Within two weeks’ time from the date of that cordial letter, Cornwallis surrendered his army, the war of the Revolution had been fought to a finish and the military life of Daniel Morgan was ended. To his estate in Clarke County, Virginia, which he proudly called “Saratoga,” he now retired; and there he spent his declining days. For two years, in obedience to the call of his people, he served them in the Congress of the nation; but, as he had been most warlike in time of war, in time of peace he preferred the quiet shades of private life. On the sixth day of July in the year 1802, in about the sixty-seventh year of his age, he passed out at Winchester, in Virginia, and there lies his dust in an humble grave. Mr. President, the dust of Daniel Morgan is noble dust. Saving alone those of the commander-in-chief, his services to his struggling country are the most remarkable in the annals of the war. From the valley of the Hockhocking in 1774, he pledged himself to the services of his brethren of Boston and marched his riflemen six hundred miles to their relief. Into the hardships of the Canadian Campaign he led the van; and three times before Quebec he guided his men to the fire-fringed heights with the courage of a demi-god. To him belongs the chief glory of Burgoyne’s surrender; and at the Cowpens he won what Bancroft affirms was “the most astonishing victory of the war.” His life was a succession of sacrifices for his country. Measure his services as you may—in number, in value, or in brilliancy—they are not surpassed by those of any officer of the Revolution, saving always the unapproachable Washington. In fifty contests with the enemy he participated—eight of them being general engagements—and in those in which he was charged with the responsibility of command, he was either successful or achieved results which were equivalent thereto. His patriotism was proof against British allurements when he was a ragged prisoner of war; and his sense of honor repelled the temptations of a superior brother-officer in the hour of victorious exultation. Into every danger where wartime duty called him, he “fought a good fight”; in spite of every wile of the seducer, “he kept the faith”; into the quietude of private life he carried the praises of the whole army and the plaudits of the civil representatives of his country. But he did not escape calumny. He paid the inevitable penalty which success entails, and paid it with the smile of scorn and the noble silence of conscious rectitude. The American people, as yet, have no Madeleine, no Valhalla, no Westminster, wherein repose the ashes of their mighty dead. But when that national mausoleum comes, as come it ought and come it will, to it in some future generation the dust of Daniel Morgan will be tenderly borne and in honor inurned beneath its vaulted halls. Meantime, he sleeps yonder at Winchester amidst the lovely hills of Old Virginia, and, “in honored rest,” sleeps well well—