MORE TROUBLE ABOUT THE CONWAY LETTER—CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LORD
STIRLING AND WILKINSON—WILKINSON’S HONOR WOUNDED—HIS PASSAGE AT
ARMS WITH GENERAL GATES—HIS SEAT AT THE BOARD OF WAR
UNCOMFORTABLE—DETERMINES THAT LORD STIRLING SHALL BLEED—HIS
WOUNDED HONOR HEALED—HIS INTERVIEW WITH WASHINGTON—SEES THE
CORRESPONDENCE OF GATES—DENOUNCES GATES AND GIVES UP THE
SECRETARYSHIP—IS THROWN OUT OF EMPLOY—CLOSING REMARKS ON THE
CONWAY CABAL.
The Conway letter was destined to be a further source of trouble to the
cabal. Lord Stirling, in whose presence, at Reading, Wilkinson had cited
the letter, and who had sent information of it to Washington, was now
told that Wilkinson, on being questioned by General Conway, had declared
that no such words as those reported, nor any to the same effect, were
in the letter.
His lordship immediately wrote to Wilkinson, reminding him of the
conversation at Reading, and telling him of what he had recently heard.
“I well know,” writes his lordship, “that it is impossible you could
have made any such declaration; but it will give great satisfaction to
many of your friends to know whether Conway made such inquiry, and what
was your answer; they would also be glad to know what were the words of
the letter, and I should be very much obliged to you for a copy of it.”
Wilkinson found that his tongue had again brought him into difficulty;
but he trusted to his rhetoric, rather than his logic, to get him out of
it. He wrote in reply, that he perfectly remembered spending a social
day with his lordship at Reading, in which the conversation became
general, unreserved and copious; though the tenor of his lordship’s
discourse, and the nature of their situation, made it confidential. “I
cannot, therefore,” adds he, logically, “recapitulate particulars, or
charge my memory with the circumstances you mention; but, my lord, I
disdain low craft, subtlety and evasion, and will acknowledge it is
possible, in the warmth of social intercourse, when the mind is relaxed
and the heart is unguarded, that observations may have elapsed which
have not since occurred to me. On my late arrival in camp,
Brigadier-general Conway informed me that he had been charged by General
Washington with writing a letter to Major-general Gates, which reflected
on the general and the army. The particulars of this charge, which
Brigadier-general Conway then repeated, I cannot now recollect. I had
read the letter alluded to; I did not consider the information conveyed
in his Excellency’s letter, as expressed by Brigadier-general Conway, to
be literal, and well remember replying to that effect in dubious terms.
I had no inducement to stain my veracity, were I ever so prone to that
infamous vice, as Brigadier Conway informed me he had justified the
charge.
“I can scarce credit my senses, when I read the paragraph in which you
request an extract from a private letter, which had fallen under my
observation. _I have been indiscreet, my lord, but be assured I will not
be dishonorable._”
This communication of Lord Stirling, Wilkinson gives as the first
intimation he had received of his being implicated in the disclosure of
Conway’s letter. When he was subsequently on his way to Yorktown to
enter upon his duties as secretary of the Board of War, he learnt at
Lancaster that General Gates had denounced him as the betrayer of that
letter, and had spoken of him in the grossest language.
“I was shocked by this information,” writes he; “I had sacrificed my
lineal rank at General Gates’s request; I had served him with zeal and
fidelity, of which he possessed the strongest evidence; yet he had
condemned me unheard for an act of which I was perfectly innocent, and
against which every feeling of my soul revolted with horror. * * * * I
worshipped honor as the jewel of my soul, and did not pause for the
course to be pursued; but I owed it to disparity of years and rank, to
former connection and the affections of my own breast, to drain the cup
of conciliation and seek an explanation.”
The result of these, and other considerations, expressed with that
grandiloquence on which Wilkinson evidently prided himself, was a letter
to Gates, reminding him of the zeal and devotion with which he had
uniformly asserted and maintained his cause; “but, sir,” adds he, “in
spite of every consideration, you have wounded my honor, and must make
acknowledgment or satisfaction for the injury.”
“In consideration of our past connection, I descend to that explanation
with you which I should have denied any other man. The enclosed letters
unmask the villain and evince my innocence. My lord shall bleed for his
conduct, but it is proper I first see you.”
The letters enclosed were those between him and Lord Stirling, the
exposition of which he alleges ought to acquit him of sinister
intention, and stamp the report of his lordship to General Washington
with palpable falsehood.
Gates writes briefly in reply. “Sir,—The following extract of a letter
from General Washington to me will show you how your honor has been
called in question; which is all the explanation necessary upon that
matter; any other satisfaction you may command.”
