Qualifications of Aides and Secretaries, Etc.: Page #3

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application for office and such other matters as are incidental to my late appointment.

The motives to this question are explained; the necessity I conceive is apparent but as I have placed my own services pay and [illegible] upon contingencies which may happen sooner or later, or never, you are to decide and will accordingly advise whether a Secretary can be appointed previously to this event, with the pay and forage allowance annexed to the office or not.

You will not have transmitted you the half-perhaps not a tenth part of the applications which are made to me. It may be taken for granted therefore that all who appear to you under my auspices are such as I am either personally acquainted with - know their families - or am satisfied with the recommendation they bring.

Your answers to Mr Caton and Judge Chase were judicious and proper - Of the propriety of remaining perfectly free from all engagements respecting my aids, I am more and more convinced as the applications increase and the little knowledge displayed of the qualifications which the aids of the Commander in Chief right to possess is discovered by the applicants. The variegated and important duties of the aid to the Commander in Chief or Commander of a separate Army require experienced officers - men of judgment - and men of business - ready pen to execute them properly and with dispatch. A great deal more is required of them than attending him at a parade or delivering verbal order, here and