Through many faults, through serious and dangerous errors, and in spite of shocks, the last and most cruel of which has failed to dissolve that union so dear to the patriotic thoughts of Washington, the American people has remained a great people, and its place among nations has in a century become more considerable than its founders had foreseen. Washington had not yet ended his work; he was to guide in the paths of government that generation of his compatriots which he had so painfully accustomed to the art of war. Scarcely was peace signed when Congress was disputing with the army as to the recompense for its sufferings and efforts. The newborn United States were threatened with a military insurrection. The influence of the general-in-chief preserved them from it, while sparing his country the shame of a cowardly ingratitude. "If this country denies the prayer of the troops," he exclaimed, at the end of one of his official letters to the president of Congress, "then I shall have learned what ingratitude is; I shall have assisted at a spectacle which for the remainder of my days will fill my soul with bitterness." The wishes of the American army were heard, and peace obtained in America as well as in Europe, although precarious and doubtful in many respects, and threatened by inward fermentation or by outside dangers, which were but ill warded off by negotiations and treaties. {321} To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the cession to France of the Island of Tobago, and of the Senegal River with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and of Karikal received some increase. For the first time for more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating stipulations so often exacted on the subject of the port of Dunkerque. Spain saw how to confirm her conquest of Florida and the Island of Minorca. The Dutch recovered all their possessions with the exception of Negapatam.