Speech Transcript:

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

The Constitution requires that the President shall from time to time
not only recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as
he may judge necessary and expedient, but also that he shall give
information to them of the state of the Union. To do this fully
involves exposition of all matters in the actual condition of the
country, domestic or foreign, which essentially concern the general
welfare. While performing his constitutional duty in this respect,
the President does not speak merely to express personal convictions,
but as the executive minister of the Government, enabled by his
position and called upon by his official obligations to scan with an
impartial eye the interests of the whole and of every part of the
United States.

Of the condition of the domestic interests of the Union--its
agriculture, mines, manufactures, navigation, and commerce--it is
necessary only to say that the internal prosperity of the country,
its continuous and steady advancement in wealth and population and in
private as well as public well-being, attest the wisdom of our
institutions and the predominant spirit of intelligence and
patriotism which, notwithstanding occasional irregularities of
opinion or action resulting from popular freedom, has distinguished
and characterized the people of America. In the brief interval
between the termination of the last and the commencement of the
present session of Congress the public mind has been occupied with
the care of selecting for another constitutional term the President
and Vice-President of the United States.

The determination of the persons who are of right, or contingently,
to preside over the administration of the Government is under our
system committed to the States and the people. We appeal to them, by
their voice pronounced in the forms of law, to call whomsoever they
will to the high post of Chief Magistrate.

And thus it is that as the Senators represent the respective States
of the Union and the members of the House of Representatives the
several constituencies of each State, so the President represents the
aggregate population of the United States. Their election of him is
the explicit and solemn act of the sole sovereign authority of the
Union.

It is impossible to misapprehend the great principles which by their
recent political action the people of the United States have
sanctioned and announced.

They have asserted the constitutional equality of each and all of the
States of the Union as States: they have affirmed the constitutional
equality of each and all of the citizens of the United States as
citizens, whatever their religion, wherever their birth or their
residence; they have maintained the inviolability of the
constitutional rights of the different sections of the Union, and
they have proclaimed their devoted and unalterable attachment to the
Union and to the Constitution, as objects of interest superior to all
subjects of local or sectional controversy, as the safeguard of the
rights of all, as the spirit and the essence of the liberty, peace,
and greatness of the Republic. In doing this they have at the same
time emphatically condemned the idea of organizing in these United
States mere geographical parties, of marshaling in hostile array
toward each other the different parts of the country, North or South,
East or West.

Schemes of this nature, fraught with incalculable mischief, and which
the considerate sense of the people has rejected, could have had
countenance in no part of the country had they not been disguised by
suggestions plausible in appearance, acting upon an excited state of
the public mind, induced by causes temporary in their character and,
it is to be hoped, transient in their influence.

Perfect liberty of association for political objects and the widest
scope of discussion are the received and ordinary conditions of
government in our country. Our institutions, framed in the spirit of
confidence in the intelligence and integrity of the people, do not
forbid citizens, either individually or associated together, to
attack by writing, speech, or any other methods short of physical
force the Constitution and the very existence of the Union. Under the
shelter of this great liberty, and protected by the laws and usages of
the Government they assail, associations have been formed in some of
the States of individuals who, pretending to seek only to prevent the
spread of the institution of slavery into the present or future
inchoate States of the Union, are really inflamed with desire to
change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish
their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of
depreciating the government organization which stands in their way
and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the
citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but
all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not
participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, framed
and adopted by our fathers, and claiming for the privileges it has
secured and the blessings it has conferred the steady support and
grateful reverence of their children. They seek an object which they
well know to be a revolutionary one. They are perfectly aware that
the change in the relative condition of the white and black races in
the slaveholding States which they would promote is beyond their
lawful authority; that to them it is a foreign object; that it can
not be effected by any peaceful instrumentality of theirs; that for
them and the States of which they are citizens the only path to its
accomplishment is through burning cities, and ravaged fields, and
slaughtered populations, and all there is most terrible in foreign
complicated with civil and servile war; and that the first step in
the attempt is the forcible disruption of a country embracing in its
broad bosom a degree of liberty and an amount of individual and
public prosperity to which there is no parallel in history, and
substituting in its place hostile governments, driven at once and
inevitably into mutual devastation and fratricidal carnage,
transforming the now peaceful and felicitous brotherhood into a vast
permanent camp of armed men like the rival monarchies of Europe and
Asia. Well knowing that such, and such only, are the means and the
consequences of their plans and purposes, they endeavor to prepare
the people of the United States for civil war by doing everything in
their power to deprive the Constitution and the laws of moral
authority and to undermine the fabric of the Union by appeals to
passion and sectional prejudice, by indoctrinating its people with
reciprocal hatred, and by educating them to stand face to face as
enemies, rather than shoulder to shoulder as friends.

It is by the agency of such unwarrantable interference, foreign and
domestic, that the minds of many otherwise good citizens have been so
inflamed into the passionate condemnation of the domestic institutions
of the Southern States as at length to pass insensibly to almost
equally passion late hostility toward their fellow-citizens of those
States, and thus finally to fall into temporary fellowship with the
avowed and active enemies of the Constitution. Ardently attached to
liberty in the abstract, they do not stop to consider practically how
the objects they would attain can be accomplished, nor to reflect
that, even if the evil were as great as they deem it, they have no
remedy to apply, and that it can be only aggravated by their violence
and unconstitutional action. A question which is one of the most
difficult of all the problems of social institution, political
economy, and statesmanship they treat with unreasoning intemperance
of thought and language. Extremes beget extremes. Violent attack from
the North finds its inevitable consequence in the growth of a spirit
of angry defiance at the South. Thus in the progress of events we had
reached that consummation, which the voice of the people has now so
pointedly rebuked, of the attempt of a portion of the States, by a
sectional organization and movement, to usurp the control of the
Government of the United States.

