Mrs. Gerry and the ladies join me in sincere regards to yourself,
your lady, Colonel and Mrs. Smith, and be assured I remain, etc.

E. GERRY.

So slow was the movement of news in those days, and so doubtful, even
after the election, were all men as to its results, Adams would not
start from Braintree, his home, till he knew he was elected, nor
Washington from Mt. Vernon. Charles Thompson, the Secretary of the old
Congress, arrived at Mt. Vernon on the fourteenth of April and
communicated to Washington the news of his election. No quorum of the
House of Representatives had been formed until the first of April, nor
of the Senate until the sixth. These bodies then counted the electoral
vote, with the result predicted by Gerry in his letter written two days
before.

Washington waited a day before starting to the seat of Government. On
the sixteenth of April he started for New York. He writes in his diary:

About ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life and
to domestic felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious
and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for
New York in company with Mr. Thompson and Colonel Humphries, with
the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience
to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations.

The journey began with a public dinner at Alexandria. Said the
gentlemen of Alexandria in their address to him:

Farewell!... Go!... and make a grateful people happy, a people who