ANSWER.
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,
GEO. MAGRATH.
Dartmoor, March 30, 1815.
Dartmoor Prison, April 9th, 1815.
To His Excellency John Q. Adams.
Sir: