ark 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