sued, 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.

[The same message was addressed to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives.]

WASHINGTON CITY, _December 23, 1839_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I herewith communicate to Congress copies of a letter from the governor
of Iowa to the Secretary of State and of the documents transmitted with
it, on the subject of a dispute respecting the boundary line between
that Territory and the State of Missouri. The disagreement as to the
extent of their respective jurisdictions has produced a state of
such great excitement that I think it necessary to invite your early
attention to the report of the commissioner appointed to run the line
in question under the act of the 18th of June, 1838, which was sent
to both Houses of Congress by the Sec