I confidently believe that the great body of those who
inconsiderately took this fatal step are sincerely attached to the
Constitution and the Union. They would upon deliberation shrink with
unaffected horror from any conscious act of disunion or civil war.
But they have entered into a path which leads nowhere unless it be to
civil war and disunion, and which has no other possible outlet. They
have proceeded thus far in that direction in consequence of the
successive stages of their progress having consisted of a series of
secondary issues, each of which professed to be confined within
constitutional and peaceful limits, but which attempted indirectly
what few men were willing to do directly; that is, to act
aggressively against the constitutional rights of nearly one-half of
the thirty-one States.

In the long series of acts of indirect aggression, the first was the
strenuous agitation by citizens of the Northern States, in Congress
and out of it, of the question of Negro emancipation in the Southern
States.

The second step in this path of evil consisted of acts of the people
of the Northern States, and in several instances of their
governments, aimed to facilitate the escape of persons held to
service in the Southern States and to prevent their extradition when
reclaimed according to law and in virtue of express provisions of the
Constitution. To promote this object, legislative enactments and other
means were adopted to take away or defeat rights which the
Constitution solemnly guaranteed. In order to nullify the then
existing act of Congress concerning the extradition of fugitives from
service, laws were enacted in many States forbidding their officers,
under the severest penalties, to participate in the execution of any
act of Congress whatever. In this way that system of harmonious
cooperation between the authorities of the United States and of the
several States, for the maintenance of their common institutions,
which existed in the early years of the Republic was destroyed;
conflicts of jurisdiction came to be frequent, and Congress found
itself compelled, for the support of the Constitution and the
vindication of its power, to authorize the appointment of new
officers charged with the execution of its acts, as if they and the
officers of the States were the ministers, respectively, of foreign
governments in a state of mutual hostility rather than
fellow-magistrates of a common country peacefully subsisting under
the protection of one well-constituted Union. Thus here also
aggression was followed by reaction, and the attacks upon the
Constitution at this point did but serve to raise up new barriers for
its defense and security.

The third stage of this unhappy sectional controversy was in
connection with the organization of Territorial governments and the
admission of new States into the Union. When it was proposed to admit
the State of Maine, by separation of territory from that of
Massachusetts, and the State of Missouri, formed of a portion of the
territory ceded by France to the United States, representatives in
Congress objected to the admission of the latter unless with
conditions suited to particular views of public policy. The
imposition of such a condition was successfully resisted; but at the
same period the question was presented of imposing restrictions upon
the residue of the territory ceded by France. That question was for
the time disposed of by the adoption of a geographical line of
limitation.

In this connection it should not be forgotten that when France, of
her own accord, resolved, for considerations of the most farsighted
sagacity, to cede Louisiana to the United States, and that accession
was accepted by the United States, the latter expressly engaged that
"the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the
Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible,
according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the
enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens
of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained
and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and
the religion which they profess;" that is to say, while it remains in
a Territorial condition its inhabitants are maintained and protected
in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, with a right
then to pass into the condition of States on a footing of perfect
equality with the original States.

The enactment which established the restrictive geographical line was
acquiesced in rather than approved by the States of the Union. It
stood on the statute book, however, for a number of years; and the
people of the respective States acquiesced in the reenactment of the
principle as applied to the State of Texas, and it was proposed to
acquiesce in its further application to the territory acquired by the
United States from Mexico. But this proposition was successfully
resisted by the representatives from the Northern States, who,
regardless of the statute line, insisted upon applying restriction to
the new territory generally, whether lying north or south of it,
thereby repealing it as a legislative compromise, and, on the part of
the North, persistently violating the compact, if compact there was.

Thereupon this enactment ceased to have binding virtue in any sense,
whether as respects the North or the South, and so in effect it was
treated on the occasion of the admission of the State of California
and the organization of the Territories of New Mexico, Utah, and
Washington.

Such was the state of this question when the time arrived for the
organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. In the
progress of constitutional inquiry and reflection it had now at
length come to be seen clearly that Congress does not possess
constitutional power to impose restrictions of this character upon
any present or future State of the Union. In a long series of
decisions, on the fullest argument and after the most deliberate
consideration, the Supreme Court of the United States had finally
determined this point in every form under which the question could
arise, whether as affecting public or private rights--in questions of
the public domain, of religion, of navigation, and of servitude.

The several States of the Union are by force of the Constitution
coequal in domestic legislative power. Congress can not change a law
of domestic relation in the State of Maine; no more can it in the
State of Missouri. Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere
nullity; it takes away no right, it confers none. If it remains on
the statute book unrepealed, it remains there only as a monument of
error and a beacon of warning to the legislator and the statesman. To
repeal it will be only to remove imperfection from the statutes,
without affecting, either in the sense of permission, or of
prohibition, the action of the States or of their citizens.

Still, when the nominal restriction of this nature, already a dead
letter in law, was in terms repealed by the last Congress, in a
clause of the act organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska,
that repeal was made the occasion of a widespread and dangerous
agitation. It was alleged that the original enactment being a compact
of perpetual moral obligation, its repeal constituted an odious breach
of faith. An act of Congress, while it remains unrepealed, more
especially if it be constitutionally valid in the judgment of those
public functionaries whose duty it is to pronounce on that point, is
undoubtedly binding on the conscience of each good citizen of the
Republic. But in what sense can it be asserted that the enactment in
question was invested with perpetuity and entitled to the respect of
a solemn Compact? Between whom was the compact? No distinct
contending powers of the Government, no separate sections of the
Union treating as such, entered into treaty stipulations on the
subject. It was a mere clause of an act of Congress, and, like any
other controverted matter of legislation, received its final shape
and was passed by compromise of the conflicting opinions or
sentiments of the members of Congress. But if it had moral authority
over men's consciences, to whom did this authority attach? Not to
those of the North, who had repeatedly refused to confirm it by
extension and who had zealously striven to establish other and
incompatible regulations upon the subject. And if, as it thus
appears, the supposed compact had no obligatory force as to the
North, of course it could not have had any as to the South, for all
such compacts must be mutual and of reciprocal obligation.

