These gentlemen being thus severally elected in accordance with the principles of the constitution of Massachusetts, chapter 2, section 10, severally signified their acceptance of the trust reposed in them, and are approved and recommended by me as persons fit to be appointed and commissioned in their respective offices.

If expedient, after they are commissioned, they may be reported for examination by a board appointed under the law for that purpose by the general commanding the department. The President, in accordance with the act of Congress approved July 22, 1861, by authority vested in the general commanding this department, has accepted the service of this company of volunteers. They have been mustered into the service of the United States in accordance with General Orders from the Adjutant-General's Office, Numbers 58 and Numbers 1, of the current series.

Said Blanchard, Parsons [Farsons[, and Fiske have been duly mustered into service and have been duly selected by the written votes of the members of said company for their several offices in accordance with the principles of the constitution of Massachusetts.

It therefore becomes my duty most respectfully to request Your Excellency to commission these the requisite company officers, so selected and recommended, in compliance with the requisitions of said act of Congress, section 5, which provides that the Governors of States furnishing volunteers under this act shall volunteers to their offices.

If Your Excellency knows or is informed of any personal disqualification in either of said officers, I respectfully ask that such disqualification may be stated, that others may be selected to be commissioned by the Governor of the State.

I have the honor to be, most respectfully, your obedient servant,

BENJAMIN F. BUTLER,

Commanding Department of New England, and authorized to raise troops, as before stated.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

October 26, 1861.

Major General B. F. BUTLER, U. S. Volunteers,

Commanding Department of New England:

GENERAL: I beg leave to acknowledge your letter dated the 25th instant, but not delivered by your messenger until this evening and not accompanied by the descriptive list therein mentioned.

I respectfully decline to issue commissions to the gentlemen for whom you therein request them, and if the descriptive list of the men over whom you desire that officers shall be placed had been forwarded by you I should have directed the adjutant-general not to deposit it in his office. This refusal is altogether independent of the military qualifications of the gentlemen for whom you request commissions, and is caused entirely by the fact that these men who are assumed by you to have been properly organized into a company of Massachusetts Volunteers have in reality been collected without due authority, in violation of law and of the express terms of an order of the War Department of the United States of a date subsequent to that of the authorization you rely upon in your General Orders, Numbers 2, of the Department of New England, and also in violation of a general order (Numbers 23) issued at my direction by the adjutant-general of this Commonwealth as well as to the detriment of the several volunteer regiments now encamped in this Commonwealth, not yet recruited to the maximum standard.