be useful to the cause." This statement is at variance with his prior letters soliciting the appointment.

The next day a reply was given by Hamilton over Washington's name:

"I am favored with your letter of yesterday, in which you propose (in order to lose no time) to begin with the instruction of the troops. You will observe, by the resolution of Congress relative to your appointment, that the Board of War is to furnish a set of instructions, according to which the troops are to be manœuvred. As you have made no mention of having received them, I suppose they are not come to you: when they do, I shall issue any orders which may be judged necessary to have them carried into immediate execution.

"Your appointment of inspector-general to the army, has not, I believe, given the least uneasiness to any officer in it. By consulting your own feelings upon the appointment of the Baron De Kalb, you may judge what must be the sensation of those brigadiers, who by your promotion are superseded. I am told they are determined to remonstrate against it. For my own part, I have nothing to do in the appointment of general officers, and shall always afford every countenance and due respect to those appointed by Congress, taking it for granted that, prior to any resolve of that nature, they take a dispassionate view of the merits of the officer to be promoted, and consider every consequence that can result from such a procedure; nor have I any other wish on that head, but that good, attentive officers may be chosen, and no extraordinary promotion take place, but when the merit of the officer is so generally acknowledged as to obviate every reasonable cause of dissatisfaction thereat."

Defeated in his object, Conway immediately replied in this offensive manner: "What you are pleased to call an

extraordinary promotion is a very plain one. There is nothing extraordinary in it, only that such a place was not thought of sooner. The general and universal merit which you wish every promoted officer might be endowed with, is a rare gift. We see but few men of merit so generally acknowledged. We know but the great Frederick in Europe, and the great Washington on this continent. I certainly never was so rash as to pretend to such a prodigious height. Neither do I pretend to any superiority in personal qualities over my brother brigadiers, for whom I have much regard. But you, sir, and the great Frederick know perfectly well, that this trade is not learnt in a few months." Vaunting his long experience, he closed, 'However, sir, by the complexion of your letter, and by the two receptions you have honored me with since my arrival, I perceive that I have not the happiness of being agreeable to your excellency, and that I can expect no support in fulfilling the laborious duty of an inspectorgeneral. I do not mean to give you or any officer in the army the least uneasiness. Therefore I am very ready to return to France, and to the army where I hope I shall meet with no frowns."

To prevent misrepresentation. it was thought expedient to communicate these letters to Congress. On the second of January, seventy-eight, a letter written by Hamilton in Washington's name was transmitted to them:

"I take the liberty of transmitting to you the enclosed copies of a letter from me to General Conway since his return from York to camp, and of two letters from him to me which you will be pleased to lay before Congress. I shall not in this letter animadvert upon them; but after making a single observation, submit the whole to Congress.

"If General Conway means by cool receptions, men

tioned in the last paragraph of his letter of the 31st ultimo, that I did not receive him in the language of a warm and cordial friend, I readily confess the charge. I did not, nor shall I ever, till I am capable of the arts of dissimulation. These I despise, and my feelings will not permit me to make professions of friendship to the man I deem my enemy, and whose system of conduct forbids it. At the same time, truth authorizes me to say, that he was received and treated with proper respect to his official character, and that he has had no cause to justify the assertion, that he could not expect any support for fulfilling the duties of his appointment."

Washington at this time received the letter of Gates demanding the source of his information as to the extract of Conway's letter. He replied on the fourth of January:

"Your letter of the 8th ultimo, came to my hands a few days ago, and to my great surprise informed me that a copy of it had been sent to Congress,-for what reason I find myself unable to account; but as some end, doubtless, was intended to be answered by it, I am laid under the disagreeable necessity of returning my answer through the same channel, lest any member of that honorable body should harbor an unfavorable suspicion of my having practised some indirect means to come at the contents of the confidential letters between you and General Conway.

I am to inform you, then, that Colonel Wilkinson, on his way to Congress, in the month of October last, fell in with Lord Stirling at Reading, and, not in confidence, that I ever understood, informed his aide-de-camp, McWilliams, that General Conway had written thus to you: 'Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad counsellors* would have ruined it.'

* "One of these, by the bye, he was," in a note in his hand.

Lord Stirling, from motives of friendship, transmitted the account, with this remark,-The enclosed was communicated by Colonel Wilkinson to Major McWilliams. Such duplicity of conduct I shall always think it my duty to defeat.'

"In consequence of this information, and without having any thing more in view than merely to show that gentleman that I was not unapprised of his intriguing disposition, I wrote him a letter in these words: 'Sir, a letter which I received last night, contained the following paragraph in a letter from General Conway to General Gates: he says, Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad counsellors would have ruined it. I am, &c.'

"Neither this letter, nor the information which occasioned it, was ever directly or indirectly communicated by me to a single officer in this army out of my own family, excepting the Marquis de la Fayette, who having been spoken to on the subject by General Conway, applied for, and saw, under injunctions of secrecy, the letter which contained Colonel Wilkinson's information. So desirous was I of concealing every matter that could in its consequences give the smallest interruption to the tranquillity of this army, or afford a gleam of hope to the enemy by dissensions therein.

"Thus, sir, with openness and candor, which I hope will ever characterize and mark my conduct, have I complied with your request. The only concern I feel upon the occasion, finding how matters stand, is, that in doing this, I have necessarily been obliged to name a gentleman whom I am persuaded, (although I never exchanged a word with him on the subject,) thought he was rather doing an act of justice, than committing an act of infidelity; and sure I am, that till Lord Stirling's letter came to my

hands, I never knew that General Conway (whom I viewed in the light of a stranger to you) was a correspondent of yours, much less did I expect that I was the subject of your confidential letters. Pardon me, then, for adding, that so far from conceiving that the safety of the States can be affected, or in the smallest degree injured by a discovery of this kind, or that I should be called on in such solemn terms to point out the author, that I considered the information as coming from yourself, and given with a friendly view to forewarn, and, consequently, forearm me against a secret enemy; or in other words, a dangerous incendiary, in which character, sooner or later, this country will know General Conway. But in this, as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken.”

This letter was enclosed to the President of Congress in a note written by Hamilton over Washington's signature, on the fourth of January.

66

Unwilling as I am to add any thing to the multiplicity of matter that necessarily engages the attention of Congress, I am compelled by unavoidable necessity to pass my answer to General Gates through their hands.

"What could induce General Gates to communicate a copy of his letters to me through that honorable body, is beyond the depth of my comprehension, upon any fair ground; but the fact being so, must stand as an apology for a liberty, which no other consideration would have induced me to take, to give you this trouble."

VOL. I.-25