"We congratulate the public upon the prospect of Mr. Gideon's edition of The Federalist, which promises to be the most perfect and satisfactory that the American people have yet seen of that valuable production."
To these articles, on Tuesday, the seventeenth of February, 1818, Mr. Coleman replied through the columns of The New York Evening Post, in which he admitted that the literary reputation of neither Mr. Madison nor General Hamilton rested "on the precise numbers of The Federalist that each wrote;" and "that the recollections of both may have been so imperfect as to have very innocently erred as to a particular paper, or two or three papers; but with regard to so great a number as twelve, stated by Hamilton to have been written by him, but now claimed by Mr. Madison, he felt himself compelled to say he was utterly unable to devise any satisfactory solution, that will be consistent with the honor of both gentlemen." At the same time he expressed his continued confidence in General Hamilton's statements; and contrasted that gentleman's character for veracity with that of Mr. Madison, in doing which he denounced the latter in the most bitter terms. As he had done some months before, however, when "Corrector" opposed him, Mr. Coleman saw fit to withdraw from the controversy which he had provoked by his threatened denunciation of Mr. Gideon, and expressed his willingness to rest the dispute there, purposely avoiding, to that end, the use of any language which might give fresh occasion to prolong a controversy, which, he feared, could never be settled to the entire satisfaction of all parties.
Notwithstanding this second unmanly withdrawal from the face of an opponent who appeared to be a match for him, another article, from the same pen, on
