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 passionate 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 encroachmeats, 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 our 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.
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 passionate 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 encroachmeats, 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 she would 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 because 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 because 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 because 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 our 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.
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 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 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 passionate hostility toward their 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 of the 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 of a common country peacefully subsisting under the protection of one 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 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 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 or 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 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 encroachmeats 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 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 she would 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 because 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 because 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 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 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 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 and from all sources which with the balance on hand up to the 1st of july 1855 made the total resources of the year amount to the expenditures including in execution of the treaty with mexico and excluding sums paid on account of the public debt amounted to and including the latter to the payment on this account having amounted to on the 4th of march 1853 the amount of the public debt was there was a subsequent increase of for the debt of texas making a total of of this the sum of including premium has been discharged reducing the debt to 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 paid by treaty to mexico has been but about 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 because 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 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 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 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 acres for which has been received the sum of during the same period there have been located with military scrip and land warrants and for other purposes acres thus making a total aggregate of acres on the 30th of september last surveys had been made of 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 presents fully the condition of that department of the government its expenditures for the last fiscal year were and its gross receipts making an excess of expenditure over receipts of the deficiency of this department is thus greater than for the year ending june 30 1853 of this deficiency 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 miles has added largely to the cost of transportation the inconsiderable augmentation of the income of the 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 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 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 exceeding those of the preceding year by nearly and the imports therefrom during the same period amounted to more than 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 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 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 our 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 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 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
constitution requires president shall time time recommend consideration congress measures may judge necessary expedient also shall give information state union fully involves exposition matters actual condition country domestic foreign essentially concern general welfare performing constitutional duty respect president speak merely express personal convictions executive minister government enabled position called upon official obligations scan impartial eye interests whole every part united states condition domestic interests union agriculture mines manufactures navigation commerce necessary say internal prosperity country continuous steady advancement wealth population private well public attest wisdom institutions predominant spirit intelligence patriotism notwithstanding occasional irregularities opinion action resulting popular freedom distinguished characterized people america brief interval termination last commencement present session congress public mind occupied care selecting another constitutional term president united states determination persons right contingently preside administration government system committed states people appeal voice pronounced forms law call whomsoever high post chief magistrate thus senators represent respective states union members house representatives several constituencies state president represents aggregate population united states election explicit solemn act sole sovereign authority union impossible misapprehend great principles recent political action people united states sanctioned announced asserted constitutional equality states union states affirmed constitutional equality citizens united states citizens whatever religion wherever birth residence maintained inviolability constitutional rights different sections union proclaimed devoted unalterable attachment union constitution objects interest superior subjects local sectional controversy safeguard rights spirit essence liberty peace greatness republic time emphatically condemned idea organizing united states mere geographical parties marshaling hostile array toward different parts country north south east west schemes nature fraught incalculable mischief considerate sense people rejected could countenance part country disguised suggestions plausible appearance acting upon excited state public mind induced causes temporary character hoped transient influence perfect liberty association political objects widest scope discussion received ordinary conditions government country institutions framed spirit confidence intelligence integrity people forbid citizens either individually associated together attack writing speech methods short physical force constitution existence union shelter great liberty protected laws usages government assail associations formed states individuals pretending seek prevent spread institution slavery present future inchoate states union really inflamed