the homage of my grateful acknowledgments. The credit is theirs, for without their experience and cordial co-operative efforts not all the powers of the Government combined could have wrought so favorable a solution of a difficult problem.

It becomes my duty also notice here, in most favorable terms, the valued services of the officers and clerks connected immediately with this office. They appreciated the emergency and bent themselves to the difficult work which, for a time, pressed upon the office with almost overwhelming weight. With payments simultaneously progressing at sixty different points, widely separated, which the necessity of keeping each one supplied with funds from day to day, and a necessity also that each should have no more than required for immediate disbursement-drawing from the Treasury at the rate or $20,000,000 per week and compelled to make close estimate and careful watch of its daily distribution, so that the demand at each given points should be surely supplied and yet no more that supplied; telegrams and letters continually pouring ion noting the movement and destination of troops, and repeating these notice to the proper points of rendezvous; applications and appeals constantly arriving requiring immediate answers; new questions arising and referred to this office for instructions, &c.-kept our thoughts, our pens, our press, and the telegraph in constant requisition by day and by night. Mid all this I am happy to bear testimony that every one labored with cheerful alacrity-in some instances, indeed, during the heated season, even beyond their strength. It may be said of these, as I have said of the ;paymasters in the field-but for their willing efforts, rendered with self-denying devotion, the work could not have been a success.

The unstinted facilities extended, sir, by your authority and orders, in the free use of the military telegraph, the printing press, and all other agencies that could be profitably applied to the end, together with the liberal confidence which you were pleased to repose in this office, leaving to it an almost unrestricted discretion to manage, without hindrance, its own details; your concurrence in and support of its acts and orders- these reveal the vital secret of a result so favorable.

I cannot close this branch of my subject without a grateful expression of indebtedness to the officers of the Treasury Department for the courteous and zealous attention with which, during the trying exigency, they always entertained the importunate demands of this office. What often seemed as hopeless impossibilities obstructing the financial path were, by their fervent efforts, readily dispelled, and thus all our requisition were met with most satisfactory promptness. At the date of my last annual report, besides the small number of officers constituting the Pay Department of the Regular Army (and which is without casualty or charge since), there were in the service 409 additional paymaster, contingent appointments under the law of July, 1838. Afterward, up to March 3, 38 others were appointed and confirmed, making a total of 447, accounted as follows: Resigned, 89; commission declined, 4; appointments canceled, 21; dropped, 2; died of disease, 5; lost at sea, 1; killed by guerrillas, 2; died while prisoner of war, 1; mustered out, 111; total casualties, 237; remaining in service, 210.

This reduction may still continue, following with even pace, as their service can be spared and their accounts be rendered, the progress of the reduction of the Army.