It has not unfrequently happened that lawgivers, with undue
estimation of the value of the law they give or in the view of
imparting to it peculiar strength, make it perpetual in terms; but
they can not thus bind the conscience, the judgment, and the will of
those who may succeed them, invested with similar responsibilities
and clothed with equal authority. More careful investigation may
prove the law to be unsound in principle. Experience may show it to
be imperfect in detail and impracticable in execution. And then both
reason and right combine not merely to justify but to require its
repeal.

The Constitution, supreme, as it is, over all the departments of the
Government--legislative, executive, and judicial--is open to
amendment by its very terms; and Congress or the States may, in their
discretion, propose amendment to it, solemn compact though it in truth
is between the sovereign States of the Union. In the present instance
a political enactment which had ceased to have legal power or
authority of any kind was repealed. The position assumed that
Congress had no moral right to enact such repeal was strange enough,
and singularly so in view of the fact that the argument came from
those who openly refused obedience to existing laws of the land,
having the same popular designation and quality as compromise acts;
nay, more, who unequivocally disregarded and condemned the most
positive and obligatory injunctions of the Constitution itself, and
sought by every means within their reach to deprive a portion of
their fellow-citizens of the equal enjoyment of those rights and
privileges guaranteed alike to all by the fundamental compact of our
Union.

This argument against the repeal of the statute line in question was
accompanied by another of congenial character and equally with the
former destitute of foundation in reason and truth. It was imputed
that the measure originated in the conception of extending the limits
of slave labor beyond those previously assigned to it, and that such
was its natural as well as intended effect; and these baseless
assumptions were made, in the Northern States, the ground of
unceasing assault upon constitutional right.

The repeal in terms of a statute, which was already obsolete and also
null for unconstitutionality, could have no influence to obstruct or
to promote the propagation of conflicting views of political or
social institution. When the act organizing the Territories of Kansas
and Nebraska was passed, the inherent effect upon that portion of the
public domain thus opened to legal settlement was to admit settlers
from all the States of the Union alike, each with his convictions of
public policy and private interest, there to found, in their
discretion, subject to such limitations as the Constitution and acts
of Congress might prescribe, new States, hereafter to be admitted
into the Union. It was a free field, open alike to all, whether the
statute line of assumed restriction were repealed or not. That repeal
did not open to free competition of the diverse opinions and domestic
institutions a field which without such repeal would have been closed
against them; it found that field of competition already opened, in
fact and in law. All the repeal did was to relieve the statute book
of an objectionable enactment, unconstitutional in effect and
injurious in terms to a large portion of the States.

Is it the fact that in all the unsettled regions of the United
States, if emigration be left free to act in this respect for itself,
without legal prohibitions on either side, slave labor will
spontaneously go everywhere in preference to free labor? Is it the
fact that the peculiar domestic institutions of the Southern States
possess relatively so much of vigor that wheresoever an avenue is
freely opened to all the world they will penetrate to the exclusion
of those of the Northern States? Is it the fact that the former
enjoy, compared with the latter, such irresistibly superior vitality,
independent of climate, soil, and all other accidental circumstances,
as to be able to produce the supposed result in spite of the assumed
moral and natural obstacles to its accomplishment and of the more
numerous population of the Northern States? The argument of those who
advocate the enactment of new laws of restriction and condemn the
repeal of old ones in effect avers that their particular views of
government have no self-extending or self-sustaining power of their
own, and will go nowhere unless forced by act of Congress. And if
Congress do but pause for a moment in the policy of stern coercion;
if it venture to try the experiment of leaving men to judge for
themselves what institutions will best suit them; if it be not
strained up to perpetual legislative exertion on this point--if
Congress proceed thus to act in the very spirit of liberty, it is at
once charged with aiming to extend slave labor into all the new
Territories of the United States.

Of course these imputations on the intentions of Congress in this
respect, conceived, as they were, in prejudice and disseminated in
passion, are utterly destitute of any justification in the nature of
things and contrary to all the fundamental doctrines and principles
of civil liberty and self-government.

While, therefore, in general, the people of the Northern States have
never at any time arrogated for the Federal Government the power to
interfere directly with the domestic condition of persons in the
Southern States, but, on the contrary, have disavowed all such
intentions and have shrunk from conspicuous affiliation with those
few who pursue their fanatical objects avowedly through the
contemplated means of revolutionary change of the Government and with
acceptance of the necessary consequences--a civil and servile war--yet
many citizens have suffered themselves to be drawn into one evanescent
political issue of agitation after another, appertaining to the same
set of opinions, and which subsided as rapidly as they arose when it
came to be seen, as it uniformly did, that they were incompatible
with the compacts of the Constitution and the existence of the Union.
Thus when the acts of some of the States to nullify the existing
extradition law imposed upon Congress the duty of passing a new one,
the country was invited by agitators to enter into party organization
for its repeal; but that agitation speedily ceased by reason of the
impracticability of its object. So when the statute restriction upon
the institutions of new States by a geographical line had been
repealed, the country was urged to demand its restoration, and that
project also died almost with its birth. Then followed the cry of
alarm from the North against imputed Southern encroachments, which
cry sprang in reality from the spirit of revolutionary attack on the
domestic institutions of the South, and, after a troubled existence
of a few months, has been rebuked by the voice of a patriotic
people.

Of this last agitation, one lamentable feature was that it was
carried on at the immediate expense of the peace and happiness of the
people of the Territory of Kansas. That was made the battlefield, not
so much of opposing factions or interests within itself as of the
conflicting passions of the whole people of the United States.
Revolutionary disorder in Kansas had its origin in projects of
intervention deliberately arranged by certain members of that
Congress which enacted the law for the organization of the Territory;
and when propagandist colonization of Kansas had thus been undertaken
in one section of the Union for the systematic promotion of its
peculiar views of policy there ensued as a matter of course a
counteraction with opposite views in other sections of the Union.

