Prior to the act of the 5th of July, 1838, last quoted, the assistant quartermasters were selected from the several regiments of the line to perform duty in the Quartermaster's Department. They were never commissioned in the Department; they merely received letters of appointment as assistant quartermasters, and were allowed the additional pay provided by the act of the 2d March, 1821, and 16th May, 1826. They held no rank in the Department separate from their rank in the line, and were liable to be returned to their regiments according to the wants of the service or at the pleasure of the President. In completing the organization of the Department provided by the act of 5th July. 1838, several officers were selected from regiments for appointment as assistant quartermasters whose lineal rank was greater than that held by the assistant quartermasters then doing duty in the Department, and on the 7th of July, the list being nearly completed, it was submitted to the Senate for confirmation. All the assistant quartermasters thus submitted to the Senate were confirmed to take rank from the 7th of July, and in the order they were nominated, which was according to their seniority in the line and agreeably to what was conceived to be the intention of the law. Had the opposite course been pursued, the lieutenants serving in the Department must either have outranked some of the captains selected or else the selections must have been confined altogether to the subaltern officers of the Army. It will appear, therefore, that the relative rank of these officers has been properly settled, both by a fair construction of the law and the long-established regulation of the service which requires that "in cases where commissions of the same grade and date interfere a retrospect is to be had to former commissions in actual service at the time of appointment." But as several of the assistant quartermasters who were doing duty in the Department prior to the act of the 5th of July, 1838, have felt themselves aggrieved by this construction of the law, and have urged a consideration of their claims to priority of rank, I have felt it my duty to lay their communications before you, with a view to their being submitted to the Senate with the accompanying list,[55] should you think proper to do so. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your most obedient servant, J.R. POINSETT. [Footnote 55: Omitted.] WASHINGTON, _December 17, 1839_. Hon. WM. R. KING, _President of the Senate_. SIR: I transmit herewith a report made to me by the Secretary of the Treasury, with accompanying documents, in regard to some difficulties which have occurred concerning the kind of papers deemed necessary to be provided by law for the use and protection of American vessels engaged in the whale fisheries, and would respectfully invite the consideration of Congress to some new legislation on a subject of so much interest and difficulty. M. VAN BUREN.