Fortunately, Conway did not limit his “insulting letters” to the commander-in-chief alone, and presently he sent one to Congress threatening to resign, which so angered that body that they took him at his word.  Moreover, his open abuse of Washington led an old-time friend of the latter to challenge him, and to lodge a ball, with almost poetic justice, in Conway’s mouth.  Thinking himself on the point of death, he wrote a farewell line to Washington “expressing my sincere grief for having done, written or said anything disagreeable to your Excellency....  You are in my eyes a great and good man.”  And with this recantation he disappeared from the army.  A third officer in this “cabal” was Thomas Mifflin.  He was the first man appointed on Washington’s staff at the beginning of the war, but did not long remain in that position, being promoted by Washington to be quartermaster-general.  In this position the rumor reached the General that Mifflin was “concerned in trade,” and Washington took “occasion to hint” the suspicion to him, only to get a denial from the officer.  Whether this inquiry was a cause for ill-feeling or not, Mifflin was one of the most outspoken against the commander-in-chief as his opponents gathered force, and Washington informed Henry that he “bore the second part in the cabal.”  Mifflin resigned from the army and took a position on the board of war, but when the influence of that body broke down with the collapse of the Cabal, he applied for a reappointment,—­a course described by Washington in plain English as follows: 

“I was not a little surprised to find a certain gentleman, who, some time ago (when a cloud of darkness hung heavy over us, and our affairs looked gloomy,) was desirous of resigning, now stepping forward in the line of the army.  But if he can reconcile such conduct to his own, feelings, as an officer and a man of honor, and Congress hath no objections to his leaving his seat in another department, I have nothing personally to oppose it.  Yet I must think, that gentleman’s stepping in and out, as the sun happens to beam forth or obscure, is not quite the thing, nor quite just, with respect to those officers, who take ye bitter with the sweet.”

Not long after Greene wrote that “I learn that General Mifflin has publicly declared that he looked upon his Excellency as the best friend he ever had in his life, so that is a plain sign that the Junto has given up all ideas of supplanting our excellent general from a confidence of the impracticability of such an attempt.”

A very minor but most malignant enemy was Dr. Benjamin Rush.  In 1774 Washington dined with him in Philadelphia, which implied friendship.  Very early in the war, however, an attempt was made to remove the director-general of hospitals, in which, so John Armstrong claimed, “Morgan was the ostensible—­Rush the real prosecutor of Shippen—­the former acting from revenge,... the latter from a desire to obtain the directorship.  In approving the sentence of the court, Washington stigmatized the prosecution as one originating in bad motives, which made Rush his enemy and defamer as long as he lived.”  Certain it is he wrote savage letters of criticism about his commander-in-chief of which the following extract is a sample: