proper by the Quassaick Creek, but after the surrender of Yorktown, he and his family with his staff became the guests of Colonel Jonathan Hasbrouck in the stone house, on the corner of Washington and Liberty Streets. Here Washington wrote his reply to the Nicola letter, which in popular parlance offered him the crown. Here is the chair in which he sat when he took his pen in hand and dipped it in ink to put on paper words which after more than a hundred years glow with the fervor of their author's single-hearted purpose.
Newburgh, May 22d, 1782.
Colonel Lewis Nicola,
Sir:—With a mixture of great surprise and astonishment, I have read with attention the sentiments you have submitted to my perusal. Be assured, sir, no occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have expressed, and I must view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity. For the present the communication of them will rest in my own bosom, unless some further agitation of the matter shall make a disclosure necessary.
I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address, which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the