In consequence of these and other incidents, many acts of disorder,
it is undeniable, have been perpetrated in Kansas, to the occasional
interruption rather than the permanent suspension of regular
government. Aggressive and most reprehensible incursions into the
Territory were undertaken both in the North and the South, and
entered it on its northern border by the way of Iowa, as well as on
the eastern by way of Missouri; and there has existed within it a
state of insurrection against the constituted authorities, not
without countenance from inconsiderate persons in each of the great
sections of the Union. But the difficulties in that Territory have
been extravagantly exaggerated for purposes of political agitation
elsewhere. The number and gravity of the acts of violence have been
magnified partly by statements entirely untrue and partly by
reiterated accounts of the same rumors or facts. Thus the Territory
has been seemingly filled with extreme violence, when the whole
amount of such acts has not been greater than what occasionally
passes before us in single cities to the regret of all good citizens,
but without being regarded as of general or permanent political
consequence.

Imputed irregularities in the elections had in Kansas, like
occasional irregularities of the same description in the States, were
beyond the sphere of action of the Executive. But incidents of actual
violence or of organized obstruction of law, pertinaciously renewed
from time to time, have been met as they occurred by such means as
were available and as the circumstances required, and nothing of this
character now remains to affect the general peace of the Union. The
attempt of a part of the inhabitants of the Territory to erect a
revolutionary government, though sedulously encouraged and supplied
with pecuniary aid from active agents of disorder in some of the
States, has completely failed. Bodies of armed men, foreign to the
Territory, have been prevented from entering or compelled to leave
it; predatory bands, engaged in acts of rapine under cover of the
existing political disturbances, have been arrested or dispersed, and
every well-disposed person is now enabled once more to devote himself
in peace to the pursuits of prosperous industry, for the prosecution
of which he undertook to participate in the settlement of the
Territory.

It affords me unmingled satisfaction thus to announce the peaceful
condition of things in Kansas, especially considering the means to
which it was necessary to have recourse for the attainment of the
end, namely, the employment of a part of the military force of the
United States. The withdrawal of that force from its proper duty of
defending the country against foreign foes or the savages of the
frontier to employ it for the suppression of domestic insurrection
is, when the exigency occurs, a matter of the most earnest
solicitude. On this occasion of imperative necessity it has been done
with the best results, and my satisfaction in the attainment of such
results by such means is greatly enhanced by the consideration that,
through the wisdom and energy of the present executive of Kansas and
the prudence, firmness, and vigilance of the military officers on
duty there tranquillity has been restored without one drop of blood
having been shed in its accomplishment by the forces of the United
States.

The restoration of comparative tranquillity in that Territory
furnishes the means of observing calmly and appreciating at their
just value the events which have occurred there and the discussions
of which the government of the Territory has been the subject. We
perceive that controversy concerning its future domestic institutions
was inevitable; that no human prudence, no form of legislation, no
wisdom on the part of Congress, could have prevented it.

It is idle to suppose that the particular provisions of their organic
law were the cause of agitation. Those provisions were but the
occasion, or the pretext, of an agitation which was inherent in the
nature of things. Congress legislated upon the subject in such terms
as were most consonant with the principle of popular sovereignty
which underlies our Government. It could not have legislated
otherwise without doing violence to another great principle of our
institutions--the imprescriptible right of equality of the several
States.

We perceive also that sectional interests and party passions have
been the great impediment to the salutary operation of the organic
principles adopted and the chief cause of the successive disturbances
in Kansas. The assumption that because in the organization of the
Territories of Nebraska and Kansas Congress abstained from imposing
restraints upon them to which certain other Territories had been
subject, therefore disorders occurred in the latter Territory, is
emphatically contradicted by the fact that none have occurred in the
former. Those disorders were not the consequence, in Kansas, of the
freedom of self-government conceded to that Territory by Congress,
but of unjust interference on the part of persons not inhabitants of
the Territory. Such interference, wherever it has exhibited itself by
acts of insurrectionary character or of obstruction to process of law,
has been repelled or suppressed by all the means which the
Constitution and the laws place in the hands of the Executive.

In those parts of the United States where, by reason of the inflamed
state of the public mind, false rumors and misrepresentations have
the greatest currency it has been assumed that it was the duty of the
Executive not only to suppress insurrectionary movements in Kansas,
but also to see to the regularity of local elections. It needs little
argument to show that the President has no such power. All government
in the United States rests substantially upon popular election. The
freedom of elections is liable to be impaired by the intrusion of
unlawful votes or the exclusion of lawful ones, by improper
influences, by violence, or by fraud. But the people of the United
States are themselves the all sufficient guardians of their own
rights, and to suppose that they will not remedy in due season any
such incidents of civil freedom is to suppose them to have ceased to
be capable of self-government. The President of the United States has
not power to interpose in elections, to see to their freedom, to
canvass their votes, or to pass upon their legality in the
Territories any more than in the States. If he had such power the
Government might be republican in form, but it would be a monarchy in
fact; and if he had undertaken to exercise it in the case of Kansas he
would have been justly subject to the charge of usurpation and of
violation of the dearest rights of the people of the United States.

Unwise laws, equally with irregularities at elections, are in periods
of great excitement the occasional incidents of even the freest and
best political institutions; but all experience demonstrates that in
a country like ours, where the right of self-constitution exists in
the completest form, the attempt to remedy unwise legislation by
resort to revolution is totally out of place, inasmuch as existing
legal institutions afford more prompt and efficacious means for the
redress of wrong.

