[BOSTON postmark] [undecipherable] The honorable The Secretary of War Philadelphia Boston Aug^t 5^th 1798 [109] Sir, I have received your letter dated on the 25^th [ultimo] informing me that the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate had been pleased to appoint me a Major General in the army. Impressed as I am with the conviction that our country is about to enter into a contest, in which its existence, as an independent Nation, will be involved I should promptly have accepted the appointment, however inconvenient to my private affairs had not the following paragraph of your letter peculiarly attracted my notice. "It may be proper to mention that the nomination to the Senate for general officers, of the established and [undecipherable] army were presented on the same day and in the order in which they appear in the annexed list and in registering them in this department the same order must be observed." The names placed before mine on the list are those of Generals Hamilton and Pinckney. It is to be presumed that you are not uninformed of the military precedence I sustained in the late War relatively to those Gentlemen. Gen^l Hamilton was a Captain in the year 1776 in the Corps of Artillery which I commanded, and in the latter part of the same year I had the rank of Brigadier General. In 1777 He was appointed an aid de camp to the Commander in chief with the incidental rank of L^t Colonel which was his highest grade — I was established a Major General from Nov^r 1781. The precise state of General Pinckney's rank is not, at present, recollected. He was a Colonel the greater part of the War and obtained the rank of Brigadier General, either by actual appointment or by virtue of the general resolve respecting brevet rank in the Year 1783. It is therefore important, necessarily to my answering affirmatively or negatively as to an acceptance, that you inform me on these points — Whether the order of names as specified in the list is intended to establish the priority of rank? Or whether the former relative rank is intended to govern according to the heretofore established principles and invariable practice? — Those principles determine explicitly that all appointments made in the same grade and on same day are to be governed by the former relative rank. It is far from my intention to deny the perfect right of the Supreme Executive to direct the precedence of all officers in the same grade, in the manner he shall please. On such a case however, it would be expected that the priority charge be decidedly specified. For if such specification should be wanting, no military tribunal would consider the order of names a sufficient cause to destroy, or reverse the former relative situations. If the rules for deciding rank founded upon the resolves or laws of Congress, under the confederation and which have been continued to operate as a part of the military code, have been repealed or annulled, it would be acceptable to me to be informed by you, when, and by what authority the repeal was effected. If those rules should be suspended or violated in the present instance, for a special purpose, the attention is ventured, that recourse must be had to them again as the laws whereby to decide the ranks between officers of the same grades, who under various circumstances of claims, may be brought into the army about to be raised. Anxiously desirous of endeavouring to serve my country and its government in a cause altogether pure and just, I shall ever regret any circumstances which may oppose insurmountable obstacles to the measure, unless upon terms which would constantly excite sensations of public degradation. I have the honor to be in with Consideration Your humble Serv^t Knox The Hon^ble The Secretary of War