ette, who was aware of their intrigues, was so disgusted by the want of deference and respect to the commander-inchief evinced in the whole proceeding, that he would at once have declined the appointment, had not Washington himself advised him strongly to accept it.

He accordingly proceeded to Yorktown, where Gates already had his little court of schemers and hangers-on. Lafayette found him at table, presiding with great hilarity, for he was social in his habits and in the flush of recent success. The young marquis had a cordial welcome to his board, which in his buoyant conviviality contrasted with the sober decencies of that of the thoughtful commander-in-chief in his dreary encampment at Valley Forge. Gates, in his excitement, was profuse of promises. Everything was to be made smooth and easy for Lafayette. He was to have at least two thousand five hundred fighting men under him. Stark, the veteran Stark, was ready to co-operate with a body of Green Mountain boys. "Indeed," cries Gates, chuckling, "General Stark will have burned the fleet before your arrival!”

It was near the end of the repast. The wine had circulated freely and toasts had been given according to the custom of the day. The marquis thought it time to show his flag. One toast, he observed, had been omitted, which he would now propose. Glasses were accordingly filled, and he gave, "The commander-in-chief of the American armies." The toast was received without cheering.

Lafayette was faithful to the flag he had unfurled. In accepting the command, he considered himself detached from the main army and under the immediate orders of the commander-in-chief. He had a favorable opinion of the military talents of Conway, but he was aware of the game he was

playing; he made a point, therefore, of having the Baron de Kalb appointed to the expedition; whose commission, being of older date than that of Conway, would give him the precedence of that officer, and make him second in command. This was reluctantly ceded by the cabal, who found themselves baffled by the loyalty in friendship of the youthful soldier.

Lafayette set out for Albany without any very sanguine expectations. Writing to Washington from Flemington, amid the difficulties of winter travel, he says: "I go on very slowly; sometimes drenched by rain, sometimes covered with snow, and not entertaining many handsome thoughts about the projected incursion into Canada. Lake Champlain is too cold for producing the least bit of laurel; and, if I am not starved, I shall be as proud as if I had gained three battles."*

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Gates undertakes to explain the Conway Correspondence-Washington's Searching Analysis of the Explanation-Close of the Correspondence Spurious Letters published-Lafayette and the Canada Expedition-His Perplexities-Counsels of Washington

WASHINGTON's letter of the 4th of January, on the subject of the Conway correspondence, had not reached General Gates until the 22d of January, after his arrival at Yorktown. No sooner did Gates learn, from its context, that all Washington's knowledge of that correspondence was confined to a single paragraph of a letter, and that merely as

* Sparks' Cor. Am. Rev., vol. ii., p. 74.

quoted in conversation by Wilkinson, than the whole matter appeared easily to be explained or shuffled off. He accordingly took pen in hand, and addressed Washington as follows, on the 23d of January: "The letter which I had the honor to receive yesterday from your Excellency has relieved me from unspeakable uneasiness. I now anticipate the pleasure it will give you when you discover that what has been conveyed to you for an extract of General Conway's letter to me was not an information which friendly motives induced a man of honor to give, that injured virtue might be forearmed against secret enemies. The paragraph which your Excellency has condescended to transcribe is spurious. It was certainly fabricated to answer the most selfish and wicked purposes.

He then goes on to declare that the genuine letter of Conway was perfectly harmless, containing judicious remarks upon the want of discipline in the army, but making no mention of weak generals or bad counselors. "Particular actions rather than persons were blamed, but with impartiality, and I am convinced he did not aim at lessening, in my opinion, the merit of any person. His letter was perfectly harmless; however, now that various reports have been circulated concerning its contents, they ought to be submitted to the solemn inspection of those who stand most high in the public esteem.

'Anxiety and jealousy would arise in the breast of very respectable officers, who, sensible of faults which experience, and that alone, may have led them into, would be unnecessarily disgusted, if they perceived a probability of such errors being recorded.

"Honor forbids it, and patriotism demands that I should return the letter into the hands of the writer. I will do it;

but, at the same time, I declare that the paragraph conveyed to your Excellency as a genuine part of it was, in words as well as in substance, a wicked forgery.

'About the beginning of December, I was informed that letter had occasioned an explanation between your Excellency and that gentleman. Not knowing whether the whole letter or a part of it had been stealingly copied, but fearing malice had altered its original texture, I own, sir, that a dread of the mischiefs which might attend the forgery I suspected would be made, put me some time in a most painful situation. When I communicated to the officers in my family the intelligence which I had received, they all entreated me to rescue their characters from the suspicions they justly conceived themselves liable to, until the guilty person should be known. To facilitate the discovery, I

wrote to your Excellency; but, unable to learn whether General Conway's letter had been transmitted to you by a member of Congress or a gentleman in the army, I was afraid much time would be lost in the course of the inquiry, and that the States might receive some capital injury from the infidelity of the person who I thought had stolen a copy of the obnoxious letter. Was it not probable that the secrets of the army might be obtained and betrayed through the same means to the enemy? For this reason, sir, not doubting that Congress would most cheerfully concur with you in tracing out the criminal, I wrote to the president, and inclosed to him a copy of my letter to your Excellency.

"About the time I was forwarding those letters, Brig. adier-general Wilkinson returned to Albany. I informed him of the treachery which had been committed, but I concealed from him the measures I was pursuing to unmask the author. Wilkinson answered he was assured it never

would come to light, and endeavored to fix my suspicions on Lieutenant-colonel Troup, who, he said, might have incautiously conversed on the substance of General Conway's letter with Colonel Hamilton, whom you had sent not long before to Albany. I did not listen to this insinuation against your aid-de-camp and mine.”

In the original draft of this letter, which we have seen among the papers of General Gates, he adds, as a reason for not listening to the insinuation, that he considered it even as ungenerous. "But," pursues he, "the light your Excellency has just assisted me with, exhibiting the many qualifications which are necessarily blended together in the head and heart of General Wilkinson, I would not omit this fact; it will enable your Excellency to judge whether or not he would scruple to make such a forgery as that which he now stands charged with, and ought to be exemplarily punished.' This, with considerable more to the same purport, intended to make Wilkinson the scapegoat, stands canceled in the draft, and was omitted in the letter sent to Washington; but by some means, fair or foul, it came to the knowledge of Wilkinson, who has published it at length in his Memoirs, and who, it will be found, resented the imputation thus conveyed.

General Conway, also, in a letter to Washington (dated January 27), informs him that the letter had been returned to him by Gates, and that he found with great satisfaction that "the paragraph so much spoken of did not exist in the said letter, nor anything like it." He had intended, he adds, to publish the letter, but had been dissuaded by President Laurens and two or three members of Congress, to whom he

* At that time an aid-de-camp of Gates.