strengthen the Army by placing in the ranks persons fit for active serviice, and whose places can be supplied by others unable to do duty in the field. On reference of the subject, however, to the Secretary of War, it has been found that this act could not be executed without seriously impairing our ability to supply the armies in the field during the approaching campaign, and that its operation would be to drop officers who have been carefully selected by reason of their superior capacity and qualifications, while retaining others of inferior merit and value.

The difficulty of furnishing supplies to the Army, owing to embarrassments in transportation, is greater now than it has been at any previous period of the war. This difficulty has prompted the selection for that duty of the best and most active and competent officers in the Quartermaster's and Commissary Departments, and such officers have within the last six months been in many instances withdrawn from the armies where their services were less important, and assigned to duty in purchasing, collecting, and forwarding supplies. This fact was, I feel confident, not known to Congress when the act was passed; and it could not have been intended to drop from service officers of special merit and retain others of inferior value. I am also satisfied, from the report made to me by the Secretary of War, that the number of officers who would be dropped under the provisions of this law is far less than is supposed; that their value as soldiers in the ranks would in no manner compensate for the loss of their services in their present position. The total number of post and purchasing commissaries in the States east of the Mississippi River is but 212, of whom many are either over forty-five years of age, or otherwise exempt from the operations of the proposed law. The total number of quartermasters collecting taxes in kind is 96, and on post duty 223, including officers in charge of manufactures of clothing, shoes, harness, wagons, ambulances, & c. A number of them are over forty-five years of age, others would not be embraced by the terms of the act, others still have special qualifications for the superintendence of the important manufactures confided to their care.

Taken altogether, it is doubted whether the officers who would be dropped under the provisions of the bill would exceed 200 in number, of whom 50 would go into the ranks in two months, 50 in four months, and 50 more in six months. This scarcely appreciable addition to the force in the field would be dearly bought at the sacrifice of efficiency in the two branches of service on which the very existence of the Army depends. The terms of the act exempt from its operation those now on duty in the field, so that if it becomes a law it would not even be possible to avert the loss of the best officers by returning them to duty in the field, and dropping others of inferior merit. The Secretary of War is left without discretion or choice in the matter.

The heads of the two branches of service affected by this act apprehend great embarrassment to their respective departments if it becomes a law. The machinery now organized would be impaired in its workings everywhere, and in some instances positively interrupted just at the opening of the most important campaign. Valuable and experienced officers would be withdrawn from service. Chief commissaries long accustomed to control operations in an entire State, quartermasters thoroughly informed as to the resources of their respective fields of duty, would at short intervals be dropped, and