Moreover, of all the statesmen
whom the nation produced, he had had the largest opportunity to make
a comparative study of government. As an eleven-year-old boy, he
went with his father to Paris in 1778, and from then until 1817,
when he became Monroe's secretary of state, nearly half his time was
spent at European courts. He served in France, Holland, Sweden,
Russia, Prussia, and England, and had been senator of the United
States from Massachusetts.
Thus Adams entered on the middle period of his career, a man of
learning and broad culture, rich in experience of national affairs,
familiar with the centers of Old-World civilization and with methods
of European administration. He had touched life too broadly, in too
many countries, to be provincial in his policy. In the minds of a
large and influential body of his fellow-citizens, the Federalists,
he was an apostate, for in the days of the embargo he had warned
Jefferson of the temper of his section, had resigned, and had been
read out of the party.
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