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Letters received at this juncture from Lafayette gave Washington tidings concerning the expedition against Canada, set on foot without consulting him. General Conway had arrived at Albany three days before the marquis, and his first word when they met was that the expedition was quite impossible. Generals Schuyler, Lincoln and Arnold had written to Conway to that effect. The marquis at first was inclined to hope the contrary, but his hope was soon demolished. Instead of the two thousand five hundred men that had been promised him, not twelve hundred in all were

espied a mulatto fellow, whom I thought I recollected, and who confirmed my conjectures by gazing very earnestly at me. I asked him if he knew me. At first he was unwilling to own it; but when he was about to be carried off, thinking, I suppose, that I might perhaps be of some service to him, he came and told me that he was Billy, and the old servant of General Washington. He had been left there on account of an indisposition which prevented his attending his master. I asked him a great many questions, as you may suppose; but found very little satisfaction in his answers. At last, however, he told me that he had a small portmanteau of his master's, of which, when he found that he must be put into confinement, he entreated my care. It contained only a few stockings and shirts; and I could see nothing worth my care, except an almanac, in which he had kept a sort of a journal or diary of his proceedings since his first coming to New York; there were also two letters from his lady, one from Mr. Custis, and some pretty long ones from a Mr. Lund Washington. And in the same bundle with them the first draughts or foul copies of answers to them. I read these with avidity; and being highly entertained with them, have shown them to several of my friends, who all agree with me that he is a very different character from what they had supposed him.

In commenting on the above, Washington observed that his mulatto man Billy had never been one moment in the power of the enemy, and that no part of his baggage nor any of his attendants were captured during the whole course of the war.-Letter to Timothy Pickering, Sparks, ix. 149.

to be found fit for duty, and most part of these were "naked even for a summer's campaign"; all shrank from a winter incursion into so cold a country. As to General Stark and his legion of Green Mountain Boys, who, according to the gasconade of Gates, might have burned the fleet before Lafayette's arrival, the marquis received at Albany a letter from the veteran, "who wishes to know," says he, "what number of men, for what time, and for what rendezvous, I desire him to raise.”

Another officer, who was to have enlisted men, would have done so, had he received money. "One asks what encouragement his people will have; the other has no clothes; not one of them has received a dollar of what was due to them. I have applied to everybody, I have begged at every door I could these two days, and I see that I could do something were the expedition to be begun in five weeks. But you know we have not an hour to lose; and, indeed, it is now rather too late had we everything in readiness."

The poor marquis was in despair-but what most distressed him was the dread of ridicule. He had written to his friends that he had the command of the expedition; it would be known throughout Europe. "I am afraid," says he, "that it will reflect on my reputation, and I shall be laughed at. My fears upon that subject are so strong that I would choose to become again only a volunteer, unless Congress offers the means of mending this ugly business by some glorious operation."

A subsequent letter is in the same vein. The poor marquis, in his perplexity, lays his whole heart open to Washington with childlike simplicity. "I have written lately to you my distressing, ridiculous, foolish, and indeed nameless situation. I am sent, with a great noise, at the head of an

army for doing great things; the whole continent, France and Europe herself, and, what is worse, the British army, are in great expectations. How far they will be deceived, how far we shall be ridiculed, you may judge by the candid account you have got of the state of our affairs. I confess, my dear general, that I find myself of very quick feelings whenever my reputation and glory are concerned in anything. It is very hard that such a part of my happiness, without which I cannot live, should depend upon schemes which I never knew of but when there was no time to put them into execution. I assure you, my most dear and respected friend, that I am more unhappy than I ever was. I should be very happy if you were here, to give me some advice; but I have nobody to consult with."

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Washington, with his considerate, paternal counsels, hastened to calm the perturbation of his youthful friend and dispel those fears respecting his reputation, excited only, as he observed, "by an uncommon degree of sensibility." "It will be no disadvantage to you to have it known in Europe, writes he, "that you have received so manifest a proof of the good opinion and confidence of Congress as an important detached command. . . . However sensibly your ardor for glory may make you feel this disappointment, you may be assured that your character stands as fair as ever it did, and that no new enterprise is necessary to wipe off this imaginary stain."

The project of an irruption into Canada was at length formally suspended by a resolve of Congress; and Washington was directed to recall the marquis and the Baron de Kalb, the presence of the latter being deemed absolutely necessary to the army at Valley Forge. Lafayette at the same time received assurance of the high sense entertained by VOL. XIV.—*** 6

Congress of his prudence, activity and zeal, and that nothing was wanting on his part to give the expedition the utmost possible effect.

Gladly the young marquis hastened back to Valley Forge, to enjoy the companionship and find himself once more under the paternal eye of Washington; leaving Conway for the time in command at Albany, "where there would be nothing, perhaps, to be attended to but some disputes of Indians and tories."

Washington, in a letter to General Armstrong, writes: "I shall say no more of the Canada expedition than that it is at an end. I never was made acquainted with a single circumstance relating to it."*

CHAPTER THIRTY

More Trouble about the Conway Letter-Correspondence between Lord Stirling and Wilkinson-Wilkinson's Honor woundedHis Passage at Arms with General Gates-His Seat at the Board of War uncomfortable-Determines that Lord Stirling shall bleed-His Wounded Honor healed-His Interviews with Washington-Sees the Correspondence of Gates-Denounces Gates and gives up the Secretaryship—Is thrown out of Employ-Closing Remarks on the Conway Cabal

THE Conway letter was destined to be a further source of trouble to the cabal. Lord Stirling, in whose presence, at Reading, Wilkinson had cited the letter, and who had sent information of it to Washington, was now told that Wilkinson, on being questioned by General Conway, had declared that no such words as those reported, nor any to the same effect, were in the letter.

* Sparks' Writings of Washington, vol. v., p. 300.

His lordship immediately wrote to Wilkinson, reminding him of the conversation at Reading, and telling him of what he had recently heard.

"I well know," writes his lordship, "that it is impossible you could have made any such declaration; but it will give great satisfaction to many of your friends to know whether Conway made such inquiry, and what was your answer; they would also be glad to know what were the words of the letter, and I should be very much obliged to you for a copy of it."

Wilkinson found that his tongue had again brought him into difficulty; but he trusted to his rhetoric, rather than his logic, to get him out of it. He wrote in reply that he perfectly remembered spending a social day with his lordship at Reading, in which the conversation became general, unreserved and copious; though the tenor of his lordship's discourse, and the nature of their situation, made it confidential. "I cannot, therefore," adds he logically, "recapitulate particulars, or charge my memory with the circumstances you mention; but, my lord, I disdain low craft, subtlety and evasion, and will acknowledge it is possible, in the warmth of social intercourse, when the mind is relaxed and the heart is unguarded, that observations may have elapsed which have not since occurred to me. On my late arrival in camp, Brigadier-general Conway informed me that he had been charged, by General Washington, with writing a letter to Major-general Gates which reflected on the general and the army. The particulars of this charge, which Brigadier-general Conway then repeated, I cannot now recollect. I had read the letter alluded to; I did not consider the information conveyed in his Excellency's letter, as expressed by Brigadier-general Conway, to be literal, and well remember reply

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