desire change domestic institutions existing states accomplish objects dedicate odious task depreciating government organization stands way calumniating indiscriminate invective citizens particular states whose laws find fault others fellow citizens throughout country participate assaults upon constitution framed adopted fathers claiming privileges secured blessings conferred steady support grateful reverence children seek object well know revolutionary one perfectly aware change relative condition white black races slaveholding states would promote beyond lawful authority foreign object effected peaceful instrumentality states citizens path accomplishment burning cities ravaged fields slaughtered populations terrible foreign complicated civil servile war first step attempt forcible disruption country embracing broad bosom degree liberty amount individual public prosperity parallel history substituting place hostile governments driven inevitably mutual devastation fratricidal carnage transforming peaceful felicitous brotherhood vast permanent camp armed men like rival monarchies europe asia well knowing means consequences plans purposes endeavor prepare people united states civil war everything power deprive constitution laws moral authority undermine fabric union appeals passion sectional prejudice indoctrinating people reciprocal hatred educating stand face face enemies rather shoulder shoulder friends agency unwarrantable interference foreign domestic minds many otherwise good citizens inflamed passionate condemnation domestic institutions southern states length pass insensibly almost equally passionate hostility toward states thus finally fall temporary fellowship avowed active enemies constitution ardently attached liberty abstract stop consider practically objects would attain accomplished reflect even evil great deem remedy apply aggravated violence unconstitutional action question one difficult problems social institution political economy statesmanship treat unreasoning intemperance thought language extremes beget extremes violent attack north finds inevitable consequence growth spirit angry defiance south thus progress events reached consummation voice people pointedly rebuked attempt portion states sectional organization movement usurp control government united states confidently believe great body inconsiderately took fatal step sincerely attached constitution union would upon deliberation shrink unaffected horror conscious act disunion civil war entered path leads nowhere unless civil war disunion possible outlet proceeded thus far direction consequence successive stages progress consisted series secondary issues professed confined within constitutional peaceful limits attempted indirectly men willing directly act aggressively constitutional rights nearly states long series acts indirect aggression first strenuous agitation citizens northern states congress question negro emancipation southern states second step path evil consisted acts people northern states several instances governments aimed facilitate escape persons held service southern states prevent extradition reclaimed according law virtue express provisions constitution promote object legislative enactments means adopted take away defeat rights constitution solemnly guaranteed order nullify existing act congress concerning extradition fugitives service laws enacted many states forbidding officers severest penalties participate execution act congress whatever way system harmonious cooperation authorities united states several states maintenance common institutions existed early years republic destroyed conflicts jurisdiction came frequent congress found compelled support constitution vindication power authorize appointment new officers charged execution acts officers states ministers respectively foreign governments state mutual hostility rather common country peacefully subsisting protection one union thus also aggression followed reaction attacks upon constitution point serve raise new barriers defense security third stage unhappy sectional controversy connection organization territorial governments admission new states union proposed admit state maine separation territory massachusetts state missouri formed portion territory ceded france united states representatives congress objected admission latter unless conditions suited particular views public policy imposition condition successfully resisted period question presented imposing restrictions upon residue territory ceded france question time disposed adoption geographical line limitation connection forgotten france accord resolved considerations farsighted sagacity cede louisiana united states accession accepted united states latter expressly engaged inhabitants ceded territory shall incorporated union united states admitted soon possible according principles federal constitution enjoyment rights advantages immunities citizens united states meantime shall maintained protected free enjoyment liberty property religion profess say remains territorial condition inhabitants maintained protected free enjoyment liberty property right pass condition states footing perfect equality original states enactment established restrictive geographical line acquiesced rather approved states union stood statute book however number years people respective states acquiesced reenactment principle applied state texas proposed acquiesce application territory acquired united states mexico proposition successfully resisted representatives northern states regardless statute line insisted upon applying restriction new territory generally whether lying north south thereby repealing legislative compromise part north persistently violating compact compact thereupon enactment ceased binding virtue sense whether respects north south effect treated occasion admission state california organization territories new mexico utah washington state question time arrived organization territories kansas nebraska progress constitutional inquiry reflection length come seen clearly congress possess constitutional power impose restrictions character upon present future state union long series decisions fullest argument deliberate consideration supreme court united states finally determined point every form question could arise whether affecting public private rights questions public domain religion navigation servitude several states union force constitution coequal domestic legislative power congress change law domestic relation state maine state missouri statute proposes mere nullity takes away right confers none remains statute book unrepealed remains monument error beacon warning legislator statesman repeal remove imperfection statutes without affecting either sense permission prohibition action states citizens still nominal restriction nature already dead letter law terms repealed last congress clause act organizing territories kansas nebraska repeal made occasion widespread dangerous agitation alleged original enactment compact perpetual moral obligation repeal constituted