Tears blinded his eyes, and he could say no more. One after another, these heroic men grasped his hand in parting. Not a word was spoken. Slowly he journeyed towards Mount Vernon. At every city and village he was greeted with the highest tokens of love and veneration. On the 23d of December he met the Continental Congress at Annapolis. Resigning his commission, he said: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to thy 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.” Soon a convention was held in Philadelphia to organize the Confederacy of States into a nation. Essentially the present Constitution was formed. By the unanimous voice of the electors, Washington was chosen first President of the United States. He was inaugurated on the 30th of April, 1789. Holding the office two terms of four years each, he retired again in 1796, to the peaceful shades of Mount Vernon. In his farewell address he bequeathed to his countrymen a graceful legacy of patriotic counsel which ever has and ever will excite their profound admiration. Washington, having inherited a large landed estate in Virginia, was, as a matter of course, a slaveholder. The whole number which he held at the time of his death was one hundred and twenty-four. The system met his strong disapproval. In 1786, he wrote to Robert Morris, saying: “There is no man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.” Lafayette, that true friend of popular rights, was extremely anxious to free our country from the reproach which slavery brought upon it. Washington wrote to him in 1788: “The scheme, my dear marquis, which you propose as a precedent to encourage the emancipation of the black people of this country from the state of bondage in which they are held, is a striking evidence of the state of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work.” In his last will and testament, he inscribed these noble words: “Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their mixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the most painful sensation, if not disagreeable consequences, from the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor; it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the dower negroes are held, to manumit them.” Long before this he had recorded his resolve. “I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.”