Such therefore were the parts of the public grievance, upon which the western people most insisted.  Now, these complaints were systematizing by the conversations of influential men, who retired into those wild countries, and who from principle, or from a series of particular heart-burnings, animated discontents already too near to effervescence.  At last the local explosion is effected.  The western people calculated on being supported by some distinguished characters in the east, and even imagined they had in the bosom of the government some abettors, who might share in their grievance or their principle.

The rioters, sobered by the organized force and its formidable numbers, surrendered without bloodshed.

In January of the following year Hamilton resigned from the Cabinet.  The pressing need of his services was over, and he had many reasons for retiring from office:  his health was seriously impaired, he had a growing family of boys to educate; he expected his father by every ship from the Windward Islands, to spend his last years in the home to which his son had so often invited him; Mrs. Mitchell was now a widow and almost penniless; and his disgust of office was so uncompromising that no consideration short of an imperative public duty would have induced him to continue.  But his principal reason, as he wrote to Mrs. Church, was that he wished to indulge his domestic happiness more freely.  Washington let him go with the less reluctance because he promised immediate response to any demand the President might make upon him.  He went with his wife, Angelica, and the younger children to Albany and the Saratoga estate, where he remained until the first of June, endeavouring to regain his health in the forest and on the river.  Young Lafayette lived with him until his return to France, in 1798.

Upon Hamilton’s return to New York he immediately engaged in practice, which he supplemented by coaching students; but he continued to be Washington’s chief adviser, and the correspondence was continuous upon every problem which confronted the harassed President.  Indeed, when one reads its bulk, one wonders if the Cabinet did anything but execute Hamilton’s suggestions.  Randolph kicked his heels in impotent wrath, and his successor’s correspondence with Hamilton was almost as voluminous as Washington’s.  So was Wolcott’s, who hardly cancelled a bond without his former chief’s advice; William Smith, the auditor-general, was scarcely less insistent for orders.  Hamilton wrote at length to all of them, as well as to the numerous members of Congress who wanted advice, or an interpretation of some Constitutional provision hitherto on the shelf.  What time he had for his practice and students would remain a mystery, were it not for the manifest price he paid in the vigours of all but will and brain.