[undecipherable] Belfast aug[undecipherable] [109] S[ept] 21^st — 79 Sir, [I] have rec[eive]d your letter dated on the 25^th [undecipherable] to inform 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. Under a persuasion [in] the communication that my country is about to enter into a considerable [undecipherable] its [undecipherable] as an independent [nation] with the [undecipherable]. I should promptly have accepted the appointment, however circumstances to my private affairs had not that the following paragraph of your letter peculiarly attracted my attention — "It may be proper to mention that the nomination to the Senate for General officers of the established and incorporated in the same and in the order in which they appear in the [act] and in registering them in this department the same order will 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 unin- formed of the military precedence I sustained in the late War relatively to those Gentlemen. Genl 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 — &d was established a Major General from [part] N^o 81. The precise state of General Pinckney's rank is not at present recollected. He was a colonel the latter part of the [war] and the [undecipherable] appointment as Brigadier General, [in] the [undecipherable] appointment a [undecipherable] by virtue of the [general] [undecipherable] respecting brevet rank in the year 1783. It is therefore important, eminently to my own [undecipherable] affirmatively or negatively as [undecipherable] answer relative, 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 is it that the former relative rank is intended to govern according to the heretofore established principles and immovable practice? — These principles declare more explicitly that all appointments made [in] [underline: the same grade and on same day] are to be governed [by] prior former relative rank. [I] cannot [have] my intention to deny the just rights of the supreme [Executive] to direct the precedence of all officers in the same grade in the manner he shall please to such [undecipherable] by [undecipherable] [undecipherable]. For if such [undecipherable] should be wanting, no military tribunal [can] consider the order of names a sufficient cause to [alter], or reverse the former relative [situation]. If the rules for awarding rank founded upon the resolves or laws of Congress, under the confederation and which have since continued — [prac-] 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 these rules should be suspended or [waived] in the present instance, for a special purpose, [the question 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 cir- cumstances of claims, may be brought into [those] about to be raised. Anxiously desirous of endeavoring 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 con- stantly create sensations of public degradation. I have the honor to be Sir with the Consideration [Your] humble serv^t Signed H Knox The Honorable The Secretary of War