In a fit of temper Lee wrote Washington two imprudent letters, expressed “in terms [so] highly improper” that he was ordered under arrest and tried by a court-martial, which promptly found him guilty of disobedience and disrespect, as well as of making a “disorderly and unnecessary retreat.” To this Lee retorted, “I aver that his Excellencies letter was from beginning to the end a most abominable lie—I aver that my conduct will stand the strictest scrutiny of every military judge—I aver that my Court Martial was a Court of Inquisition—that there was not a single member with a military idea—at least if I may pronounce from the different questions they put to the evidences.”
In this connection it is of interest to note a letter from Washington’s friend Mason, which said, “You express a fear that General Lee will challenge our friend. Indulge in no such apprehensions, for he too well knows the sentiments of General Washington on the subject of duelling. From his earliest manhood I have heard him express his contempt of the man who sends and the man who accepts a challenge, for he regards such acts as no proof of moral courage; and the practice he abhors as a relic of old barbarisms, repugnant alike to sound morality and Christian enlightenment.”
A little later, still smarting from this court-martial, Lee wrote to a newspaper a savage attack on his late commander, apparently in the belief, as he said in a private letter, that “there is … a visible revolution … in the minds of men, I mean that our Great Gargantua, or Lama Babak (for I know not which Title is the properest) begins to be no longer consider’d as an infallible Divinity—and that those who have been sacrificed or near sacrific’d on his altar, begin to be esteem’d as wantonly and foolishly offer’d up.” Lee very quickly found his mistake, for the editor of the paper which contained his attack was compelled by a committee of citizens to publish an acknowledgment that in printing it “I have transgressed against truth, justice and my duty as a good citizen,” and, as Washington wrote to a friend, “the author of the Queries, ‘Political and Military,’ has had no cause to exult in the favorable reception of them by the public.” With Lee’s disappearance the last army rival dropped from the ranks, and from that time there was no question as to who should command the armies of America. Long after, a would-be editor of Lee’s papers wrote to Washington to ask if he had any wishes in regard to the publication, and was told in the reply that,—
“I never had a difference with that gentleman, but on public ground, and my conduct towards him upon this occasion was such only, as I conceived myself indispensably bound to adopt in discharge of the public trust reposed in me. If this produced in him unfavorable sentiments of me, I yet can never consider the conduct I pursued, with respect to him, either wrong or improper, however I may regret that it may have been differently viewed by him and that it excited his censure and animadversions. Should there appear in General Lee’s writings any thing injurious or unfriendly to me, the impartial and dispassionate world must decide how far I deserved it from the general tenor of my conduct.”
These attempts to undermine Washington owed their real vitality to the Continental Congress, and it is safe to say that but for Washington’s political enemies no army rival would have ventured to push forward. In what the opposition in that body consisted, and to what length it went, are discussed elsewhere, but a glance at the reasons of hostility to him is proper here.
John Adams declared himself “sick of the Fabian systems,” and in writing of the thanksgiving for the Saratoga Convention, he said that “one cause of it ought to be that the glory of turning the tide of arms is not immediately due to the commander-in-chief…. If it had, idolatry and adulation would have been unbounded.” James Lovell asserted that “Our affairs are Fabiused into a very disagreeable posture,” and wrote that “depend upon it for every ten soldiers placed under the command of our Fabius, five recruits will be wanted annually during the war.” William Williams agreed with Jonathan Trumbull that the time had come when “a much exalted character should make way for a general” and suggested if this was not done “voluntarily,” those to whom the public looked should “see to it.” Abraham Clark thought “we may talk of the Enemy’s Cruelty as we will, but we have no greater Cruelty to complain of than the Management of our Army.” Jonathan D. Sargent asserted that “we want a general—thousands of Lives & Millions of Property are yearly sacrificed to the Insufficiency of our Commander-in-Chief—Two Battles he has lost for us by two such Blunders as might have disgraced a Soldier of three months standing, and yet we are so attached to this Man that I fear we shall rather sink with him than throw him off our Shoulders. And sink we must under his Management. Such Feebleness, & Want of Authority, such Confusion & Want of Discipline, such Waste, such destruction would exhaust the Wealth of both the Indies & annihilate the armies of all Europe and Asia.” Richard Henry Lee agreed with Mifflin that Gates was needed to “procure the indispensable changes in our Army.” Other Congressmen who were inimical to Washington, either by openly expressed opinion or by vote, were Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Adams, William Ellery, Eliphalet Dyer, Roger Sherman, Samuel Chase, and F.L. Lee. Later, when Washington’s position was more secure, Gerry and R.H. Lee wrote to him affirming their friendship, and to both the General replied without a suggestion of ill-feeling, nor does he seem, in later life, to have felt a trace of personal animosity towards any one of the men who had been in opposition to him in Congress. Of this enmity in the army and Congress Washington wrote,—
“It is easy to bear the first, and even the devices of private enemies whose ill will only arises from their common hatred to the cause we are engaged in, are to me tolerable; yet, I confess, I cannot help feeling the most painful sensations, whenever I have reason to believe I am the object of persecution to men, who are embarked in the same general interest, and whose friendship my heart does not reproach me with, ever having done any thing to forfeit. But with many, it is a sufficient cause to hate and wish the ruin of a man, because he has been happy enough, to be the object of his country’s favor.”
The political course of Washington while President produced the alienation of the two Virginians whom he most closely associated with himself in the early part of his administration. With Madison the break does not seem to have come from any positive ill-feeling, but was rather an abandonment of intercourse as the differences of opinion became more pronounced. The disagreement with Jefferson was more acute, though probably never forced to an open rupture. To his political friends Jefferson in 1796 wrote that the measures pursued by the administration were carried out “under the sanction of a name which has done too much good not to be sufficient to cover harm also,” and that he hoped the President’s “honesty and his political errors may not furnish a second occasion to exclaim, ‘curse on his virtues, they’ve undone his country.’” Henry Lee warned Washington of the undercurrent of criticism, and when Jefferson heard indirectly of this he wrote his former chief that “I learn that [Lee] has thought it worth his while to try to sow tares between you and me, by representing me as still engaged in the bustle of politics & in turbulence & intrigue against the government. I never believed for a moment that this could make any impression on you, or that your knowledge of me would not overweigh the slander of an intriguer dirtily employed in sifting the conversations of my table.” To this Washington replied,—
“As you have mentioned the subject yourself, it would not be frank, candid or friendly to conceal, that your conduct has been represented as derogating from that opinion I had conceived you entertained of me; that, to your particular friends and connexions you have described, and they have denounced me as a person under a dangerous influence; and that, if I would listen more to some other opinions, all would be well. My answer invariably has been, that I had never discovered any thing in the conduct of Mr. Jefferson to raise suspicions in my mind of his insincerity; that, if he would retrace my public conduct while he was in the administration, abundant proofs would occur to him, that truth and right decisions were the sole objects of my pursuit; that there was as many instances within his own knowledge of my having decided against as in favor of the opinions of the person evidently alluded to; and, I was no believer in the infallibility of the politics or measures of any man living. In short that I was no party man myself and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.”
As proof upon proof of Jefferson’s secret enmity accumulated, Washington ceased to trust his disclaimers, and finally wrote to one of his informants, “Nothing short of the evidence you have adduced, corroborative of intimations which I had received long before through another channel, could have shaken my belief in the sincerity of a friendship, which I had conceived as possessed for me by the person to whom you allude. But attempts to injure those, who are supposed to stand well in the estimation of the people, and are stumbling blocks in the way, by misrepresenting their political tenets, thereby to destroy all confidence in them, are among the means by which the government is to be assailed, and the constitution destroyed.”