Your Excellency’s late happy return to this City, after so much personal hazard and eminent service is an event, upon which the Militia Officers of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia cannot possibly be silent.

It has been reserved for your Excellency to unite in the most eminent degree the Characters, of the Citizen and the Soldier, and exhibit a new and glorious spectacle in the annals of Mankind: The Hero and deliverer of his Country retiring in the zenith of glory and power to the shade of private life—Such virtue Heaven only can reward.

We look back on those hours in which we were honoured with your Excellency’s commands in our occasional military services, as the most pleasing of our lives, and cannot form a wish more expressive of our gratitude and affection, than that your Excellency’s future life may be as happy, as your former has been useful and glorious. In behalf of the Militia Officers