dispassionate as to Conway, adding, “I have no doubt that everything happens for the best, that we shall triumph over all our misfortunes, and in the end be happy; when, my dear Marquis, if you will give me your company in Virginia, we will laugh at our past difficulties and the folly of others.”  But though he wrote thus lightly to his friends, he followed Gates sternly enough, and kept that gentleman occupied as he drove him from point to point.  Among other things he touched upon Conway’s character with sharp irony, saying, “It is, however, greatly to be lamented that this adept in military science did not employ his abilities in the progress of the campaign, in pointing out those wise measures which were calculated to give us ‘that degree of success we could reasonably expect.’”

Poor Gates did not find these letters pleasant reading, and one more curt note, on February 24, finished the controversy.  By that time the cabal was falling to pieces, and in a little while was dispersed.  Wilkinson’s resignation was accepted, Mifflin was put under Washington’s orders, and Gates was sent to his command in the north.  Conway resigned one day in a pet, and found his resignation accepted and his power gone with unpleasant suddenness.  He then got into a quarrel with General Cadwalader on account of his attacks on the commander-in-chief.  The quarrel ended in a duel.  Conway was badly wounded, and thinking himself dying, wrote a contrite note of apology to Washington, then recovered, left the country, and disappeared from the ken of history.  Thus domestic malice and the “bitter party” in Congress failed and perished.  They had dashed themselves in vain against the strong man who held firmly both soldiers and people.  “While the public are satisfied with my endeavors, I mean not to shrink from the cause.”  So Washington wrote to Gordon as the cabal was coming to an end, and in that spirit he crushed silently and thoroughly the faction that sought to thwart his purpose, and drive him from office by sneers, slights, and intrigues.

These attacks upon him came at the darkest moment of his military career.  Defeated at Brandywine and Germantown, he had been forced from the forts after a desperate struggle, had seen Philadelphia and the river fall completely into the hands of the enemy, and, bitterest of all, he had been obliged to hold back from another assault on the British lines, and to content himself with baffling Howe when that gentleman came out and offered battle.  Then the enemy withdrew to their comfortable quarters, and he was left to face again the harsh winter and the problem of existence.  It was the same ever recurring effort to keep the American army, and thereby the American Revolution, alive.  There was nothing in this task to stir the blood and rouse the heart.  It was merely a question of grim tenacity of purpose and of the ability to comprehend its overwhelming importance.  It was not a work that appealed to or inspirited any one, and to carry it through to a successful issue rested with the commander-in-chief alone.