I confidently trust that now, when the peaceful condition of Kansas
affords opportunity for calm reflection and wise legislation, either
the legislative assembly of the Territory or Congress will see that
no act shall remain on its statute book violative of the provisions
of the Constitution or subversive of the great objects for which that
was ordained and established, and will take all other necessary steps
to assure to its inhabitants the enjoyment, without obstruction or
abridgment, of all the constitutional rights, privileges, and
immunities of citizens of the United States, as contemplated by the
organic law of the Territory.

Full information in relation to recent events in this Territory will
be found in the documents communicated herewith from the Departments
of State and War.

I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury for
particular information concerning the financial condition of the
Government and the various branches of the public service connected
with the Treasury Department.

During the last fiscal year the receipts from customs were for the
first time more than $64,000,000, and from all sources $73,918,141,
which, with the balance on hand up to the 1st of July, 1855, made the
total resources of the year amount to $92,850,117. The expenditures,
including $3,000,000 in execution of the treaty with Mexico and
excluding sums paid on account of the public debt, amounted to
$60,172,401, and including the latter to $72,948,792, the payment on
this account having amounted to $12,776,390.

On the 4th of March, 1853, the amount of the public debt was
$69,129,937. There was a subsequent increase of $2,750,000 for the
debt of Texas, making a total of $71,879,937. Of this the sum of
$45,525,319, including premium, has been discharged, reducing the
debt to $30,963,909, all which might be paid within a year without
embarrassing the public service, but being not yet due and only
redeemable at the option of the holder, can not be pressed to payment
by the Government.

On examining the expenditures of the last five years it will be seen
that the average, deducting payments on account of the public debt
and $10,000,000 paid by treaty to Mexico, has been but about
$48,000,000. It is believed that under an economical administration
of the Government the average expenditure for the ensuing five years
will not exceed that sum, unless extraordinary occasion for its
increase should occur. The acts granting bounty lands will soon have
been executed, while the extension of our frontier settlements will
cause a continued demand for lands and augmented receipts, probably,
from that source. These considerations will justify a reduction of
the revenue from customs so as not to exceed forty-eight or fifty
million dollars. I think the exigency for such reduction is
imperative, and again urge it upon the consideration of Congress.

The amount of reduction, as well as the manner of effecting it, are
questions of great and general interest, it being essential to
industrial enterprise and the public prosperity, as well as the
dictate of obvious justice, that the burden of taxation be made to
rest as equally as possible upon all classes and all sections and
interests of the country.

I have heretofore recommended to your consideration the revision of
the revenue laws, prepared under the direction of the Secretary of
the Treasury, and also legislation upon some special questions
affecting the business of that Department, more especially the
enactment of a law to punish the abstraction of official books or
papers from the files of the Government and requiring all such books
and papers and all other public property to be turned over by the
outgoing officer to his successor; of a law requiring disbursing
officers to deposit all public money in the vaults of the Treasury or
in other legal depositories, where the same are conveniently
accessible, and a law to extend existing penal provisions to all
persons who may become possessed of public money by deposit or
otherwise and who shall refuse or neglect on due demand to pay the
same into the Treasury. I invite your attention anew to each of these
objects.

The Army during the past year has been so constantly employed against
hostile Indians in various quarters that it can scarcely be said, with
propriety of language, to have been a peace establishment. Its duties
have been satisfactorily performed, and we have reason to expect as a
result of the year's operations greater security to the frontier
inhabitants than has been hitherto enjoyed. Extensive combinations
among the hostile Indians of the Territories of Washington and Oregon
at one time threatened the devastation of the newly formed settlements
of that remote portion of the country. From recent information we are
permitted to hope that the energetic and successful operations
conducted there will prevent such combinations in future and secure
to those Territories an opportunity to make steady progress in the
development of their agricultural and mineral resources.

Legislation has been recommended by me on previous occasions to cure
defects in the existing organization and to increase the efficiency
of the Army, and further observation has but served to confirm me in
the views then expressed and to enforce on my mind the conviction
that such measures are not only proper, but necessary.

I have, in addition, to invite the attention of Congress to a change
of policy in the distribution of troops and to the necessity of
providing a more rapid increase of the military armament. For details
of these and other subjects relating to the Army I refer to the report
of the Secretary of War.

The condition of the Navy is not merely satisfactory, but exhibits
the most gratifying evidences of increased vigor. As it is
comparatively small, it is more important that it should be as
complete as possible in all the elements of strength; that it should
be efficient in the character of its officers, in the zeal and
discipline of its men, in the reliability of its ordnance, and in the
capacity of its ships. In all these various qualities the Navy has
made great progress within the last few years. The execution of the
law of Congress of February 28, 1855, "to promote the efficiency of
the Navy," has been attended by the most advantageous results. The
law for promoting discipline among the men is found convenient and
salutary. The system of granting an honorable discharge to faithful
seamen on the expiration of the period of their enlistment and
permitting them to reenlist after a leave of absence of a few months
without cessation of pay is highly beneficial in its influence. The
apprentice system recently adopted is evidently destined to
incorporate into the service a large number of our countrymen,
hitherto so difficult to procure. Several hundred American boys are
now on a three years' cruise in our national vessels and will return
well-trained seamen. In the Ordnance Department there is a decided
and gratifying indication of progress, creditable to it and to the
country. The suggestions of the Secretary of the Navy in regard to
further improvement in that branch of the service I commend to your
favorable action. The new frigates ordered by Congress are now afloat
and two of them in active service. They are superior models of naval
architecture, and with their formidable battery add largely to public
strength and security. I concur in the views expressed by the
Secretary of the Department in favor of a still further increase of
our naval force.

The report of the Secretary of the Interior presents facts and views
in relation to internal affairs over which the supervision of his
Department extends of much interest and importance.

The aggregate sales of the public lands during the last fiscal year
amount to 9,227,878 acres, for which has been received the sum of
$8,821,414. During the same period there have been located with
military scrip and land warrants and for other purposes 30,100,230
acres, thus making a total aggregate of 39,328,108 acres. On the 30th
of September last surveys had been made of 16,873,699 acres, a large
proportion of which is ready for market.

