The assembly considered the offer put forward by Congress and rejected it on October 16, but it agreed to consider negotiations over its boundaries. Pro-British factions in Vermont had not done well in the election, and news of a French naval victory on the Chesapeake had dampened Loyalist sentiment. By mid-November news of Charles Cornwallis's surrender of his army at Yorktown arrived, and St. Leger returned to Quebec. Haldimand, who believed that the negotiations were conducted in good faith, and some Vermonters continued to correspond through the winter, but with the British in a weak position, and Vermont in a position that appeared strong, nothing of substance came of the exchange.