and the assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest.

“While I repeat my obligations to the army in general, I should do injustice to my own feelings not to acknowledge in this place, the peculiar services and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who have been attached to my person during the war.  It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to compose my family should have been more fortunate.  Permit me, sir, to recommend in particular, those who have continued in the service to the present moment, as worthy of the favorable notice and patronage of Congress.

“I consider it as an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest country, to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to his holy keeping.

“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”

After advancing to the chair, and delivering his commission to the President, he returned to his place, and received standing, the answer of Congress which was delivered by the President.  In the course of his remarks, General Mifflin said: 

“Having defended the standard of liberty in this new world:  having taught a new lesson useful to those who inflict, and to those who feel oppression, you retire from the great theatre of action, with the blessings of your fellow citizens; but the glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command:  it will continue to animate remotest ages."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Marshall, IV, 563.]

The meeting then broke up, and Washington departed.  He went that same afternoon to Virginia and reached Mount Vernon in the evening.  We can imagine with what satisfaction and gratitude he, to whom home was the dearest place in the world, returned to the home he had seen only once by chance since the beginning of the Revolution, eight years before.  Probably few of those who had risen to the highest station in their country said, and felt more honestly, that they were grateful at being allowed by Fate to retire from office, than did Washington.  To be relieved of responsibility, free from the hourly spur, day and night, of planning and carrying out, of trying to find food for starving soldiers, of leading forlorn hopes against the truculent enemy, must have seemed to the weary and war-worn General like a call from the Hesperides.  Men of his iron nature, and of his capacity for work and joy in it, do not, of course, really delight in idleness.  They may think that they crave idleness, but in reality they crave the power of going on.