The first important movement in this conspiracy was the sending of anonymous letters to the president of Congress, and to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia. These letters were filled with complaints, insinuations, and exaggerated statements, ascribing the misfortunes of the army to the incapacity or ill-timed policy of the commander-in-chief. Similar letters were sent to different members of Congress, and, it is believed, to the presiding officers of some of the state Legislatures. Washington was early apprised of these secret machinations, but a patriotic jealousy of the public good made him suffer in silence. "My enemies," he said, in a letter to the president of Congress, when the matter became the subject of correspondence, "take an ungenerous advantage of me. They know the delicacy of my situation, and that motives of policy deprive me of the defense I might otherwise make against their insidious attacks. They know I can not combat their insinuations, however injurious, without disclosing secrets which it is of the utmost moment to conceal." [[1777]] Early in November, the affair was presented to Washington in a definite shape. When Colonel Wilkinson was on his way to Congress (then in session at York, in Pennsylvania) from Saratoga, with Gates's dispatches, announcing the surrender of Burgoyne, he stopped at the quarters of Lord Stirling, at Reading, and in the course of conversation while there, he repeated to Major M'Williams, Stirling's aid-de-camp, a part of the contents of a letter which Gates had received from Conway, containing strictures on the management of the army under Washington, accompanied by reflections disparaging to the chief. * Lord Stirling, prompted by a sense of duty, communicated to Washington the extracts from Conway's letter, as repeated by Wilkinson. A correspondence between Washington, Gates, and Conway followed. Gates affected to be greatly distressed, and conjured Washington to aid him in discovering the villain who had betrayed his confidence in repeating the substance of private letters. Afterward he denied the genuineness of the extract, and called it "a wicked and malicious forgery;" This assertion compromised the veracity of Wilkinson, who wrote to General Washington, indignantly repelling the ungenerous accusation of Gates, and affirming that he had truly given to Lord Stirling's aid the substance of Conway's letter. ** Notwithstanding Gates denied the truth of the extract, he never fortified his assertion by producing the original. This fact, and other things of like tenor, which proved the duplicity of Gates, were severely commented upon by Washington, in reply to an explanatory letter from the former. Conway's offensive letter was afterward seen by Mr. Laurens, president of Congress, and one or two others. The words were not * One of Conway's expressions was, "Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it."