odious breach faith act congress remains unrepealed especially constitutionally valid judgment public functionaries whose duty pronounce point undoubtedly binding conscience good citizen republic sense asserted enactment question invested perpetuity entitled respect solemn compact compact distinct contending powers government separate sections union treating entered treaty stipulations subject mere clause act congress like controverted matter legislation received final shape passed compromise conflicting opinions sentiments members congress moral authority men consciences authority attach north repeatedly refused confirm extension zealously striven establish incompatible regulations upon subject thus appears supposed compact obligatory force north course could south compacts must mutual reciprocal obligation unfrequently happened lawgivers undue estimation value law give view imparting peculiar strength make perpetual terms thus bind conscience judgment may succeed invested similar responsibilities clothed equal authority careful investigation may prove law unsound principle experience may show imperfect detail impracticable execution reason right combine merely justify require repeal constitution supreme departments government legislative executive judicial open amendment terms congress states may discretion propose amendment solemn compact though truth sovereign states union present instance political enactment ceased legal power authority kind repealed position assumed congress moral right enact repeal strange enough singularly view fact argument came openly refused obedience existing laws land popular designation quality compromise acts nay unequivocally disregarded condemned positive obligatory injunctions constitution sought every means within reach deprive portion equal enjoyment rights privileges guaranteed alike fundamental compact union argument repeal statute line question accompanied another congenial character equally former destitute foundation reason truth imputed measure originated conception extending limits slave labor beyond previously assigned natural well intended effect baseless assumptions made northern states ground unceasing assault upon constitutional right repeal terms statute already obsolete also null unconstitutionality could influence obstruct promote propagation conflicting views political social institution act organizing territories kansas nebraska passed inherent effect upon portion public domain thus opened legal settlement admit settlers states union alike convictions public policy private interest found discretion subject limitations constitution acts congress might prescribe new states hereafter admitted union free field open alike whether statute line assumed restriction repealed repeal open free competition diverse opinions domestic institutions field without repeal would closed found field competition already opened fact law repeal relieve statute book objectionable enactment unconstitutional effect injurious terms large portion states fact unsettled regions united states emigration left free act respect without legal prohibitions either side slave labor spontaneously go everywhere preference free labor fact peculiar domestic institutions southern states possess relatively much vigor wheresoever avenue freely opened world penetrate exclusion northern states fact former enjoy compared latter irresistibly superior vitality independent climate soil accidental circumstances able produce supposed result spite assumed moral natural obstacles accomplishment numerous population northern states argument advocate enactment new laws restriction condemn repeal old ones effect avers particular views government power go nowhere unless forced act congress congress pause moment policy stern coercion venture try experiment leaving men judge institutions best suit strained perpetual legislative exertion point congress proceed thus act spirit liberty charged aiming extend slave labor new territories united states course imputations intentions congress respect conceived prejudice disseminated passion utterly destitute justification nature things contrary fundamental doctrines principles civil liberty therefore general people northern states never time arrogated federal government power interfere directly domestic condition persons southern states contrary disavowed intentions shrunk conspicuous affiliation pursue fanatical objects avowedly contemplated means revolutionary change government acceptance necessary consequences civil servile war yet many citizens suffered drawn one evanescent political issue agitation another appertaining set opinions subsided rapidly arose came seen uniformly incompatible compacts constitution existence union thus acts states nullify existing extradition law imposed upon congress duty passing new one country invited agitators enter party organization repeal agitation speedily ceased reason impracticability object statute restriction upon institutions new states geographical line repealed country urged demand restoration project also died almost birth followed cry alarm north imputed southern encroachmeats cry sprang reality spirit revolutionary attack domestic institutions south troubled existence months rebuked voice patriotic people last agitation one lamentable feature carried immediate expense peace happiness people territory kansas made battlefield much opposing factions interests within conflicting passions whole people united states revolutionary disorder kansas origin projects intervention deliberately arranged certain members congress enacted law organization territory propagandist colonization kansas thus undertaken one section union systematic promotion peculiar views policy ensued matter course counteraction opposite views sections union consequence incidents many acts disorder undeniable perpetrated kansas occasional interruption rather permanent suspension regular government aggressive reprehensible incursions territory undertaken north south entered northern border way iowa well eastern way missouri existed within state insurrection constituted authorities without countenance inconsiderate persons great sections union difficulties territory extravagantly exaggerated purposes political agitation elsewhere number gravity acts violence magnified partly statements entirely untrue partly reiterated accounts rumors facts thus territory seemingly filled extreme violence whole amount acts greater occasionally passes us single cities regret good citizens without regarded general permanent political consequence imputed irregularities elections kansas like occasional irregularities description states beyond sphere action executive incidents actual violence organized obstruction law pertinaciously renewed time time met occurred means available circumstances required nothing character remains affect general peace union attempt part inhabitants territory erect revolutionary government though sedulously encouraged supplied pecuniary aid active agents disorder states completely failed bodies armed men foreign