Adams, however, as chairman of the committee was of the opinion that the pictures should be done by foreign artists, there being no Americans available, he thought, of sufficiently high standing to execute the work with fitting distinction.

This opinion, publicly expressed, infuriated James Fenimore Cooper, Morse's friend, and Cooper wrote an attack on Adams in the New York Evening Post, but without signing it.

Supposing Morse to be the author of this article, Adams summarily struck his name from the list of artists who were to be employed.
How very poor Morse was about this time is indicated by a story afterwards told by General Strother of Virginia, who was one of his pupils: I engaged to become Morse's pupil and subsequently went to New York and found him in a room in University Place.

He had three or four other pupils and I soon found that our professor had very little patronage.
I paid my fifty dollars for one-quarter's instruction.

Morse was a faithful teacher and took as much interest in our progress as--more indeed than--we did ourselves.