Theodore Roosevelt wrote this resignation letter to the Mayor of New York, ceding his position as President of the New York Police Department, on 17 April 1897.
I herewith tender you my resignation to take effect on April 19th. in accordance with our understanding.
I wish to take this opportunity, sir, to thank you for appointing me,and to express my very deep appreciation of your attitude toward me, and toward the force, the direction of which you in part entrusted to my care. We have been very intimately associated with your work and I know, as all men who have been associated with you do know, the devotion with which you have given all of your time and all of your efforts to the betterment of our civic conditions, and the single mindedness with which at every crisis you have sought merely the good of the City. I have been able to work so zealously under you because you have never required of me but loyal service to what you conceived to be the best interest of New York City, and I well know that had I followed any other course it would have met with instant and sharp rebuke from you. (Read on.)