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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

HENRY KNOX TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR. 1 - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


HENRY KNOX TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR.1

Boston, 5 August, 1798.

Sir,—

I have received your letter, dated on the 25th ultimo, informing me that the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, had been pleased to appoint me a Major-General in the army.

Impressed as I am with the conviction that our country is about to enter into a contest, in which its existence as an independent nation will be involved, I should promptly have accepted the appointment, however inconvenient to my private affairs, had not the following paragraph of your letter peculiarly arrested my notice.

“It may be proper to mention, that the nominations to the Senate, for general officers of the established and provisional army, were presented on the same day, and in the order in which they appear in the annexed list, and that, in registering them in this department, the same order will be observed.”

The names placed before mine in the list are those of Generals Hamilton and Pinckney.

It is to be presumed that you are not uninformed of the military precedence I sustained in the late war, relatively to those gentlemen.

General Hamilton was a Captain, in the year 1776, in the corps of artillery which I commanded, and in the latter part of the same year I had the rank of Brigadier-General. In 1777, he was appointed an Aid-de-camp to the Commander-in-chief, with the incidental rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, which was his highest grade. I was established a Major-General from November, 1781.

The precise state of General Pinckney’s rank is not at present recollected. He was a Colonel the greater part of the war, and obtained the rank of Brigadier-General either by actual appointment, or by virtue of the general resolve respecting brevet rank, in the year 1783.

It is, therefore, important, previously to my answering affirmatively or negatively, as to an acceptance, that you inform me on these points.

Whether the order of names, as specified in the list, is intended to establish the priority of rank? Or whether the former relative rank is intended to govern, according to the heretofore established principles and invariable practice? Those principles determine explicitly that all appointments, made in the same grade and on the same day, are to be governed by the former relative rank.

It is far from my intention to deny the perfect right of the Supreme Executive to direct the precedence of all officers in the same grade, in the manner he shall please. In such a case, however, it would be essential that the priority should be decidedly specified. For, if such specification should be wanting, no military tribunal would consider the order of names as a sufficient cause to destroy or reverse the former situations.

If the rules for deciding rank, founded upon the resolves or laws of Congress, under the confederation, and which have since continued to operate as a part of the military code, have been repealed or annulled, it would be acceptable to me to be informed by you when and by what authority the repeal was effected.

If these rules should be suspended or violated in the present instance, for a special purpose, the assertion is ventured that recourse must be had to them again, as the laws whereby to decide the ranks between officers of the same grade, who, under various circumstances of claim, may be brought into the army about to be raised.

Anxiously desirous of endeavoring to serve my country and its government in a cause altogether pure and just, I shall ever regret any circumstance which may oppose insurmountable obstacles to the measure, unless upon terms which would constantly excite sensations of public degradation.

I have the honor to be, &c.

H. Knox.

[1 ]This letter is inserted as essential to a complete view of the much disputed question of rank at this period.