with as much general good-will and public confidence as possible, so Hamilton sacrificed himself to this necessity, and withdrew his name voluntarily.  His withdrawal was a mistake, but it was a wholly natural one under the circumstances.  Washington then made the next best choice, and appointed John Jay, who was a man of most spotless character, honorable, high-minded, and skilled in public affairs.  He was chief justice of the United States, and that fact gave additional weight to the mission.  The only point in which he fell behind Hamilton was in aggressiveness of character, and this negotiation demanded, not merely firmness and tact, which Jay had in abundance, but a boldness verging on audacity.  The immediate purpose, however, was answered, and Jay set forth on his journey with much good feeling toward himself, and with a very solemn sense among the people of the gravity of his undertaking.  Washington himself saw Jay depart with many misgivings, and the act of sending such a mission at all was very trying to him, for the conduct of England galled him to the quick.  He had long suspected Great Britain, as well as Spain, of inciting the Indians secretly to assail our settlements, and knowing as he did the character of savage warfare, and feeling deeply the bloodshed and expense of our Indian wars, he cherished a profound dislike for those who could be capable of promoting such misery to the injury of a friendly and-civilized nation.  As England became more and more hostile, he made up his mind that she was bent on attacking us, and in March, 1794, he wrote to Governor Clinton that he had no doubts as to the authenticity of Lord Dorchester’s speech, and that he believed England intended war.  He therefore urged the governor to inquire carefully into the state of feeling in Canada, and as to the military strength of the country, especially on the border.  He put no trust in the disclaimers of the ministry when he saw the long familiar signs of hostile intrigue among the Indians, and he was quite determined that, if war should come, all the suffering should not be on one side.

This belief in the coming of war, however, only strengthened him in his well-matured plans to leave nothing undone to prevent it.  It was in this spirit that he despatched the special mission, although his first letter to Jay shows that he had no very strong hopes of peace, and that his uppermost thoughts were of the wrongs which had been perpetrated, and of the perils which hung over the border.  He did not wish the commissioner to mince matters at all.  “There does not remain a doubt,” he wrote, “in the mind of any well-informed person in this country, not shut against conviction, that all the difficulties we encounter with the Indians, their hostilities, the murder of helpless women and innocent children along our frontiers, result from the conduct of the agents of Great Britain in this country....  Can it be expected, I ask, so long as these things are known in the United States, or at least firmly