rejection of the offers.

On the 2d of May, that is, eleven days after the above rejection was
made, the treaty between the United States and France arrived at
York-Town; and until this moment Congress had not the least notice or
idea, that such a measure was in any train of execution. But lest this
declaration of mine should pass only for assertion, I shall support it
by proof, for it is material to the character and principle of the
revolution to shew, that no condition of America, since the
declaration of independence, however trying and severe, ever operated
to produce the most distant idea of yielding it up either by force,
distress, artifice, or persuasion. And this proof is the more
necessary, because it was the system of the British ministry at this
time, as well as before and since, to hold out to the European powers
that America was unfixt in her resolutions and policy; hoping by this
artifice to lessen her reputation in Europe, and weaken the confidence
which those powers, or any of them, might be inclined to place in her.

At the time these matters were transacting, I was Secretary to the
Foreign Department of Congress. All the political letters from the
American Commissioners rested in my hands, and all that were
officially written went from my office; and so far from Congress
knowing anything of the signing the treaty, at the time they rejected
the British offers, they had not received a line of information from
their Commissioners at Paris on any subject whatever for upwards of a
twelvemonth. Probably the loss of the port of Philadelphia, and the
navigation of the Delaware, together with the danger of the seas,
covered at this time with British cruizers, contributed to the
disappointment.