"I have just a moment to spare to bid you farewell. We go on board in an hour or two, with a fair wind and everything ready. I understand that you have expressed a desire to withdraw from business, and I beg leave to assure you that every wish of mine, so far as it can be attended with any service, will be employed to make your resignation, should it be accepted, attended with every possible mark of honor which your long services and high character in life justly merit."* * He confides to Franklin a letter to be forwarded to Bury St. Edmunds, the region of his birth. Perhaps he had already been corresponding with some one there about his projected visit. Ten years later the Bury Post vigorously supported Paine and his "Rights of Man." They sailed from Brest on the French frigate _Resolve_ June 1st, reaching Boston August 25th, with 2,500,000 livres in silver, and in convoy a ship laden with clothing and military stores. The glad tidings had long before reached Washington, then at New Windsor. On May 14, 1781, the General writes to Philip Schuyler: "I have been exceedingly distressed by the repeated accounts I have received of the sufferings of the troops on the frontier, and the terrible consequences which must ensue unless they were speedily supplied. What gave a particular poignancy to the sting I felt on the occasion was my inability to afford relief." On May 26th his diary notes a letter from Laurens reporting the relief coming from France. The information was confided by Washington only to his diary, lest it should forestall efforts of self-help. Of course Washington knew that the starting of convoys from France could not escape English vigilance, and that their arrival was uncertain; so he passed near three months in preparations, reconnoitrings, discussions. By menacing the British in New York he made them draw away some of the forces of Cornwallis from Virginia, where he meant to strike; but his delay in marching south brought on him complaints from Governor Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and others, who did not know the secret of that delay. Washington meant to carry to Virginia an army well clad, with hard money in their pockets, and this he did. The arrival of the French supplies at Boston, August 25th, was quickly heralded, and while sixteen ox-teams were carrying them to Philadelphia, Washington was there getting, on their credit, all the money and supplies he wanted for the campaign that resulted in the surrender of Cornwallis.