territory prevented entering compelled leave predatory bands engaged acts rapine cover existing political disturbances arrested dispersed every person enabled devote peace pursuits prosperous industry prosecution undertook participate settlement territory affords unmingled satisfaction thus announce peaceful condition things kansas especially considering means necessary recourse attainment end namely employment part military force united states withdrawal force proper duty defending country foreign foes savages frontier employ suppression domestic insurrection exigency occurs matter earnest solicitude occasion imperative necessity done best results satisfaction attainment results means greatly enhanced consideration wisdom energy present executive kansas prudence firmness vigilance military officers duty tranquillity restored without one drop blood would accomplishment forces united states restoration comparative tranquillity territory furnishes means observing calmly appreciating value events occurred discussions government territory subject perceive controversy concerning future domestic institutions inevitable human prudence form legislation wisdom part congress could prevented idle suppose particular provisions organic law agitation provisions occasion pretext agitation inherent nature things congress legislated upon subject terms consonant principle popular sovereignty underlies government could legislated otherwise without violence another great principle institutions imprescriptible right equality several states perceive also sectional interests party passions great impediment salutary operation organic principles adopted chief successive disturbances kansas assumption organization territories nebraska kansas congress abstained imposing restraints upon certain territories subject therefore disorders occurred latter territory emphatically contradicted fact none occurred former disorders consequence kansas freedom conceded territory congress unjust interference part persons inhabitants territory interference wherever exhibited acts insurrectionary character obstruction process law repelled suppressed means constitution laws place hands executive parts united states reason inflamed state public mind false rumors misrepresentations greatest currency assumed duty executive suppress insurrectionary movements kansas also see regularity local elections needs little argument show president power government united states rests substantially upon popular election freedom elections liable impaired intrusion unlawful votes exclusion lawful ones improper influences violence fraud people united states sufficient guardians rights suppose remedy due season incidents civil freedom suppose ceased capable president united states power interpose elections see freedom canvass votes pass upon legality territories states power government might republican form would monarchy fact undertaken exercise case kansas would justly subject charge usurpation violation dearest rights people united states unwise laws equally irregularities elections periods great excitement occasional incidents even freest best political institutions experience demonstrates country like right exists completest form attempt remedy unwise legislation resort revolution totally place inasmuch existing legal institutions afford prompt efficacious means redress wrong confidently trust peaceful condition kansas affords opportunity calm reflection wise legislation either legislative assembly territory congress see act shall remain statute book violative provisions constitution subversive great objects ordained established take necessary steps assure inhabitants enjoyment without obstruction abridgment constitutional rights privileges immunities citizens united states contemplated organic law territory full information relation recent events territory found documents communicated herewith departments state war refer report secretary treasury particular information concerning financial condition government various branches public service connected treasury department last fiscal year receipts customs first time sources balance hand 1st july 1855 made total resources year amount expenditures including execution treaty mexico excluding sums paid account public debt amounted including latter payment account amounted 4th march 1853 amount public debt subsequent increase debt texas making total sum including premium discharged reducing debt might paid within year without embarrassing public service yet due redeemable option holder pressed payment government examining expenditures last five years seen average deducting payments account public debt paid treaty mexico believed economical administration government average expenditure ensuing five years exceed sum unless extraordinary occasion increase occur acts granting bounty lands soon executed extension frontier settlements continued demand lands augmented receipts probably source considerations justify reduction revenue customs exceed fifty million dollars think exigency reduction imperative urge upon consideration congress amount reduction well manner effecting questions great general interest essential industrial enterprise public prosperity well dictate obvious justice burden taxation made rest equally possible upon classes sections interests country heretofore recommended consideration revision revenue laws prepared direction secretary treasury also legislation upon special questions affecting business department especially enactment law punish abstraction official books papers files government requiring books papers public property turned outgoing officer successor law requiring disbursing officers deposit public money vaults treasury legal depositories conveniently accessible law extend existing penal provisions persons may become possessed public money deposit otherwise shall refuse neglect due demand pay treasury invite attention anew objects army past year constantly employed hostile indians various quarters scarcely said propriety language peace establishment duties satisfactorily performed reason expect result year operations greater security frontier inhabitants hitherto enjoyed extensive combinations among hostile indians territories washington oregon one time threatened devastation newly formed settlements remote portion country recent information permitted hope energetic successful operations conducted prevent combinations future secure territories opportunity make steady progress development agricultural mineral resources legislation recommended previous occasions cure defects existing organization increase efficiency army observation served confirm views expressed enforce mind conviction measures proper necessary addition invite attention congress change policy distribution troops necessity providing rapid increase military armament details subjects relating army refer report secretary war condition navy merely satisfactory exhibits gratifying evidences increased vigor comparatively small important complete possible elements strength efficient