Sir,
Since it has been our good fortune to be placed under your charge, such has been the kindness of your treatment, we beg you to allow us the present privilege of reciprocating that kindness so far as this humble testimonial of our hearts' offering can do.
Your magnanimity of heart, as well as experience in the world, rightly estimates the situation and feelings of the brave, who, through the fortune of war, become prisoners in a foreign land. Such has been our fortune. In duty to our own, we entered your country as political enemies, and manfully performed that duty. Your conduct, and that of [140] other Mexican officers, governed by the highest principles of moral bravery, does more in winning our admiration and affections, and in bringing about a right understanding between our respective nations, than the carnage of a thousand battles.
In leaving your hospitable roof on our progress to the capital, we beg to tender you and your amiable family our warmest gratitude, with our hearts' best wishes that you may continue to enjoy many years of felicity in the exercise of that domestic happiness, of which, dear sir, you are so pre-eminent an example.
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