times. On May 4, 1781,
the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army recorded in his diary: "A
letter from the Marq^s de la Fayette, dated at Alexandria on the 23rd,
mentioned his having commenced his march that day for Fredericksburg"--that
desertion had ceased, and that his detachment was in good spirits.[46]
High morale and grand strategy brought victory for the Continental cause
that October. Something like thirty-odd officers of the Revolution lived
in or near Alexandria, or came to live here after the war. Sixteen of them
became members of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which Washington was
President General.

The Peace of 1783 revived strangulated commerce and construction. The
harbor came to life. The brickmason and the carpenter took up their
tools. Wheat and tobacco rolled in to fill again the empty warehouses.
The citizens were gay and indulged themselves in festivities, as witness
an old letter written from Alexandria on February 13, 1787:

Last Evening there was an elegant Ball in this Town, being the
anniversary of General Washington's birth. No less than fifty Ladies
elegantly dressed graced the Ball Room, tho the mud in our
intolerable Streets was up to the Knees in Shoes (rather Boots) &
Stockings.

Mr. Jenckes attended--says the Ball was agreeable for one so
numerous. He has formed considerable acquaintances with the ladies,
who are very agreeable but in general they talk rather too broad
Irish for him.[47]

Brissot de Warville, who visited America in 1788, was impressed by the
possibilities of Alexandria:

... where thirty or forty years ago there were only one or two
houses, is now indeed smaller than Baltimore, but plans to surpass
her. She is already quite as irregular in construction and as muddy.
But there is more luxury evident at Alexandria, if a miserable
luxury; you see servants in silk stockings, and their masters in
boots.

At the end of the war the people of Alexandria imagined that the
natural advantages of their situation, the salubrity of the air, the
depth of the river channel and the safety of the harbour which can
accomodate the largest ships and permit them to anchor close to the
wharves, must unite with the richness of the back country to make
their town the center of a large commerce. In consequence they are
building on all sides, they have set up superb wharves and raised
vast warehouses.

At th