After his release, Hall continued his activities. He began to travel around the United States, ostensibly on vacation but gathering support to replace Dennis as the general secretary. He accused the general secretary Dennis of cowardice for not going underground as ordered in 1951 and also claimed Dennis had used funds reserved for the underground for his own purposes. Hall's rise to the position of general secretary was generally unexpected by the American Communist circles (the post was expected to go to either Henry Winston or Gil Green, both important figures in the YCL) although Hall had held the office of acting general secretary briefly in the early 1950s during Dennis's arrest. In 1959, Hall was elected CPUSA general secretary and afterward received the Order of Lenin.