Then followed the extracts giving the information communicated by
Wilkinson to Major McWilliams, Lord Stirling’s aide-de-camp.
“After reading the whole of the above extract,” adds Gates, “I am
astonished, if you really gave Major McWilliams such information, how
you could intimate to me that it was _possible_ Colonel Troup _had
conversed_ with Colonel Hamilton upon the subject of General Conway’s
letter.”
According to Wilkinson’s story he now proceeded to Yorktown, purposely
arriving in the twilight, to escape observation. There he met with an
old comrade, Captain Stoddart, recounted to him his wrongs, and
requested him to be the bearer of a message to General Gates. Stoddart
refused; and warned him that he was running headlong to destruction:
“but ruin,” observes Wilkinson, “had no terrors for an ardent young man,
who prized his honor a thousand fold more than his life, and who was
willing to hazard his eternal happiness in its defence.”
He accidentally met with another military friend, Lieutenant-colonel
Ball, of the Virginia line, “whose spirit was as independent as his
fortune.” He willingly became bearer of the following note from
Wilkinson to General Gates:
“Sir,—I have discharged my duty to you, and to my conscience; meet me
to-morrow morning behind the English church, and I will there stipulate
the satisfaction which you have promised to grant,” &c.
Colonel Ball was received with complaisance by the general. The meeting
was fixed for eight o’clock in the morning, with pistols.
At the appointed time Wilkinson and his second, having put their arms in
order, were about to sally forth, when Captain Stoddart made his
appearance, and informed Wilkinson that Gates desired to speak with him.
Where?—In the street near the door.—“The surprise robbed me of
circumspection,” continues Wilkinson. “I requested Colonel Ball to halt,
and followed Captain Stoddart. I found General Gates unarmed and alone,
and was received with tenderness but manifest embarrassment; he asked me
to walk, turned into a back street, and we proceeded in silence till we
passed the buildings, when he burst into tears, took me by the hand, and
asked me ‘how I could think he wished to injure me?’ I was too deeply
affected to speak, and he relieved my embarrassment by continuing: ‘_I_
injure you! it is impossible. I should as soon think of injuring my own
child.’ This language,” observes Wilkinson, “not only disarmed me, but
awakened all my confidence and all my tenderness. I was silent; and he
added, ‘Besides, there was no cause for injuring you, as Conway
acknowledged his letter, and has since said much harder things to
Washington’s face.’
“Such language left me nothing to require,” continues Wilkinson. “It was
satisfactory beyond expectation, and rendered me more than content. I
was flattered and pleased; and if a third person had doubted the
sincerity of the explanation, I would have insulted him.”
A change soon came over the spirit of this maudlin scene. Wilkinson
attended as secretary at the War Office. “My reception from the
president, General Gates,” writes he, “did not correspond with his
recent professions; he was civil, but barely so, and I was at a loss to
account for his coldness, yet had no suspicion of his insincerity.”
Wilkinson soon found his situation at the Board of War uncomfortable;
and after the lapse of a few days set out for Valley Forge. On his way
thither he met Washington’s old friend, Dr. Craik, and learnt from him
that his promotion to the rank of brigadier-general by brevet, had been
remonstrated against to Congress by forty-seven colonels. He therefore
sent in his resignation, not wishing, he said, to hold it, unless he
could wear it to the honor and advantage of his country; “and this
conduct,” adds he, “however repugnant to fashionable ambition, I find
consistent with those principles in which I early drew my sword in the
present contest.”
At Lancaster, Wilkinson, recollecting his resolve that Lord Stirling
“should bleed for his conduct,” requested his friend, Colonel Moylan, to
deliver a “peremptory message” to his lordship. The colonel considered
the measure rather precipitate, and suggested that a suitable
acknowledgment from his lordship would be a more satisfactory reparation
of the wrong than a sacrifice of the life of either of the parties.
“There is not in the whole range of my friends, acquaintance, and I
might add, in the universe,” exclaims Wilkinson, “a man of more
sublimated sentiment, or who combined with sound discretion a more
punctilious sense of honor, than Colonel Moylan.” Taking the colonel’s
advice, therefore, he moderated his peremptory message to the following
note: “My Lord,—The propriety or impropriety of your communicating to
his excellency any circumstance which passed at your lordship’s board at
Reading, I leave to be determined by your own feelings and the judgment
of the public; but as the affair has eventually induced reflections on
my integrity, the sacred duty I owe my honor obliges me to request from
your lordship’s hand, that the conversation which you have published
_passed in a private company during a convivial hour_.”
