It seemed, therefore, to be incumbent on me to make the necessary arrangements for carrying this act into effect in Africa in time to meet the delivery of any persons who might be taken by the public vessels and landed there under it.
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Having executed the act entitled 'An act to reduce and fix the military peace establishment of the United States' on great consideration and according to my best judgment
We see, on the contrary, that every corps of the Army and staff was to be reorganized, and most of them reduced in officers and men, and that in arranging the officers from the old to the new corps full power was granted to the President to take them from any and every corps of the former establishment and place them in the latter.
It is on the authority of these examples, supported by the construction which I gave to the law, that I have acted in the discharge of this high trust.
I am aware that many officers of great merit, having the strongest claims on their country, have been reduced and others dismissed, but under the law that result was inevitable.
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