_Officers and brave Americans collectively_:
Permit me to request you will accept the warmest and most sincere
thanks of my heart, for the flattering testimonials of your
approbation of my conduct, with which you have honored me, and allow
me to assure you, that nothing can be more exquisitely gratifying
to my very best feeling, than the language in which you have been
pleased to convey this mark of your esteem. I feel convinced that
you will indulgently excuse me, if I find it impossible to command
words sufficiently emphatic, adequately to express the sentiments of
gratitude, with which I am penetrated, for this unexpected proof of
your regard; I must therefore allow my heart, rather than my pen, to
thank you. But it would not be doing justice to my feelings were I
to abstain from assuring you, that I have endeavored to perform my
duty towards you, with that self-devotedness which looks only for its
reward in its own consciousness of right, and its own secret sense
of virtue; and whatever difficulties I have had to encounter in the
discharge of my important trust, by struggling with a succession of
the most violent and exasperated epidemic diseases, perhaps ever
recorded in medical history, during the whole of my service among
you, the distinguished proof of your confidence, and approbation of
my professional labors, with which you this day have been pleased to
honor me, amply compensates me, and must rank amongst the proudest
and happiest events of my life. It now only remains for me, in this
plain, but unfeigned language, again to beg you will receive my most
sincere thanks; and to assure you, collectively, that a due and
lively sense of the high honor which you have conferred upon me,
shall, to the last moments of my existence, remain ingrafted in my
breast. And here allow me most sincerely to congratulate you on the
happy event which terminates your captivity, and which is soon to
restore you to the bosoms of your families and friends; and that you
may all enjoy peace and happiness, is the sincere wish of your most
grateful and much obliged humble servant,