The suggestions in this report in regard to the complication and
progressive expansion of the business of the different bureaus of the
Department, to the pension system, to the colonization of Indian
tribes, and the recommendations in relation to various improvements
in the District of Columbia are especially commended to your
consideration.

The report of the Postmaster-General presents fully the condition of
that Department of the Government. Its expenditures for the last
fiscal year were $10,407,868 and its gross receipts $7,620,801,
making an excess of expenditure over receipts of $2,787,046. The
deficiency of this Department is thus $744,000 greater than for the
year ending June 30, 1853. Of this deficiency $330,000 is to be
attributed to the additional compensation allowed to postmasters by
the act of Congress of June 22, 1854. The mail facilities in every
part of the country have been very much increased in that period, and
the large addition of railroad service, amounting to 7,908 miles, has
added largely to the cost of transportation.

The inconsiderable augmentation of the income of the Post-Office
Department under the reduced rates of postage and its increasing
expenditures must for the present make it dependent to some extent
upon the Treasury for support. The recommendations of the
Postmaster-General in relation to the abolition of the franking
privilege and his views on the establishment of mail steamship lines
deserve the consideration of Congress. I also call the special
attention of Congress to the statement of the Postmaster-General
respecting the sums now paid for the transportation of mails to the
Panama Railroad Company, and commend to their early and favorable
consideration the suggestions of that officer in relation to new
contracts for mail transportation upon that route, and also upon the
Tehuantepec and Nicaragua routes.

The United States continue in the enjoyment of amicable relations
with all foreign powers.

When my last annual message was transmitted to Congress two subjects
of controversy, one relating to the enlistment of soldiers in this
country for foreign service and the other to Central America,
threatened to disturb the good understanding between the United
States and Great Britain. Of the progress and termination of the
former question you were informed at the time, and the other is now
in the way of satisfactory adjustment.

The object of the convention between the United States and Great
Britain of the 19th of April, 1850, was to secure for the benefit of
all nations the neutrality and the common use of any transit way or
interoceanic communication across the Isthmus of Panama which might
be opened within the limits of Central America. The pretensions
subsequently asserted by Great Britain to dominion or control over
territories in or near two of the routes, those of Nicaragua and
Honduras, were deemed by the United States not merely incompatible
with the main object of the treaty, but opposed even to its express
stipulations. Occasion of controversy on this point has been removed
by an additional treaty, which our minister at London has concluded,
and which will be immediately submitted to the Senate for its
consideration. Should the proposed supplemental arrangement be
concurred in by all the parties to be affected by it, the objects
contemplated by the original convention will have been fully
attained.

The treaty between the United States and Great Britain of the 5th of
June, 1854, which went into effective operation in 1855, put an end
to causes of irritation between the two countries, by securing to the
United States the right of fishery on the coast of the British North
American Provinces, with advantages equal to those enjoyed by British
subjects. Besides the signal benefits of this treaty to a large class
of our citizens engaged in a pursuit connected to no inconsiderable
degree with our national prosperity and strength, it has had a
favorable effect upon other interests in the provision it made for
reciprocal freedom of trade between the United States and the British
Provinces in America. The exports of domestic articles to those
Provinces during the last year amounted to more than $22,000,000,
exceeding those of the preceding year by nearly $7,000,000; and the
imports therefrom during the same period amounted to more than
twenty-one million, an increase of six million upon those of the
previous year.

The improved condition of this branch of our commerce is mainly
attributable to the above-mentioned treaty.

Provision was made in the first article of that treaty for a
commission to designate the mouths of rivers to which the common
right of fishery on the coast of the United States and the British
Provinces was not to extend. This commission has been employed a part
of two seasons, but without much progress in accomplishing the object
for which it was instituted, in consequence of a serious difference
of opinion between the commissioners, not only as to the precise
point where the rivers terminate, but in many instances as to what
constitutes a river. These difficulties, however, may be overcome by
resort to the umpirage provided for by the treaty.

The efforts perseveringly prosecuted since the commencement of my
Administration to relieve our trade to the Baltic from the exaction
of Sound dues by Denmark have not yet been attended with success.
Other governments have also sought to obtain a like relief to their
commerce, and Denmark was thus induced to propose an arrangement to
all the European powers interested in the subject, and the manner in
which her proposition was received warranting her to believe that a
satisfactory arrangement with them could soon be concluded, she made
a strong appeal to this Government for temporary suspension of
definite action on its part, in consideration of the embarrassment
which might result to her European negotiations by an immediate
adjustment of the question with the United States. This request has
been acceded to upon the condition that the sums collected after the
16th of June last and until the 16th of June next from vessels and
cargoes belonging to our merchants are to be considered as paid under
protest and subject to future adjustment. There is reason to believe
that an arrangement between Denmark and the maritime powers of Europe
on the subject will be soon concluded, and that the pending
negotiation with the United States may then be resumed and terminated
in a satisfactory manner.

With Spain no new difficulties have arisen, nor has much progress
been made in the adjustment of pending ones.

Negotiations entered into for the purpose of relieving our commercial
intercourse with the island of Cuba of some of its burdens and
providing for the more speedy settlement of local disputes growing
out of that intercourse have not yet been attended with any results.
Soon after the commencement of the late war in Europe this Government
submitted to the consideration of all maritime nations two principles
for the security of neutral commerce--one that the neutral flag
should cover enemies' goods, except articles contraband of war, and
the other that neutral property on board merchant vessels of
belligerents should be exempt from condemnation, with the exception
of contraband articles. These were not presented as new rules of
international law, having been generally claimed by neutrals, though
not always admitted by belligerents. One of the parties to the war
(Russia), as well as several neutral powers, promptly acceded to
these propositions, and the two other principal belligerents (Great
Britain and France) having consented to observe them for the present
occasion, a favorable opportunity seemed to be presented for
obtaining a general recognition of them, both in Europe and America.
But Great Britain and France, in common with most of the States of
Europe, while forbearing to reject, did not affirmatively act upon
the overtures of the United States.

