not so easy to dispose of by an intrigue as they had fancied.  Nevertheless, they rallied, and taking advantage of the feeling in Congress created by Burgoyne’s surrender, they set to work to get control of military matters.  The board of war was enlarged to five, with Gates at its head and Mifflin a member, and, thus constituted, it proceeded to make Conway inspector-general, with the rank of major-general.  This, after Conway’s conduct, was a direct insult to Washington, and marks the highest point attained by his opponents.

In Congress, too, they became more active, and John Jay said that there was in that body a party bitterly hostile to Washington.  We know little of the members of that faction now, for they never took the trouble to refer to the matter in after years, and did everything that silence could do to have it all forgotten.  But the party existed none the less, and significant letters have come down to us, one of them written by Lovell, and two anonymous, addressed respectively to Patrick Henry and to Laurens, then president, which show a bitter and vindictive spirit, and breathe but one purpose.  The same thought is constantly reiterated, that with a good general the northern army had won a great victory, and that the main army, if commanded in the same way, would do likewise.  The plan was simple and coherent.  The cabal wished to drive Washington out of power and replace him with Gates.  With this purpose they wrote to Henry and Laurens; with this purpose they made Conway inspector-general.

When they turned from intrigue to action, however, they began to fail.  One of their pet schemes was the conquest of Canada, and with this object Lafayette was sent to the lakes, only to find that no preparations had been made, because the originators of the idea were ignorant and inefficient.  The expedition promptly collapsed and was abandoned, with much instruction in consequence to Congress and people.  Under their control the commissariat also went hopelessly to pieces, and a committee of Congress proceeded to Valley Forge and found that in this direction, too, the new managers had grievously failed.  Then the original Conway letter, uncovered so unceremoniously by Washington, kept returning to plague its author.  Gates’s correspondence went on all through the winter, and with every letter Gates floundered more and more, and Washington’s replies grew more and more freezing and severe.  Gates undertook to throw the blame on Wilkinson, who became loftily indignant and challenged him.  The two made up their quarrel very soon in a ludicrous manner, but Wilkinson in the interval had an interview with Washington, which revealed an amount of duplicity and perfidy on the part of the cabal, so shocking to the former’s sensitive nature, that he resigned his secretaryship of the board of war on account, as he frankly said, of the treachery and falsehood of Gates.  Such a quarrel of course hurt the cabal, but it was still more weakened by Gates himself, whose only idea seemed to be to supersede Washington by slighting him, refusing troops, and declining to propose his health at dinner,—­methods as unusual as they were feeble.