdom, moderation, and pure patriotism of the President, Congress and Government of the United States, who commenced and prosecuted the War, and authorized, the conclusion of the Peace, upon principles founded in the honour, independence, and real welfare of the Union—fourthly to the able, and honourable colleagues with whom I have been associated. With all these aids, and with a line of conduct so plainly marked out, as the only one that could with propriety be pursed, whatever anxious moments have weighed upon me during the career through which I have passed, there has certainly been no extraordinary effort either of intellect or of virtue required of me, in any of the situations, wherein I have been placed. I have not been called upon to rise, at the dictate of my own conscience above the very atmosphere of party Politics. To act in opposition to all, or most of those with whom I had acted before—to bear the buffetings of the most inveterate of political enemies—'the foes who once were friends'—to lose the affection, and even the esteem of those whom I had most highly regarded and respected to be branded as an apostate from my Principles, for the very stubbornness of my adherence to them—to have my inflexible devotion to my duty construed into a base and sordid dereliction of it—to encounter the glance 'of hard unkindess' altered eye' and the more mortifying candour of those, whose compassion was willing to acquit my honesty, at the expense of my understanding, and scored to the account of folly, whatever they deducted from the charge of vice. Of all this I had some, and not a little experience for two years before I left the United States, and of this I think you have had no small share during the last three years—It is precisely the Period of my whole public life to which I look back with the greatest satisfaction, and in which to my own mind my services, were though less successful, yet more meritorious than any thing that I have done in Europe. I am aware that of the measures of that time, your opinion was and continues to be unfavourable, whether they were the best measures, might then, and may still be very fairly questioned; nor shall I deny that the policy and wisdom of the Declaration of War when it was made might at the time and may yet be far from unquestionable—and that different views of the common interest may lead upon the fairest grounds to opposite conclusions on this question. It was not the Constitutional opposition, it was the spirit of Faction, and the project of disunion, in the New-England leaders, that I held in abhorrence. It is this which you have so boldly, and in the end so successfully resisted, and by resisting it, with the weight of your character, and the power of your eloquence, have rendered service to the Union, and even to New England, which the whole lives of the whole Hartford Convention will never equal—I yet hope that at the moment I am writing, a Majority of the People of Massachusetts have testified their sense of this most important service, by placing you at the head of their Government—But should it be otherwise, should the Bulwark and the Press-gang combination, still be strong enough to carry a Candidate, whom I should be sorry to rank among them, and whom I believe they took up more for your sake than for his own; more to keep you out, than to get him in, you will enjoy a reward superior to anything that Parties, or Peoples can bestow—the imperishable reward of a self-approving mind. The Plan for separating New England from the rest of the North-American Union, has, I suppo