Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:
After a brief interval the Congress of the United States resumes
its annual legislative labors. An all-wise and merciful
Providence has abated the pestilence which visited our shores,
leaving its calamitous traces upon some portions of our country.
Peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority have been
formally declared to exist throughout the whole of the United
States. In all of the States civil authority has superseded the
coercion of arms, and the people, by their voluntary action, are
maintaining their governments in full activity and complete
operation. The enforcement of the laws is no longer "obstructed
in any State by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," and the
animosities engendered by the war are rapidly yielding to the
beneficent influences of our free institutions and to the kindly
effects of unrestricted social and commercial intercourse. An
entire restoration of fraternal feeli