neral, that
General Gates was to be exalted on the ruin of my reputation
and influence. This I am authorized to say, from undeniable
facts in my own possession, from publications, the evident
scope of which could not be mistaken, and from private
detractions industriously circulated. General Mifflin, it is
commonly supposed, bore the second part in the cabal; and
General Conway, I know, was a very active and malignant
partisan; but I have good reason to believe that their
machinations have recoiled most sensibly upon themselves.
With sentiments of great esteem and regard, I am, dear sir,
your affectionate humble servant.[285]

This incident in the lives of Washington and Patrick Henry is to be
noted by us, not only for its own exquisite delicacy and nobility, but
likewise as the culminating fact in the growth of a very deep and true
friendship between the two men,--a friendship which seems to have
begun many years before, probably in the House of Burgesses, and which
lasted with increasing strength and tenderness, and with but a single
episode of estrangement, during the rest of their lives. Moreover, he
who tries to interpret the later career of Patrick Henry, especially
after the establishment of the government under the Constitution, and
who leaves out of the account Henry's profound friendship for
Washington, and the basis of moral and intellectual congeniality on
which that friendship rested, will lose an important clew to the
perfect naturalness and consistency of Henry's political course during
his last years. A fierce partisan outcry was then raised against him
in Virginia, and he was bitterly denounced as a political apostate,
simply because, in the parting of the ways of Washington and of
Jefferson, Patrick Henry no longer walked with Jefferson. In truth,
Patrick Henry was never Washington's follower nor Jefferson's: he was
no man's follower. From the beginning, he had always done for himself
his own thinking, whether right or wrong. At the same time, a careful
student of the three men may see that, in his thinking, Patrick Henry
had a closer and a truer moral kinship with Washington than with
Jefferson. At present, however, we pause before the touching incident
that has just been narrated in the relations between Washington and
Henry, in order to mark its bearing on their subsequent intercourse.
Washington, in whose nature confidence was a plant of slow