t insisted. Now, these complaints were
systematizing by the conversations of influential men, who retired
into those wild countries, and who from principle, or from a series
of particular heart-burnings, animated discontents already too near
to effervescence. At last the local explosion is effected. The
western people calculated on being supported by some distinguished
characters in the east, and even imagined they had in the bosom of
the government some abettors, who might share in their grievance or
their principle.

The rioters, sobered by the organized force and its formidable numbers,
surrendered without bloodshed.

In January of the following year Hamilton resigned from the Cabinet. The
pressing need of his services was over, and he had many reasons for
retiring from office: his health was seriously impaired, he had a
growing family of boys to educate; he expected his father by every ship
from the Windward Islands, to spend his last years in the home to which
his son had so often invited him; Mrs. Mitchell was now a widow and
almost penniless; and his disgust of office was so uncompromising that
no consideration short of an imperative public duty would have induced
him to continue. But his principal reason, as he wrote to Mrs. Church,
was that he wished to indulge his domestic happiness more freely.
Washington let him go with the less reluctance because he promised
immediate response to any demand the President might make upon him. He
went with his wife, Angelica, and the younger children to Albany and the
Saratoga estate, where he remained until the first of June, endeavouring
to regain his health in the forest and on the river. Young Lafayette
lived with him until his return to France, in 1798.

Upon Hamilton's return to New York he immediately engaged in practice,
which he supplemented by coaching students; but he continued to be
Washington's chief adviser, and the correspondence was continuous upon
every problem which confronted the harassed President. Indeed, when one
reads its bulk, one wonders if the Cabinet did anything but execute
Hamilton's suggestions. Randolph kicked his heels in impotent wrath, and
his successor's correspondence with Hamilton was almost as voluminous
as Washington's. So was Wolcott's, who hardly cancelled a bond without
his former chief's advice; William Smith, the auditor-general, was
scarcely less insistent for orders. Hamilton wrote at length to al