vere you:--you strengthened my prepossessions by marks of attention." And
in another place he acknowledged the weakness of his attack by saying,
"still however, those very objections, the very reputation which you have
acquired, will cause it to be asked, why you should be suspected of acting
towards me, in any other manner, than deliberately, justly and even
kindly?"

In the preparation of this pamphlet Randolph wrote the President a letter
which the latter asserted was "full of innuendoes," and one statement in
the pamphlet he denounced as being "as impudent and insolent an assertion
as it is false." And his irritation at this treatment from one he had
always befriended gave rise to an incident, narrated by James Ross, at a
breakfast at the President's, when "after a little while the Secretary of
War came in, and said to Washington, 'Have you seen Mr. Randolph's
pamphlet?' 'I have,' said Washington, 'and, by the eternal God, he is the
damnedest liar on the face of the earth!' and as he spoke he brought his
fist down upon the table with all his strength, and with a violence which
made the cups and plates start from their places." Fortunately, the attack
was ineffective; indeed, Hamilton wrote that "I consider it as amounting
to a confession of guilt; and I am persuaded this will be the universal
opinion. His attempts against you are viewed by all whom I have seen, as
base. They will certainly fail of their aim, and will do good rather than
harm, to the public cause and to yourself. It appears to me that, by you,
no notice can be, or ought to be, taken of the publication. It contains
its own antidote."

Not content with this double giving up of what to any man of honor was
confidential, Randolph, a little later, rested under Washington's
suspicions of a third time breaking the seal of official secrecy by
sending a Cabinet paper to the newspapers for no other purpose than to
stir up feeling against Washington. But after his former patron's death
regret came, and Randolph wrote to Bushrod Washington, "If I could now
present myself before your venerated uncle it would be my pride to confess
my contrition that I suffered my irritation, be the cause what it might,
to use some of those expressions respecting him which, at this moment ... I
wish to recall as being inconsistent with my subsequent convictions."

Another type of enemy, more or less the result of this differing with
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Randolph, was s