eager to have him take control of the disordered country as
Cromwell had done in England a little more than a century before.
With the army at his back, and supported by the great forces
which, in every community, desire order before everything else,
and are ready to assent to any arrangement which will bring peace
and quiet, nothing would have been easier than for Washington to
have made himself the ruler of the new nation. But that was not
his conception of duty, and he not only refused to have anything
to do with such a movement himself, but he repressed, by his
dominant personal influence, all such intentions on the part of
the army. On the 23d of December, 1783, he met the Congress at
Annapolis, and there resigned his commission. What he then said
is one of the two most memorable speeches ever made in the United
States, and is also memorable for its meaning and spirit among
all speeches ever made by men. He spoke as follows:

Mr. President:--The great events on which my resignation depended
having at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my
sincere congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself
before them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to
me and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my
country.

Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignity
and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of
becoming a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the
appointment I accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my
abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, was
superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the
support of the supreme power of the Union, and the patronage of