While the question was in this position the representatives of
Russia, France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, and
Turkey, assembled at Paris, took into consideration the subject of
maritime rights, and put forth a declaration containing the two
principles which this Government had submitted nearly two years
before to the consideration of maritime powers, and adding thereto
the following propositions: "Privateering is and remains abolished,"
and "Blockades in order to be binding must be effective; that is to
say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the
coast of the enemy;" and to the declaration thus composed of four
points, two of which had already been proposed by the United States,
this Government has been invited to accede by all the powers
represented at Paris except Great Britain and Turkey. To the last of
the two additional propositions--that in relation to blockades--there
can certainly be no objection. It is merely the definition of what
shall constitute the effectual investment of a blockaded place, a
definition for which this Government has always contended, claiming
indemnity for losses where a practical violation of the rule thus
defined has been injurious to our commerce. As to the remaining
article of the declaration of the conference of Paris, that
"privateering is and remains abolished," I certainly can not ascribe
to the powers represented in the conference of Paris any but liberal
and philanthropic views in the attempt to change the unquestionable
rule of maritime law in regard to privateering. Their proposition was
doubtless intended to imply approval of the principle that private
property upon the ocean, although it might belong to the citizens of
a belligerent state, should be exempted from capture; and had that
proposition been so framed as to give full effect to the principle,
it would have received my ready assent on behalf of the United
States. But the measure proposed is inadequate to that purpose. It is
true that if adopted private property upon the ocean would be
withdrawn from one mode of plunder, but left exposed meanwhile to
another mode, which could be used with increased effectiveness. The
aggressive capacity of great naval powers would be thereby augmented,
while the defensive ability of others would be reduced. Though the
surrender of the means of prosecuting hostilities by employing
privateers, as proposed by the conference of Paris, is mutual in
terms, yet in practical effect it would be the relinquishment of a
right of little value to one class of states, but of essential
importance to another and a far larger class. It ought not to have
been anticipated that a measure so inadequate to the accomplishment
of the proposed object and so unequal in its operation would receive
the assent of all maritime powers. Private property would be still
left to the depredations of the public armed cruisers.

I have expressed a readiness on the part of this Government to accede
to all the principles contained in the declaration of the conference
of Paris provided that the one relating to the abandonment of
privateering can be so amended as to effect the object for which, as
is presumed, it was intended--the immunity of private property on the
ocean from hostile capture. To effect this object, it is proposed to
add to the declaration that "privateering is and remains abolished"
the following amendment:

And that the private property of subjects and citizens of a
belligerent on the high seas shall be exempt from seizure by the
public armed vessels of the other belligerent, except it be
contraband.

This amendment has been presented not only to the powers which have
asked our assent to the declaration to abolish privateering, but to
all other maritime states. Thus far it has not been rejected by any,
and is favorably entertained by all which have made any communication
in reply.

Several of the governments regarding with favor the proposition of
the United States have delayed definitive action upon it only for the
purpose of consulting with others, parties to the conference of Paris.
I have the satisfaction of stating, however, that the Emperor of
Russia has entirely and explicitly approved of that modification and
will cooperate in endeavoring to obtain the assent of other powers,
and that assurances of a similar purport have been received in
relation to the disposition of the Emperor of the French. The present
aspect of this important subject allows us to cherish the hope that a
principle so humane in its character, so just and equal in its
operation, so essential to the prosperity of commercial nations, and
so consonant to the sentiments of this enlightened period of the
world will command the approbation of all maritime powers, and thus
be incorporated into the code of international law.

My views on the subject are more fully set forth in the reply of the
Secretary of State, a copy of which is herewith transmitted, to the
communications on the subject made to this Government, especially to
the communication of France.

The Government of the United States has at all times regarded with
friendly interest the other States of America, formerly, like this
country, European colonies, and now independent members of the great
family of nations. But the unsettled condition of some of them,
distracted by frequent revolutions, and thus incapable of regular and
firm internal administration, has tended to embarrass occasionally our
public intercourse by reason of wrongs which our citizens suffer at
their hands, and which they are slow to redress.

Unfortunately, it is against the Republic of Mexico, with which it is
our special desire to maintain a good understanding, that such
complaints are most numerous; and although earnestly urged upon its
attention, they have not as yet received the consideration which this
Government had a right to expect. While reparation for past injuries
has been withheld, others have been added. The political condition of
that country, however, has been such as to demand forbearance on the
part of the United States. I shall continue my efforts to procure for
the wrongs of our citizens that redress which is indispensable to the
continued friendly association of the two Republics.

The peculiar condition of affairs in Nicaragua in the early part of
the present year rendered it important that this Government should
have diplomatic relations with that State. Through its territory had
been opened one of the principal thoroughfares across the isthmus
connecting North and South America, on which a vast amount of
property was transported and to which our citizens resorted in great
numbers in passing between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the
United States. The protection of both required that the existing
power in that State should be regarded as a responsible Government,
and its minister was accordingly received. But he remained here only
a short time. Soon thereafter the political affairs of Nicaragua
underwent unfavorable change and became involved in much uncertainty
and confusion. Diplomatic representatives from two contending parties
have been recently sent to this Government, but with the imperfect
information possessed it was not possible to decide which was the
Government de facto, and, awaiting further developments, I have
refused to receive either.

Questions of the most serious nature are pending between the United
States and the Republic of New Granada. The Government of that
Republic undertook a year since to impose tonnage duties on foreign
vessels in her ports, but the purpose was resisted by this Government
as being contrary to existing treaty stipulations with the United
States and to rights conferred by charter upon the Panama Railroad
Company, and was accordingly refurbished at that time, it being
admitted that our vessels were entitled to be exempt from tonnage
duty in the free ports of Panama and Aspinwall. But the purpose has
been recently revived on the part of New Granada by the enactment of
a law to subject vessels visiting her ports to the tonnage duty of 40
cents per ton, and although the law has not been put in force, yet the
right to enforce it is still asserted and may at any time be acted on
by the Government of that Republic.

