The highly prized retirement to Mount Vernon did not now, more than at any previous time, separate Washington from the affairs of the country. He continued to take a keen interest in all that went on, to correspond with his friends, and to use his influence for what he thought wisest and best for the general welfare. These were stirring times, too, and the progress of events brought him to take a more active part than he had ever expected to play again; for France, having failed, thanks to his policy, to draw us either by fair words or trickery from our independent and neutral position, determined, apparently, to try the effect of force and ill usage. Pinckney, sent out as minister, had been rebuffed; and then Adams, with the cordial support of the country, had made another effort for peace by sending Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry as a special commission. The history of that commission is one of the best known episodes in our history. Our envoys were insulted, asked for bribes, and browbeaten, until the two who retained a proper sense of their own and their country's dignity took their passports and departed. The publication of the famous X, Y, Z letters, which displayed the conduct of France, roused a storm of righteous indignation from one end of the United States to the other. The party of France and of the opposition bent before the storm, and the Federalists were at last all-powerful. A cry for war went up from every corner, and Congress provided rapidly for the formation of an army and the beginning of a navy.