age the country round, seize supplies wherever he could find them, and pay for them in money or in certificates redeemable by Congress. He exercised these powers with great reluctance; rurally inclined himself, he had a strong sympathy with the cultivators of the soil, and ever regarded the yeomanry with a paternal eye. He was apprehensive, moreover, of irritating the jealousy of military sway, prevalent throughout the country, and of corrupting the morals of the army. "Such procedures," writes he to the President of Congress, "may give a momentary relief, but if repeated will prove of the most pernicious consequences. Besides spreading disaffection, jealousy and fear among the people, they never fail, even in the most veteran troops, under the most rigid and exact discipline, to raise in the soldiery a disposition to licentiousness, to plunder and robbery, difficult to suppress afterward, and which has proved not only ruinous to the inhabitants, but, in many instances, to armies themselves. I regret the occasion that compelled us to the measure the other day, and shall consider it the greatest of our misfortunes if we should be under the necessity of practicing it again.

How truly in all these trying scenes of his military career does the patriot rise above the soldier!

With these noble and high-spirited appeals to Congress we close Washington's operations for 1777; one of the most arduous and eventful years of his military life, and one the most trying to his character and fortunes. He began it with an empty army chest and a force dwindled down to four thousand half-disciplined men. Throughout the year he had had to contend not merely with the enemy but with the parsimony and meddlesome interference of Congress. In his most critical times that body had left him without

funds and without re-enforcements. It had made promotions contrary to his advice and contrary to military usage; thereby wronging and disgusting some of his bravest officers. It had changed the commissariat in the very midst of a campaign, and thereby thrown the whole service into confusion.

Among so many cross-purposes and discouragements it was a difficult task for Washington to "keep the life and soul of the army together." Yet he had done so. Marvelous indeed was the manner in which he had soothed the discontents of his aggrieved officers and reconciled them to an ill-requitting service; and still more marvelous the manner in which he had breathed his own spirit of patience and perseverance in his yeoman soldiery during their sultry marchings and countermarchings through the Jerseys, under all kinds of privations, with no visible object of pursuit to stimulate their ardor, hunting, as it were, the rumored apparitions of an unseen fleet.

All this time, too, while endeavoring to ascertain and counteract the operations of Lord Howe upon the ocean and his brother upon the land, he was directing and aiding military measures against Burgoyne in the North. Three games were in a manner going on under his supervision. The operations of the commander-in-chief are not always the most obvious to the public eye; victories may be planned in his tent of which subordinate generals get the credit; and most of the moves which ended in giving a triumphant check to Burgoyne may be traced to Washington's shifting camp in the Jerseys.

It has been an irksome task in some of the preceding chapters to notice the under-current of intrigue and management by which some part of this year's campaign was disgraced; yet even-handed justice requires that such machina

tions should be exposed. We have shown how successful they were in displacing the noble-hearted Schuyler from the head of the Northern department; the same machinations were now at work to undermine the commander-in-chief, and elevate the putative hero of Saratoga on his ruins. He was painfully aware of them; yet in no part of the war did he more thoroughly evince that magnanimity which was his grand characteristic than in the last scenes of this campaign, where he rose above the tauntings of the press, the sneerings of the cabal, the murmurs of the public, the suggestions of some of his friends, and the throbbing impulses of his own courageous heart, and adhered to that Fabian policy which he considered essential to the safety of the cause. To dare is often the impulse of selfish ambition or harebrained valor; to forbear is at times the proof of real greatness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Gates on the Ascendant-The Conway Letter-Suspicions-Consequent Correspondence between Gates and Washington-Warning Letter from Dr. Craik-Anonymous Letters-Projected Expedition to Canada-Lafayette, Gates, and the Board of War

WHILE censure and detraction had dogged Washington throughout his harassing campaign and followed him to his forlorn encampment at Valley Forge, Gates was the con stant theme of popular eulogium, and was held up by the cabal as the only one capable of retrieving the desperate fortunes of the South. Letters from his friends in Congress urged him to hasten on, take his seat at the head of the

Board of War, assume the management of military affairs, and save the country!

Gates was not a strong-minded man. Is it a wonder, then, that his brain should be bewildered by the fumes of incense offered up on every side? In the midst of his tri umph, however, while feasting on the sweets of adulation, came the withering handwriting on the wall! It is an epistle from his friend Mifflin. "My dear general," writes he, "an extract from Conway's letter to you has been procured and sent to headquarters. The extract was a collection of just sentiments, yet such as should not have been intrusted to any of your family. General Washington inclosed it to Conway without remarks. My dear general, take care of your sincerity and frank disposition; they cannot injure yourself, but may injure some of your best friends. Affectionately yours.'

Nothing could surpass the trouble and confusion of mind of Gates on the perusal of this letter. Part of his correspondence with Conway had been sent to headquarters. But what part? What was the purport and extent of the alleged extracts? How had they been obtained? Who had sent them? Mifflin's letter specified nothing; and this silence as to particulars left an unbounded field for tormenting conjecture. In fact, Mifflin knew nothing in particular when he wrote, nor did any of the cabal. The laconic nature of Washington's note to Conway had thrown them all in confusion. None knew the extent of the correspondence discovered, nor how far they might be individually compromised.

Gates, in his perplexity, suspected that his portfolio had been stealthily opened and his letters copied. But which of them?-and by whom? He wrote to Conway and Mifflin, anxiously inquiring what part of their correspondence had

been thus surreptitiously obtained, and "who was the villain that had played him this treacherous trick. There is scarcely a man living," says he, "who takes a greater care of his letters than I do. I never fail to lock them up and keep the key in my pocket. No punishment is too severe for the wretch who betrayed me; and I doubt not your friendship for me, as well as your zeal for our safety, will bring the name of this miscreant to light.

Gates made rigid inquiries among the gentlemen of his staff; all disavowed any knowledge of the matter. In the confusion and perturbation of his mind his suspicions glanced, or were turned, upon Colonel Hamilton as the channel of communication, he having had free access to headquarters during his late mission from the commander-in-chief. In this state of mental trepidation Gates wrote, on the 8th of December, the following letter to Washington:

"SIR-I shall not attempt to describe what, as a private gentleman, I cannot help feeling, on representing to my mind the disagreeable situation in which confidential letters, when exposed to public inspection, may place an unsuspecting correspondent; but, as a public officer, I conjure your Excellency to give me all the assistance you can in tracing the author of the infidelity which put extracts from General Conway's letters to me into your hands. Those letters have been stealingly copied, but which of them, when, and by whom, is to me as yet an unfathomable secret. . . It is, I believe, in your Excellency's power to do me and the United States a very important service, by detecting a wretch who may betray me, and capitally injure the very operations under your immediate directions. The crime being

* Gates's Papers, N. Y. Hist. Lib.