Viewed as a part of the diplomatic history of the United States, this war of 1798 is simply an incident. In the story of the Union it plays a greater part. Regardless of its disastrous results to the Federalists, it undoubtedly first rallied the people to the standard of a union for the common defence against a foreign foe. The old Revolutionary spirit had been revived. A national respect had been created in the eyes of its constituents. This was essential to a proper respect in the eyes of other nations. This national spirit, if the Administration had remained in the hands of the Federalists, might have grown too rapidly for the maintenance of a proper equilibrium. Hamilton, unhampered by an Adams, would have made the United States a party to European alliances, dangerous to American originality and American neutrality. Self-government would have assumed some form of European imitation. Drawn into the Napoleonic wars as allies of Britain, nothing but a miracle could have saved them from the legitimacy-restoring Congress of Vienna. What changes in American history might have followed! The desire of Britain for the Louisiana country, the claim of Spain to the Mississippi below the Ohio, silenced but not abandoned after 1783, the necessity for neutrality as a basis for the Monroe Doctrine, and the development of America free from the burden of a war-basis defence, must be considered in this connection. So many are the conditions and menaces that speculation pauses at predicting the results if the great law of reaction had not manifested itself at this juncture. The decision of John Adams to renew negotiations with France thus became a turning-point in history, because it precipitated the threatened schism among the Federalists, led to the downfall of the party, and turned the National Government from centralisation toward decentralisation. Although Adams recognised all this, he nevertheless defended his decision as the most disinterested and meritorious action in his life. Years after, he said that he desired no other inscription on his gravestone than, "Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France, in 1800." At the time he showed no spirit of yielding to his advisers, who declared his action "the great shade on the presidential escutcheon." They said they had been delivered to the enemy in the house of their friend. Hamilton confessed that the news of the mission would astonish him if anything from that quarter could astonish. Having complete mastery over the President's Cabinet and with a large following in Congress, Hamilton had become almost a dictator in the party during the war craze and the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition laws. With the talent of a born leader, he assumed charge of the War Department during the two years that he was a major-general. Adams resented every assumption and attempt at dictation.