character officers zeal discipline men reliability ordnance capacity ships various qualities navy made great progress within last years execution law congress february 28 1855 promote efficiency navy attended advantageous results law promoting discipline among men found convenient salutary system granting honorable discharge faithful seamen expiration period enlistment permitting reenlist leave absence months without cessation pay highly beneficial influence apprentice system recently adopted evidently destined incorporate service large number countrymen hitherto difficult procure several hundred american boys three years cruise national vessels return seamen ordnance department decided gratifying indication progress creditable country suggestions secretary navy regard improvement branch service commend favorable action new frigates ordered congress afloat two active service superior models naval architecture formidable battery add largely public strength security concur views expressed secretary department favor still increase naval force report secretary interior presents facts views relation internal affairs supervision department extends much interest importance aggregate sales public lands last fiscal year amount acres received sum period located military scrip land warrants purposes acres thus making total aggregate acres 30th september last surveys made acres large proportion ready market suggestions report regard complication progressive expansion business different bureaus department pension system colonization indian tribes recommendations relation various improvements district columbia especially commended consideration report presents fully condition department government expenditures last fiscal year gross receipts making excess expenditure receipts deficiency department thus greater year ending june 30 1853 deficiency attributed additional compensation allowed postmasters act congress june 22 1854 mail facilities every part country much increased period large addition railroad service amounting miles added largely cost transportation inconsiderable augmentation income department reduced rates postage increasing expenditures must present make dependent extent upon treasury support recommendations relation abolition franking privilege views establishment mail steamship lines deserve consideration congress also call special attention congress statement respecting sums paid transportation mails panama railroad company commend early favorable consideration suggestions officer relation new contracts mail transportation upon route also upon tehuantepec nicaragua routes united states continue enjoyment amicable relations foreign powers last annual message transmitted congress two subjects controversy one relating enlistment soldiers country foreign service central america threatened disturb good understanding united states great britain progress termination former question informed time way satisfactory adjustment object convention united states great britain 19th april 1850 secure benefit nations neutrality common use transit way interoceanic communication across isthmus panama might opened within limits central america pretensions subsequently asserted great britain dominion control territories near two routes nicaragua honduras deemed united states merely incompatible main object treaty opposed even express stipulations occasion controversy point removed additional treaty minister london concluded immediately submitted senate consideration proposed supplemental arrangement concurred parties affected objects contemplated original convention fully attained treaty united states great britain 5th june 1854 went effective operation 1855 put end causes irritation two countries securing united states right fishery coast british north american provinces advantages equal enjoyed british subjects besides signal benefits treaty large class citizens engaged pursuit connected inconsiderable degree national prosperity strength favorable effect upon interests provision made reciprocal freedom trade united states british provinces america exports domestic articles provinces last year amounted exceeding preceding year nearly imports therefrom period amounted million increase six million upon previous year improved condition branch commerce mainly attributable treaty provision made first article treaty commission designate mouths rivers common right fishery coast united states british provinces extend commission employed part two seasons without much progress accomplishing object instituted consequence serious difference opinion commissioners precise point rivers terminate many instances constitutes river difficulties however may overcome resort umpirage provided treaty efforts perseveringly prosecuted since commencement administration relieve trade baltic exaction sound dues denmark yet attended success governments also sought obtain like relief commerce denmark thus induced propose arrangement european powers interested subject manner proposition received warranting believe satisfactory arrangement could soon concluded made strong appeal government temporary suspension definite action part consideration embarrassment might result european negotiations immediate adjustment question united states request acceded upon condition sums collected 16th june last 16th june next vessels cargoes belonging merchants considered paid protest subject future adjustment reason believe arrangement denmark maritime powers europe subject soon concluded pending negotiation united states may resumed terminated satisfactory manner spain new difficulties arisen much progress made adjustment pending ones negotiations entered purpose relieving commercial intercourse island cuba burdens providing speedy settlement local disputes growing intercourse yet attended results soon commencement late war europe government submitted consideration maritime nations two principles security neutral commerce one neutral flag cover enemies goods except articles contraband war neutral property board merchant vessels belligerents exempt condemnation exception contraband articles presented new rules international law generally claimed neutrals though always admitted belligerents one parties war russia well several neutral powers promptly acceded propositions two principal belligerents great britain france consented observe present occasion favorable opportunity seemed presented obtaining general recognition europe america great britain france common states europe forbearing reject affirmatively act upon overtures united states question position representatives russia france great britain austria prussia sardinia turkey assembled paris took consideration subject maritime rights put forth declaration containing two principles government submitted nearly two years consideration maritime powers adding thereto following propositions privateering remains abolished blockades order binding must effective say maintained force sufficient really prevent access coast enemy declaration thus composed four points two already