volunteers compensation for their services, I have the honor to say, in reply to the first branch of the inquiry, that commissioners have been appointed in the States of Maryland and Delaware, and that in the other slave States, by the President's direction, no appointments have yet been made.

In answer to the second branch of the resolution, I have the honor to state that the amount of the commutation fund is reported by the provost-marshal to be $12,170,663.45, a portion of which has been assigned for the payment of bounties required in raising new troops. It is believed, however, that there will be sufficient to pay to the owners of slaves the sum allowed by the act of Congress.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

DAVENPORT, IOWA, January 25, 1865.

SECRETARY OF WAR:

I ask that proper orders anew be issued to prevent recruiting officers, agents, substitute brokers, or anything of the kind enlisting Iowa men for other States. The order should be general for all States.

N. B. BAKER,

Adjutant-General of Iowa.

EXECUTIVE CHAMBER,

Harrisburg, January 25, 1865.

The PRESIDENT:

SIR: The act of the 3rd of March, 1863, commonly called the Enrollment Act, provided (section 4) that for the purposes of the act each Congressional district of the respective States should form a district, and (section 11) that all persons enrolled should be subject to be called into the military service of the United States, and to continue in service during the present rebellion, not, however, exceeding the term of three years; and further (section 12), that in assigning to the districts the number of men furnished therefrom the President should take into consideration the number of volunteers and militia furnished by and from the several States in which said districts were situated, and the period of their service since the commencement of the rebellion, and should so make said assignments as to equalize the numbers among the districts of the several States, considering and allowing for the numbers already furnished, as aforesaid, and the time of their service.

The time of actual service which, by this act, you were directed to consider and allow for could not, without impracticable labor or, indeed, at all, be fixed with exactitude for each district, but it could easily have been so approximated by averages that little if any practical injustice would have been done.

The commencement of the third year of the war was close at hand at the time of the passage of the act. It would not have been difficult to ascertain, of 1,000 men enlisted for three years, what was the average number that remained actually in the service at the end of the first and second years, respectively, and thus the act could have been substantially complied with. For instance, suppose it to have been found that 1,000 men enlisted for three years, there remained in the service an average of 40 per cent. at the close of the first year and 20