[Secretary at War Petition of the received eletting * the S[undecipherable: Secretary] [undecipherable] all [undecipherable] 19[undecipherable] [undecipherable] on [undecipherable] [undecipherable]] Trenton 21 Sep^t. 1798 I have had the honour to recieve your letter of the 5th instant, for which I sincerely thank you. It has not only relieved me from some painful impressions, but affords me ground to expect, I shall be able, when I have the pleasure of again seeing you, to satisfy you more fully that I acted, in no particular whatever, the line pointed out to me by your instructions. Having acted both towards you and Genl Washington, through the whole of this business, with the utmost candor, I feel my position at this moment peculiarly distressing. I thought it necessary to apprise General Washington, in a private letter on the 10th instant, that it seemed to be the President's opinion, that legally considered, and as things were situated at present, it would be proper to arrange the relative rank of Genl's Hamilton, Pinckney & Knox, according to the rank they respectively held in the revolutionary army, and that it appeared to me probable such might be your final determination. To this the General has answered in an unofficial letter dated the 16 instant. "I can perceive pretty clearly, that the matter is, or very soon will be brought to the alternative of submitting to the President's forgetfulness of what I considered a compact, or condition of acceptance of the appointment, with which he was pleased to honour me, or to return him my commission, and as that compact was ultimately and at the time declared to him through you; in your letter written from this place, and the strong part of it inserted after it was first drawn, at my request, to avoid mis-conception, I conceive I have a right and accordingly ask to be furnished with a copy of it." "You will recollect too, that my acceptance being conditional, I requested you to take the commission back, that it might be restored or annulled according to the President's determination, to accept or reject the terms on which I had offered to serve; and that but for your assuring me, that it would make no difference whether I retained or returned it, and conceiving that the latter might be considered as an evidence of distrust, I would have been done. Subsequent events shew, that it would have been a measure of utility, for though the case in principle, is the same, yet such a moment of the fact could not so easily have been forgotten." You will, Sir, I am sure feel for the situation in which I am placed, between your conceptions and General Washington's. I have, as I said before, acted in every step of this business with the utmost candor, and cannot keep retaining a hope, that you will upon a review of all circumstances, give your assent to this arrangement. I have the honour to be with the most respectful attachment Sir. your most ob^t V^t James McHenry John Adams Es^q President of the United States.