proposed united states government invited accede powers represented paris except great britain turkey last two additional propositions relation blockades certainly objection merely definition shall constitute effectual investment blockaded place definition government always contended claiming indemnity losses practical violation rule thus defined injurious commerce remaining article declaration conference paris privateering remains abolished certainly ascribe powers represented conference paris liberal philanthropic views attempt change unquestionable rule maritime law regard privateering proposition doubtless intended imply approval principle private property upon ocean although might belong citizens belligerent state exempted capture proposition framed give full effect principle would received ready assent behalf united states measure proposed inadequate purpose true adopted private property upon ocean would withdrawn one mode plunder left exposed meanwhile another mode could used increased effectiveness aggressive capacity great naval powers would thereby augmented defensive ability others would reduced though surrender means prosecuting hostilities employing privateers proposed conference paris mutual terms yet practical effect would relinquishment right little value one class states essential importance another far larger class ought anticipated measure inadequate accomplishment proposed object unequal operation would receive assent maritime powers private property would still left depredations public armed cruisers expressed readiness part government accede principles contained declaration conference paris provided one relating abandonment privateering amended effect object presumed intended immunity private property ocean hostile capture effect object proposed add declaration privateering remains abolished following amendment private property subjects citizens belligerent high seas shall exempt seizure public armed vessels belligerent except contraband amendment presented powers asked assent declaration abolish privateering maritime states thus far rejected favorably entertained made communication reply several governments regarding favor proposition united states delayed definitive action upon purpose consulting others parties conference paris satisfaction stating however emperor russia entirely explicitly approved modification cooperate endeavoring obtain assent powers assurances similar purport received relation disposition emperor french present aspect important subject allows us cherish hope principle humane character equal operation essential prosperity commercial nations consonant sentiments enlightened period world command approbation maritime powers thus incorporated code international law views subject fully set forth reply secretary state copy herewith transmitted communications subject made government especially communication france government united states times regarded friendly interest states america formerly like country european colonies independent members great family nations unsettled condition distracted frequent revolutions thus incapable regular firm internal administration tended embarrass occasionally public intercourse reason wrongs citizens suffer hands slow redress unfortunately republic mexico special desire maintain good understanding complaints numerous although earnestly urged upon attention yet received consideration government right expect reparation past injuries withheld others added political condition country however demand forbearance part united states shall continue efforts procure wrongs citizens redress indispensable continued friendly association two republics peculiar condition affairs nicaragua early part present year rendered important government diplomatic relations state territory opened one principal thoroughfares across isthmus connecting north south america vast amount property transported citizens resorted great numbers passing atlantic pacific coasts united states protection required existing power state regarded responsible government minister accordingly received remained short time soon thereafter political affairs nicaragua underwent unfavorable change became involved much uncertainty confusion diplomatic representatives two contending parties recently sent government imperfect information possessed possible decide government de facto awaiting developments refused receive either questions serious nature pending united states republic new granada government republic undertook year since impose tonnage duties foreign vessels ports purpose resisted government contrary existing treaty stipulations united states rights conferred charter upon panama railroad company accordingly refurbished time admitted vessels entitled exempt tonnage duty free ports panama aspinwall purpose recently revived part new granada enactment law subject vessels visiting ports tonnage duty 40 cents per ton although law put force yet right enforce still asserted may time acted government republic congress new granada also enacted law last year levies tax 3 every pound mail matter transported across isthmus sum thus required paid mails united states would nearly annually addition large sum payable contract panama railroad company objection exaction exorbitancy amount could submitted united states imposition however would obviously contravene treaty new granada infringe contract republic panama railroad company law providing tax terms take effect 1st september last local authorities isthmus induced suspend execution await instructions subject government republic yet advised determination government measure extraordinary character clearly contrary treaty stipulations contract rights panama railroad company composed mostly american citizens persisted duty united states resist execution regret exceedingly occasion exists invite attention subject still graver import relations republic new granada 15th day april last riotous assemblage inhabitants panama committed violent outrageous attack premises railroad company passengers persons near involving death several citizens united states pillage many others destruction large amount property belonging railroad company caused full investigation event made result shows satisfactorily complete responsibility occurred attaches government new granada therefore demanded government perpetrators wrongs question punished provision made families citizens united states killed full indemnity property pillaged destroyed present condition isthmus panama far regards security persons property passing requires serious consideration recent incidents tend show local authorities relied maintain public peace panama ground apprehension portion inhabitants meditating outrages without adequate measures security protection persons property taken either state panama general government new granada guaranties treaty citizens united states outlay several million dollars constructed railroad across isthmus become main route atlantic pacific possessions multitudes citizens vast amount property constantly passing security