But, in the autumn of the next year, 1782, Congress receiving assurances
that a general peace would be concluded in the winter and spring, they
renewed my appointment on the 13th of November of that year. I had, two
months before that, lost the cherished companion of my life, in whose
affections, unabated on both sides, I had lived the last ten years in
unchequered happiness. With the public interests, the state of my mind
concurred in recommending the change of scene proposed; and I accepted
the appointment, and left Monticello on the 19th of December, 1782,
for Philadelphia, where I arrived on the 27th. The Minister of France,
Luzerne, offered me a passage in the Romulus frigate, which I accepted;
but she was then lying a few miles below Baltimore, blocked up in the
ice. I remained, therefore, a month in Philadelphia, looking over the
papers in the office of State, in order to possess myself of the general
state of our foreign relations, and then went to Baltimore, to await
the liberation of the frigate from the ice. After waiting there nearly
a month, we received information that a Provisional treaty of peace
had been signed by our Commissioners on the 3rd of September, 1782, to
become absolute, on the conclusion of peace between France and Great
Britain. Considering my proceeding to Europe as now of no utility to the
public, I returned immediately to Philadelphia, to take the orders of
Congress, and was excused by them from further proceeding. I therefore
returned home, where I arrived on the 15th of May, 1783.

* His ostensible character was to be that of a merchant, his
real one that of agent for military supplies, and also for
sounding the dispositions of the government of France, and
seeing how far they would favor us, either secretly or
openly. His appointment had been by the Committee of Foreign
Correspondence, March, 1776.