The Congress of New Granada has also enacted a law during the last
year which levies a tax of more than $3 on every pound of mail matter
transported across the Isthmus. The sum thus required to be paid on
the mails of the United States would be nearly $2,000,000 annually in
addition to the large sum payable by contract to the Panama Railroad
Company. If the only objection to this exaction were the exorbitancy
of its amount, it could not be submitted to by the United States.

The imposition of it, however, would obviously contravene our treaty
with New Granada and infringe the contract of that Republic with the
Panama Railroad Company. The law providing for this tax was by its
terms to take effect on the 1st of September last, but the local
authorities on the Isthmus have been induced to suspend its execution
and to await further instructions on the subject from the Government
of the Republic. I am not yet advised of the determination of that
Government. If a measure so extraordinary in its character and so
clearly contrary to treaty stipulations and the contract rights of
the Panama Railroad Company, composed mostly of American citizens,
should be persisted in, it will be the duty of the United States to
resist its execution.

I regret exceedingly that occasion exists to invite your attention to
a subject of still graver import in our relations with the Republic of
New Granada. On the 15th day of April last a riotous assemblage of the
inhabitants of Panama committed a violent and outrageous attack on the
premises of the railroad company and the passengers and other persons
in or near the same, involving the death of several citizens of the
United States, the pillage of many others, and the destruction of a
large amount of property belonging to the railroad company. I caused
full investigation of that event to be made, and the result shows
satisfactorily that complete responsibility for what occurred
attaches to the Government of New Granada. I have therefore demanded
of that Government that the perpetrators of the wrongs in question
should be punished; that provision should be made for the families of
citizens of the United States who were killed, with full indemnity for
the property pillaged or destroyed.

The present condition of the Isthmus of Panama, in so far as regards
the security of persons and property passing over it, requires
serious consideration. Recent incidents tend to show that the local
authorities can not be relied on to maintain the public peace of
Panama, and there is just ground for apprehension that a portion of
the inhabitants are meditating further outrages, without adequate
measures for the security and protection of persons or property
having been taken, either by the State of Panama or by the General
Government of New Granada. Under the guaranties of treaty, citizens
of the United States have, by the outlay of several million dollars,
constructed a railroad across the Isthmus, and it has become the main
route between our Atlantic and Pacific possessions, over which
multitudes of our citizens and a vast amount of property are
constantly passing; to the security and protection of all which and
the continuance of the public advantages involved it is impossible
for the Government of the United States to be indifferent.

I have deemed the danger of the recurrence of scenes of lawless
violence in this quarter so imminent as to make it my duty to station
a part of our naval force in the harbors of Panama and Aspinwall, in
order to protect the persons and property of the citizens of the
United States in those ports and to insure to them safe passage
across the Isthmus. And it would, in my judgment, be unwise to
withdraw the naval force now in those ports until, by the spontaneous
action of the Republic of New Granada or otherwise, some adequate
arrangement shall have been made for the protection and security of a
line of interoceanic communication, so important at this time not to
the United States only, but to all other maritime states, both of
Europe and America.

Meanwhile negotiations have been instituted, by means of a special
commission, to obtain from New Granada full indemnity for injuries
sustained by our citizens on the Isthmus and satisfactory security
for the general interests of the United States.

In addressing to you my last annual message the occasion seems to me
an appropriate one to express my congratulations, in view of the
peace, greatness, and felicity which the United States now possess
and enjoy. To point you to the state of the various Departments of
the Government and of all the great branches of the public service,
civil and military, in order to speak of the intelligence and the
integrity which pervades the whole, would be to indicate but
imperfectly the administrative condition of the country and the
beneficial effects of that on the general welfare. Nor would it
suffice to say that the nation is actually at peace at home and
abroad; that its industrial interests are prosperous; that the canvas
of its mariners whitens every sea, and the plow of its husbandmen is
marching steadily onward to the bloodless conquest of the continent;
that cities and populous States are springing up, as if by
enchantment, from the bosom of oar Western wilds, and that the
courageous energy of our people is making of these United States the
great Republic of the world. These results have not been attained
without passing through trials and perils, by experience of which,
and thus only, nations can harden into manhood. Our forefathers were
trained to the wisdom which conceived and the courage which achieved
independence by the circumstances which surrounded them, and they
were thus made capable of the creation of the Republic. It devolved
on the next generation to consolidate the work of the Revolution, to
deliver the country entirely from the influences of conflicting
transatlantic partialities or antipathies which attached to our
colonial and Revolutionary history, and to organize the practical
operation of the constitutional and legal institutions of the Union.
To us of this generation remains the not less noble task of
maintaining and extending the national power. We have at length
reached that stage of our country's career in which the dangers to be
encountered and the exertions to be made are the incidents, not of
weakness, but of strength. In foreign relations we have to attemper
our power to the less happy condition of other Republics in America
and to place ourselves in the calmness and conscious dignity of right
by the side of the greatest and wealthiest of the Empires of Europe.
In domestic relations we have to guard against the shock of the
discontents, the ambitions, the interests, and the exuberant, and
therefore sometimes irregular, impulses of opinion or of action which
are the natural product of the present political elevation, the
self-reliance, and the restless spirit of enterprise of the people of
the United States.

I shall prepare to surrender the Executive trust to my successor and
retire to private life with sentiments of profound gratitude to the
good Providence which during the period of my Administration has
vouchsafed to carry the country through many difficulties, domestic
and foreign, and which enables me to contemplate the spectacle of
amicable and respectful relations between ours and all other
governments and the establishment of constitutional order and
tranquillity throughout the Union.