ch of arrogance that displayed itself in
letters as well as in manners. The soldierly qualities that made him a
commander did not qualify him for public place dependent upon the
suffrage of men. People respected but did not love him. If they were
indignant that Gates succeeded him, they did not want him to govern
them, however much it may have been in his heart to serve them
faithfully.

[Footnote 14: While in command of the northern department, embracing
the province of New York, Schuyler was known as "Great Eye," so
watchful did he become of the enemy's movements; and although
subsequently, through slander and intrigue, superseded by Horatio
Gates, history has credited Burgoyne's surrender largely to his wisdom
and patriotism, and has branded Gates with incompetency, in spite of
the latter's gold medal and the thanks of Congress.]

John Morin Scott represented the radical element among the patriots.
By profession he was an able and wealthy lawyer; by occupation a
patriotic agitator. John Adams, who breakfasted with him, speaks of
his country residence three miles out of town as "an elegant seat,
with the Hudson just behind the house, and a rural prospect all around
him." But the table seems to have made a deeper impression upon the
Yankee patriot than the picturesque scenery of the river. "A more
elegant breakfast I never saw--rich plate, a very large silver
coffee-pot, a very large silver teapot, napkins of the very finest
materials, toast and bread and butter in great perfection. Afterwards
a plate of beautiful peaches, another of pears, another of plums, and
a musk melon." As a parting salute, this lover of good things spoke of
his host as "a sensible man, one of the readiest speakers upon the
continent, but not very polite."[15] This is what the Tories thought.
According to Jones, the Tory historian, Scott had the misfortune to
graduate at Yale--"a college remarkable for its republican principles
and religious intolerance," he says, and to belong to a triumvirate
whose purpose was "to pull down church and state, and to raise their
own government upon the ruins."[16]

[Footnote 15: John Adams, _Life and Works_, Vol. 2, p. 349 (Diary).]

[Footnote 16: Thomas Jones, _History of New York_, Vol. 1, p. 3.]

Scott, no doubt, was sometimes mistaken in the proper course to
pursue, but he was always right from his point of view, and his point
of view was bitter hostility to English misrule. Whatever he did he
did with