protection continuance public advantages involved impossible government united states indifferent deemed danger recurrence scenes lawless violence quarter imminent make duty station part naval force harbors panama aspinwall order protect persons property citizens united states ports insure safe passage across isthmus would judgment unwise withdraw naval force ports spontaneous action republic new granada otherwise adequate arrangement shall made protection security line interoceanic communication important time united states maritime states europe america meanwhile negotiations instituted means special commission obtain new granada full indemnity injuries sustained citizens isthmus satisfactory security general interests united states addressing last annual message occasion seems appropriate one express congratulations view peace greatness felicity united states possess enjoy point state various departments government great branches public service civil military order speak intelligence integrity pervades whole would indicate imperfectly administrative condition country beneficial effects general welfare would suffice say nation actually peace home abroad industrial interests prosperous canvas mariners whitens every sea plow husbandmen marching steadily onward bloodless conquest continent cities populous states springing enchantment bosom western wilds courageous energy people making united states great republic world results attained without passing trials perils experience thus nations harden manhood forefathers trained wisdom conceived courage achieved independence circumstances surrounded thus made capable creation republic devolved next generation consolidate work revolution deliver country entirely influences conflicting transatlantic partialities antipathies attached colonial revolutionary history organize practical operation constitutional legal institutions union us generation remains less noble task maintaining extending national power length reached stage country career dangers encountered exertions made incidents weakness strength foreign relations attemper power less happy condition republics america place calmness conscious dignity right side greatest wealthiest empires europe domestic relations guard shock discontents ambitions interests exuberant therefore sometimes irregular impulses opinion action natural product present political elevation restless spirit enterprise people united states shall prepare surrender executive trust successor retire private life sentiments profound gratitude good providence period administration vouchsafed carry country many difficulties domestic foreign enables contemplate spectacle amicable respectful relations governments establishment constitutional order tranquillity throughout union
constitution require president shall time time recommend consideration congress measure may judge necessary expedient also shall give information state union fully involve exposition matter actual condition country domestic foreign essentially concern general welfare perform constitutional duty respect president speak merely express personal conviction executive minister government enable position call upon official obligation scan impartial eye interest whole every part unite state condition domestic interest union agriculture mine manufacture navigation commerce necessary say internal prosperity country continuous steady advancement wealth population private well public attest wisdom institution predominant spirit intelligence patriotism notwithstanding occasional irregularity opinion action result popular freedom distinguish characterized people america brief interval termination last commencement present session congress public mind occupy care select another constitutional term president united state determination person right contingently preside administration government system commit state people appeal voice pronounce form law call whomsoever high post chief magistrate thus senator represent respective state union member house representative several constituency state president represent aggregate population united state election explicit solemn act sole sovereign authority union impossible misapprehend great principle recent political action people united state sanction announce asserted constitutional equality state union state affirm constitutional equality citizen united state citizen whatever religion wherever birth residence maintain inviolability constitutional right different section union proclaim devote unalterable attachment union constitution object interest superior subject local sectional controversy safeguard right spirit essence liberty peace greatness republic time emphatically condemn idea organize united state mere geographical party marshal hostile array toward different part country north south east west scheme nature fraught incalculable mischief considerate sense people reject could countenance part country disguise suggestion plausible appearance act upon excited state public mind induced cause temporary character hop transient influence perfect liberty association political object wide scope discussion receive ordinary condition government country institution frame spirit confidence intelligence integrity people forbid citizen either individually associate together attack write speech method short physical force constitution existence union shelter great liberty protect law usages government assail association form state individual pretend seek prevent spread institution slavery present future inchoate state union really inflamed desire change domestic institution exist state accomplish object dedicate odious task depreciate government organization stand way calumniate indiscriminate invective citizen particular state whose law find fault others fellow citizen throughout country participate assault upon constitution frame adopted father claim privilege secure blessing confer steady support grateful reverence child seek object well know revolutionary one perfectly aware change relative condition white black race slaveholding state would promote beyond lawful authority foreign object effect peaceful instrumentality state citizens path accomplishment burn city ravage field slaughter population terrible foreign complicate civil servile war first step attempt forcible disruption country embrace broad bosom degree liberty amount individual public prosperity parallel history substitute place hostile government drive inevitably mutual devastation fratricidal carnage transform peaceful felicitous brotherhood vast permanent camp arm men like rival monarchy europe asia well know mean consequence plan purpose endeavor prepare people united state civil war everything power deprive constitution law moral authority undermine fabric union appeal passion sectional prejudice indoctrinate people reciprocal hatred educate stand face face enemies rather shoulder shoulder friend agency unwarrantable interference foreign domestic mind many otherwise good citizen inflame passionate condemnation domestic institution