military confidence than of private attachment."

Had Washington been the man this letter described he would never have
forgiven this treatment. On the contrary, only two months later, when
compelled to refuse for military reasons a favor Hamilton asked, he said
that "my principal concern arises from an apprehension that you will
impute my refusal to your request to other motives." On this refusal
Hamilton enclosed his commission to Washington, but "Tilghman came to me
in his name, pressed me to retain my commission, with an assurance that he
would endeavor, by all means, to give me a command." Later Washington did
more than Hamilton himself had asked, when he gave him the leading of the
storming party at Yorktown, a post envied by every officer in the army.

Apparently this generosity lessened Hamilton's resentment, for a
correspondence on public affairs was maintained from this time on, though
Madison stated long after "that Hamilton often spoke disparagingly of
Washington's talents, particularly after the Revolution and at the first
part of the presidentcy," and Benjamin Rush confirms this by a note to the
effect that "Hamilton often spoke with contempt of General Washington. He
said that ... his heart was a stone." The rumor of the ill feeling was
turned to advantage by Hamilton's political opponents in 1787, and
compelled the former to appeal to Washington to save him from the injury
the story was doing. In response Washington wrote a letter intended for
public use, in which he said,--

"As you say it is insinuated by some of your political adversaries,
and may obtain credit, 'that you _palmed_ yourself upon me, and was
_dismissed_ from my family,' and call upon me to do you justice by a
recital of the facts, I do therefore explicitly declare, that both charges
are entirely unfounded. With respect to the first, I have no cause to
believe, that you took a single step to accomplish, or had the most
distant idea of receiving an appointment in my family till you were
invited in it; and, with respect to the second, that your quitting it was
altogether the effect of your own choice."

With the appointment as Secretary of the Treasury warmer feelings were
developed. Hamilton became the President's most trusted official, and was
tireless in the aid he gave his superior. Even after he left office he
performed many services equivalent to official ones, for which Washington
did "not know how to thank" him "sufficiently,