Few believed that Washington would serve again, and the Nation turned naturally to Hamilton as its General-in-chief.  He had manifestly been born to extricate them from difficulties.  Even the Presidential faction put their pride in their pockets, and agreed that he was the one man in the country of matchless resource and military genius; they passed over the veterans of the war without controversy.  But there was one man who never put his pride in his pocket, and that was John Adams.  Rather than present to Alexander Hamilton another opportunity for distinction and power, he would himself cull fresh laurels for George Washington; the supply of his old rival was now so abundant that new ones would add nothing.  Hamilton already had written to Washington as peremptorily as only he dared, urging that he must come forth once more and without hesitation.  Washington replied that he would as cheerfully go to the tombs of his ancestors, but admitted the obligation, and asked Hamilton would he serve with him?  Hamilton answered that he would on condition that he be second in command to himself; he would make no further sacrifice for an inconsiderable reward.  When Washington, therefore, received Adams’s invitation, he made his acceptance conditional upon being given the power to appoint his generals next in rank.  Adams, meanwhile, without waiting for his answer, had sent his name to the Senate, and it had been confirmed as a matter of course.  Washington was irritated, but persisted in his condition, and sent in the names of Alexander Hamilton for Inspector-General, with the rank of Major-General, C.C.  Pinckney and Knox for Major-Generals, and a list of Brigadiers and Adjutant-Generals.  Adams, fuming, sent the names to the Senate, and they were confirmed in the order in which Washington had written them; but when they came back, jealousy and temper mastered him, and he committed the intemperate act which tolled the death-knell of the Federalist party:  he ordered the commissions made out with Hamilton’s name third on the list.  Knox and Pinckney, he declared, were entitled to precedence; and so the order should stand or not at all.  He had not anticipated an outcry, and when it arose, angry and determined, he was startled but unshaken.  The leading men in Congress waited upon him; he received a new deluge of letters, and the most pointed of them was from John Jay.  Hamilton alone held his peace.  He saw the terrible mistake Adams had made, and dreaded the result.  He wrote to Washington that he should be governed entirely by his wishes, that he should not embarrass him in any manner, and that it never should be said of himself that his ambition or interest had stood in the way of the public welfare.  But when Adams stood with his head down, like an angry bull, and it was plain to be seen that his astonishing attitude was prompted by personal hatred alone, when the Cabinet and all the eminent men in the Nation, with the exception of the Republican leaders, faced