The Adamses felt that the country was slipping away from them and from people like themselves. That explains a lot of CFA Jr.'s life and writing. Same thing for his brother Henry.
Read CFA Jr.'s 1913 Founders' Day Address at the University of South Carolina.
In this all-important respect I do not hesitate to say we theorists and abstractionists of the North, throughout that long anti-slavery discussion which ended with the 1861 clash of arms, were thoroughly wrong. In utter disregard of fundamental, scientific facts, we theoretically believed that all men — no matter what might be the color of their skin, or the texture of their hair — were, if placed under exactly similar conditions, in essentials the same. In other words, we indulged in the curious and, as is now admitted, utterly erroneous theory that the African was, so to speak, an Anglo-Saxon, or, if you will, a Yankee " who had never had a chance," — a fellow-man who was guilty, as we chose to express it, of a skin not colored like our own. In other words, though carved in ebony, he also was in the image of God.
Adams still believed slavery was technically wrong, but his conviction that Whites and Blacks were not equal did much to explain his increasing softness towards the Confederacy.
As I said before, he doesn't go deeply into the historical and legal background, so it's not out of place to attribute his conversion and his very emotional essay to his views on race.
“As I said before, he doesn’t go deeply into the historical and legal background”
Well you can’t possibly be referring to “Shall Cromwell Have A Statue?” because that’s exactly what he does do. All he does is discuss the history of secession and it’s legal standing. That quote in your post is from a different essay a decade later.
But if you can produce even a single sentence from “Cromwell” discussing race and/or African Americans I’ll concede that race tinged his position in it.
Of course I’ve read that essay enough times to know that there is absolutely nothing in it like that, and that this is simply you reading an agenda into it. The Left loves to psychoanalyze their chosen targets to explain them away.
And you’re emulating that.