fering other inducements. The project, in view of the
numerous discouragements and difficulties, was at length formally
suspended by a resolve of Congress.]

Washington's letter of the 4th of January, on the subject of the
Conway correspondence, had not reached General Gates until the 22d of
January, after his arrival at Yorktown. No sooner did Gates learn from
its context that all Washington's knowledge of that correspondence was
confined to a single paragraph of a letter, and that merely as quoted
in conversation by Wilkinson, than the whole matter appeared easily to
be explained or shuffled off. He accordingly took pen in hand, and
addressed Washington as follows, on the 22d of January: "The letter
which I had the honor to receive yesterday from your Excellency, has
relieved me from unspeakable uneasiness. I now anticipate the pleasure
it will give you when you discover that what has been conveyed to you
for an extract of General Conway's letter to me, was not an
information which friendly motives induced a man of honor to give,
that injured virtue might be forearmed against secret enemies. The
paragraph which your Excellency has condescended to transcribe, is
spurious. It was certainly fabricated to answer the most selfish and
wicked purposes." He then goes on to declare that the genuine letter
of Conway was perfectly harmless, containing judicious remarks upon
the want of discipline in the army, but making no mention of weak
generals or bad counsellors.

General Conway, also, in a letter to Washington (dated January 27th),
informs him that the letter had been returned to him by Gates, and
that he found with great satisfaction that "the paragraph so much
spoken of did not exist in the said letter, nor anything like it." He
had intended, he adds, to publish the letter, but had been dissuaded
by President Laurens and two or three members of Congress, to whom he
had shown it, lest it should inform the enemy of a misunderstanding
among the American generals. He therefore depended upon the justice,
candor, and generosity of General Washington to put a stop to the
forgery.

On the 9th of February, Washington wrote Gates a long and searching
reply to his letters of the 8th and 23d of January, analyzing them,
and showing how, in spirit and import, they contradicted each other;
and how sometimes the same letter contradicted itself. How, in the
first letter, the reality of the extracts was by implication allowed,
and the