Note 1 — Chapter VII · GEORGE WASHINGTON (continued 2)

[Footnote 1: (return) The charge in the pamphlet purporting to give an account of the trial of the New York conspirators in 1776 is of such doubtful origin and character that it hardly merits consideration, and the only other allusion is in the well-known intercepted letter of Harrison, which is of doubtful authenticity in certain passages, open to suspicion from having been intercepted and published by the enemy and quite likely to have been at best merely a coarse jest of a character very common at that period and entirely in keeping with the notorious habits of life and speech peculiar to the writer. (See Life of John Adams, iii. 35.)]