which gave so much umbrage, did not last two minutes.  In less than an hour after, Tilghman came to me in the General’s name, assuring me of his great confidence in my abilities, integrity, usefulness, etc, and of his desire, in a candid conversation, to heal a difference which could not have happened but in a moment of passion.  I requested Mr Tilghman to tell him—­1st.  That I had taken my resolution in a manner not to be revoked ...  Thus we stand ...  Perhaps you may think I was precipitate in rejecting the overture made by the General to an accomodation.  I assure you, my dear sir, it was not the effect of resentment; it was the deliberate result of maxims I had long formed for the government of my own conduct....  I believe you know the place I held in the General’s confidence and counsels, which will make more extraordinary to you to learn that for three years past I have felt no friendship for him and have professed none.  The truth is, our dispositions are the opposites of each other, and the pride of my temper would not suffer me to profess what I did not feel.  Indeed, when advances of this kind have been made to me on his part, they were received in a manner that showed at least that I had no desire to court them, and that I desired to stand rather upon a footing of military confidence than of private attachment.”

Had Washington been the man this letter described he would never have forgiven this treatment.  On the contrary, only two months later, when compelled to refuse for military reasons a favor Hamilton asked, he said that “my principal concern arises from an apprehension that you will impute my refusal to your request to other motives.”  On this refusal Hamilton enclosed his commission to Washington, but “Tilghman came to me in his name, pressed me to retain my commission, with an assurance that he would endeavor, by all means, to give me a command.”  Later Washington did more than Hamilton himself had asked, when he gave him the leading of the storming party at Yorktown, a post envied by every officer in the army.

Apparently this generosity lessened Hamilton’s resentment, for a correspondence on public affairs was maintained from this time on, though Madison stated long after “that Hamilton often spoke disparagingly of Washington’s talents, particularly after the Revolution and at the first part of the presidentcy,” and Benjamin Rush confirms this by a note to the effect that “Hamilton often spoke with contempt of General Washington.  He said that ... his heart was a stone.”  The rumor of the ill feeling was turned to advantage by Hamilton’s political opponents in 1787, and compelled the former to appeal to Washington to save him from the injury the story was doing.  In response Washington wrote a letter intended for public use, in which he said,—­