This new crisis in the Eaton affair resulted in the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton from the Cabinet, and Jackson hastily wrote Donelson on April 19th telling him of these resignations and predicting that “you will find an entire new Cabinet when you arrive.” But now the Donelsons were offended. Upset by the strong words of Jackson’s letter of March 24th they, as General Coffee expressed it, “fear that you require more than they can consistently comply with.” In reply to this letter Donelson wrote a reply which Jackson styled “a vindictive phillippic,” the general tenor of which was that he could not return with his wife under the terms set forth in Jackson’s communication. Jackson’s reply was firm, though tempered with expressions of his affection, and showed clearly the extent to which the controversy had upset him. His letter concluded: “I am laboured almost to death, and have been a good deal afflicted; but will try amongst strangers to get a man who will aid me and who will think it no disgrace to associate with me and my friends.” This must have cut Donelson to the quick, but it did not alter his determination to sever his official relations with his godfather, the President. He went back to Washington—alone—to wind up his personal affairs there; and before leaving finally, on June 18th, he wrote an affectionate note to Jackson giving “assurance of my readiness to resume the relation which I have maintained near you for so many years, whenever you think that my services can be of any avail.” In a letter written home to his wife he told of a long conversation he had had with Jackson, and dropped the strange comment that “After what has now passed, while our duty remains the same, I am almost as well satisfied that the view which Uncle takes is correct.” Nevertheless, he went on home; and Jackson engaged as his private secretary Mr. Nicholas P. Trist (whose wife was a granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson), and he served until the reconciliation with the Donelsons. The reconciliation, as might have been expected where there was so much mutual love and esteem, was not long in coming. Jackson kept up a friendly correspondence with Andrew and Emily as though nothing had happened, and in July two Nashville friends, John C. McLemore and John Bell, took it upon themselves to act to bring Jackson and Donelson back together. They talked to the Major, read all the letters the President had written to him, and then gave him the sensible advice to pack up his family and return to the White House “without further correspondence.” They wrote Jackson that they had given Donelson this advice and stated further that “we think there is no necessity for the specification of terms on one side or the other.” That this effort of the peacemakers was at length successful is shown by a single reference in one of Jackson’s letters to Coffee on September 6th: “Major Donelson and his little family reached here yesterday.”