His lordship accordingly gave it under his hand, that the words passed
under such circumstances, but under no injunction of secrecy. Whereupon
Wilkinson’s irritable but easily pacified honor was appeased, and his
sword slept in its sheath.
At Valley Forge Wilkinson had an interview with Washington, in which the
subject of General Conway’s letter was discussed, and the whole
correspondence between Gates and the commander-in-chief laid before him.
“This exposition,” writes Wilkinson, “unfolded to me a scene of perfidy
and duplicity of which I had no suspicion.” It drew from him the
following letter to Washington, dated March 28th. “I beg you to receive
the grateful homage of a sensible mind for your condescension in
exposing to me General Gates’s letters, which unmask his artifices and
efforts to ruin me. The authenticity of the information received through
Lord Stirling I cannot confirm, as I solemnly assure your Excellency I
do not remember the conversation which passed on that occasion, nor can
I recollect particular passages of that letter, as I had but a cursory
view of it at a late hour. However, I so well remember its general
tenor, that, although General Gates has pledged his word it was a wicked
and malicious forgery, I will stake my reputation, if the genuine letter
is produced, that words to the same effect will appear.”
A few days afterwards, Wilkinson addressed the following letter to the
President of Congress.
“SIR,—While I make my acknowledgments to Congress, for the appointment
of secretary to the Board of War and Ordnance, I am sorry I should be
constrained to resign that office; but, after the acts of _treachery_
and _falsehood_ in which I have detected Major-general Gates, the
president of that board, it is impossible for me to reconcile it to my
honor to serve with him.”[122]
After recording this letter in his Memoirs, Wilkinson adds: “I had
previously resigned my brevet of brigadier-general, on grounds of
patriotism; but I still retained my commission of colonel, which was
never to my knowledge revoked; yet the dominant influence of General
Gates, and the feuds, and factions, and intrigues which prevailed in
Congress and in the army of that day, threw me out of employ.”—There we
shall leave him; it was a kind of retirement which we apprehend he had
richly merited, and we doubt whether his country would have been the
loser had he been left to enjoy it for the remainder of his days.
Throughout all the intrigues and manœuvres of the cabal, a part of which
we have laid before the reader, Washington had conducted himself with
calmness and self-command, speaking on the subject to no one but a very
few of his friends; lest a knowledge of those internal dissensions
should injure the service.
In a letter to Patrick Henry he gives his closing observations
concerning them. “I cannot precisely mark the extent of their views; but
it appeared in general, that General Gates was to be exalted on the ruin
of my reputation and influence. This I am authorized to say, from
undeniable facts in my own possession, from publications, the evident
scope of which could not be mistaken, and from private detractions
industriously circulated. General Mifflin, it is commonly supposed, bore
the second part in the cabal; and General Conway, I know, was a very
active and malignant partisan; but I have good reason to believe that
their machinations have recoiled most sensibly upon themselves.”
An able and truthful historian, to whose researches we are indebted for
most of the documents concerning the cabal, gives it as his opinion that
there is not sufficient evidence to prove any concerted plan of action
or any fixed design among the leaders: a few aspiring men like Gates and
Mifflin, might have flattered themselves with indefinite hopes, and
looked forward to a change as promising the best means of aiding their
ambitious views; but that it was not probable they had united in any
clear or fixed purpose.[123]
These observations are made with that author’s usual candor and
judgment; yet, wanting as the intrigues of the cabal might be in plan or
fixed design, they were fraught with mischief to the public service,
inspiring doubts of its commanders and seeking to provoke them to
desperate enterprises. They harassed Washington in the latter part of
his campaign; contributed to the dark cloud that hung over his gloomy
encampment at Valley Forge, and might have effected his downfall, had he
been more irascible in his temper, more at the mercy of impulse, and
less firmly fixed in the affections of the people. As it was, they only
tended to show wherein lay his surest strength. Jealous rivals he might
have in the army, bitter enemies in Congress, but the soldiers loved
him, and the large heart of the nation always beat true to him.
NOTE.
The following anecdote of the late Governor Jay, one of our purest and
most illustrious statesmen, is furnished to us by his son Judge Jay:—
“Shortly before the death of John Adams, I was sitting alone with my
father, conversing about the American Revolution. Suddenly he
remarked, ‘Ah, William! the history of that Revolution will never be
known. Nobody now alive knows it but John Adams and myself.’ Surprised
at such a declaration, I asked him to what he referred? He briefly
replied, ‘The proceedings of the old Congress.’ Again I inquired,
‘What proceedings?’ He answered, ‘Those against Washington; from first
to last there was a most bitter party against him.’” As the old
Congress always sat with closed doors, the public knew no more of what
passed within than what it was deemed expedient to disclose.