The immediate outcome of this controversy was to widen the rift which was already separating the President from the faction led by Hamilton. Adams had taken office in the belief that Washington's cabinet advisers were loyal to him. "Pickering and all his colleagues are as much attached to me as I desire," he had written just before his inauguration. But he speedily found that all were accustomed to look to Hamilton as the virtual leader of the Federalist party. Moreover, he found himself thrust into the background in the matter of military appointments, as soon as Hamilton took over the actual work of organizing the army. The Constitution made him commander-in-chief; circumstances seemed to conspire, he complained bitterly, "to annihilate the essential powers given to the President." He had, too, all the natural aversion of a civilian for military affairs. "Regiments are costly articles everywhere," he told McHenry testily, "and more so in this country than in any other under the sun. And if this country sees a great army to maintain, without an enemy to fight, there may arise an enthusiasm that seems to be little foreseen." It would have been strange, indeed, if under these circumstances the President had not scanned the horizon anxiously for the faintest intimations of peace. In October, 1798, definite assurances were given by Talleyrand, through our Minister at The Hague, that France would receive a new minister from the United States. On February 18, 1799, the President confounded both friends and foes by sending to the Senate the nomination of Vans Murray to be Minister to France. The emotions of the militant Federalists were too various to admit of description. It would have been madness, however, not to accept the proffered olive branch. Swallowing their wrath, they agreed to the mission, but substituted a commission of three for a single minister. From Napoleon, the new master of France, the commissioners secured a convention which not only restored peace, but safeguarded the rights of neutrals, by restraining the right of search and conceding the principle that free ships make free goods. Napoleon consented also to the abrogation of the treaties of 1778, but only upon condition that the new treaty should contain no provision for the settlement of claims for indemnity. John Adams was not far from the truth when he accounted this peace one of the most meritorious actions of his life. "I desire no other inscription over my gravestone," he wrote fifteen years later, "than: 'Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France in the year 1800.'" BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE