In November I resigned my commission, and before it was accepted went to Alexandria, where my regiment then lay. I asked the officers to meet me and explained the cause of my being forced to resign. I was surprised to find that my resolution, which all admitted to be reasonable, met with the most flattering opposition. Indeed, I received soon after a letter from these gentlemen in which, with much more, they said: We, your obedient and affectionate officers, beg leave to express our great concern at the marked disagreeable news we have received of your determination to resign the command of the corps. Your steady adherence to impartial justice, your quick discernment and invariable regard to merit, enlivened our natural emulation to excel. As this letter lies before me and I think of the emotion it caused me, I still like to remember that at the close they spoke of me as “one who taught them to despise danger and to think lightly of toil and hardships while led by a man they knew and loved.” I have been spoken of as wanting in sensibility. If it had been said I lacked means to show what I feel, that were to put the matter more correctly. Even now the recollection of the praise thus given moves me deeply, and recalls the memory of my farewell to those who served with me in the War of Independency. I was but twenty-three when I left the colonial service. I did so with much reluctance, for my desire was not to leave the military line, as my inclinations were still strongly bent to arms, and of this I assured Colonel Fitzhugh very plainly when he would have had me submit to return to service in the inferiour grade of captain. I preferred my farm to submitting to this degradation. Among the minor matters which, by degrees, discontented even the most loyal of the upper class of Virginia gentlemen, none was more ill borne than the impertinence and insults to which this order of the King gave rise. Having thus, with much regret, resigned my commission, I retired to private life at Mount Vernon and to the care of my neglected plantations. As we had left two hostages, Van Braam and Stobo, in the hands of the French after my defeat at the Meadows, I was anxious that La Force and the French officers we held should be treated with decency and exchanged for my two captains.