* General Hamilton, in a letter to Governor Clinton, written on the 13th of February, 1778, said, "America once had a representation that would do honor to any age or nation. The present falling off is very alarming and dangerous. What is the cause? and how is it to be remedied? are questions that the welfare of these states requires should be well attended to. The great men who composed our first council--are they dead, have they deserted the cause, or what has become of them? Very few are dead, and still fewer have deserted the cause; they are all, except the few who still remain in Congress, either in the field, or in the civil offices of their respective states; far the greater part are engaged in the latter. The only remedy, then, is to take them out of these employments, and return them to the place where their presence is infinitely more important."
** Mrs. Mercy Warren, who was the warm personal friend of Samuel Adams, apologizes for his being found in bad company in this affair by saying that, "Zealous and ardent in his defense of his injured country, he was startled at every thing that seemed to retard the operations of the war, or impede the success of the Revolution; a revolution for which posterity is as much indebted to the talent and exertions of Mr. Adams as to those of any one in the United States." History of the Revolution, i., 39. Mrs. Warren further says that "Adams never harbored a feeling of disaffection toward the person of Washington; on the contrary, he esteemed and respected his character, and loved him as a man."
[[[Anonymous Letters.--Conway's Letter to Gates.--Quarrel between Gates and Wilkinson.]]]
{ 338}irritated, and talented Conway was ready to foster discontent in the public mind; and he was doubtless the willing cat's-paw of Gates or his friends in making covert attacks upon the military character of the commander-in-chief, calculated to injure his reputation as a general and patriot. So prominently does Conway appear in the whole transaction, that it is known in history as _Conway's cabal_.
The first important movement in this conspiracy was the sending of anonymous letters to the president of Congress, and to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia. These letters were filled with complaints, insinuations, and exaggerated statements, ascribing the misfortunes of the army to the incapacity or ill-timed policy of the commander-in-chief. Similar letters were sent to different members of Congress, and, it is believed, to the presiding officers of some of the state Legislatures. Washington was early apprised of these secret machinations, but a patriotic jealousy of the public good made him suffer in silence. "My enemies," he said, in a letter to the president of Congress, when the matter became the subject of correspondence, "take an ungenerous advantage of me. They know the delicacy of my situation, and that motives of policy deprive me of the defense I might otherwise make against their insidious attacks. They know I can not combat their insinuations, however injurious, without disclosing secrets which it is of the utmost moment to conceal."