southern state length pas insensibly almost equally passionate hostility toward state thus finally fall temporary fellowship avow active enemy constitution ardently attach liberty abstract stop consider practically object would attain accomplished reflect even evil great deem remedy apply aggravate violence unconstitutional action question one difficult problem social institution political economy statesmanship treat unreasoning intemperance think language extreme beget extremes violent attack north find inevitable consequence growth spirit angry defiance south thus progress event reach consummation voice people pointedly rebuke attempt portion state sectional organization movement usurp control government unite state confidently believe great body inconsiderately take fatal step sincerely attach constitution union would upon deliberation shrink unaffected horror conscious act disunion civil war enter path lead nowhere unless civil war disunion possible outlet proceed thus far direction consequence successive stage progress consist series secondary issue profess confine within constitutional peaceful limit attempt indirectly men willing directly act aggressively constitutional right nearly state long series act indirect aggression first strenuous agitation citizen northern state congress question negro emancipation southern state second step path evil consist act people northern state several instance government aim facilitate escape person hold service southern state prevent extradition reclaim accord law virtue express provision constitution promote object legislative enactment mean adopted take away defeat right constitution solemnly guarantee order nullify exist act congress concern extradition fugitive service law enact many state forbid officer severe penalty participate execution act congress whatever way system harmonious cooperation authority unite state several state maintenance common institution exist early year republic destroy conflict jurisdiction come frequent congress find compel support constitution vindication power authorize appointment new officer charge execution act officer state minister respectively foreign government state mutual hostility rather common country peacefully subsist protection one union thus also aggression follow reaction attack upon constitution point serve raise new barrier defense security third stage unhappy sectional controversy connection organization territorial government admission new state union propose admit state maine separation territory massachusetts state missouri form portion territory cede france united state representative congress object admission latter unless condition suit particular view public policy imposition condition successfully resist period question present imposing restriction upon residue territory cede france question time disposed adoption geographical line limitation connection forget france accord resolve consideration farsighted sagacity cede louisiana united state accession accept united state latter expressly engage inhabitant cede territory shall incorporate union united state admit soon possible accord principle federal constitution enjoyment right advantage immunity citizen united state meantime shall maintain protected free enjoyment liberty property religion profess say remain territorial condition inhabitant maintain protected free enjoyment liberty property right pas condition state foot perfect equality original state enactment establish restrictive geographical line acquiesce rather approve state union stand statute book however number year people respective state acquiesce reenactment principle apply state texas propose acquiesce application territory acquire united state mexico proposition successfully resist representative northern state regardless statute line insist upon apply restriction new territory generally whether lie north south thereby repeal legislative compromise part north persistently violating compact compact thereupon enactment cease bind virtue sense whether respect north south effect treat occasion admission state california organization territory new mexico utah washington state question time arrive organization territory kansas nebraska progress constitutional inquiry reflection length come see clearly congress possess constitutional power impose restriction character upon present future state union long series decision fullest argument deliberate consideration supreme court unite state finally determine point every form question could arise whether affect public private right question public domain religion navigation servitude several state union force constitution coequal domestic legislative power congress change law domestic relation state maine state missouri statute proposes mere nullity take away right confers none remain statute book unrepealed remains monument error beacon warn legislator statesman repeal remove imperfection statute without affect either sense permission prohibition action state citizen still nominal restriction nature already dead letter law term repeal last congress clause act organize territory kansas nebraska repeal make occasion widespread dangerous agitation allege original enactment compact perpetual moral obligation repeal constitute odious breach faith act congress remain unrepealed especially constitutionally valid judgment public functionary whose duty pronounce point undoubtedly binding conscience good citizen republic sense assert enactment question invest perpetuity entitle respect solemn compact compact distinct contend power government separate section union treat enter treaty stipulation subject mere clause act congress like controvert matter legislation receive final shape pass compromise conflicting opinion sentiment member congress moral authority men conscience authority attach north repeatedly refuse confirm extension zealously striven establish incompatible regulation upon subject thus appear suppose compact obligatory force north course could south compact must mutual reciprocal obligation unfrequently happen lawgiver undue estimation value law give view impart peculiar strength make perpetual term thus bind conscience judgment may succeed invest similar responsibility clothe equal authority careful investigation may prove law unsound principle experience may show imperfect detail impracticable execution reason right combine merely justify require repeal constitution supreme department government legislative executive judicial open amendment term congress state may discretion propose amendment solemn compact though truth sovereign state union present instance political enactment cease legal power authority kind repeal position assume congress moral right enact repeal strange enough singularly view fact argument come openly refuse obedience exist law land popular designation quality compromise act nay unequivocally disregard condemn positive obligatory injunction constitution seek every mean within reach deprive portion equal enjoyment right privilege guarantee alike fundamental compact union argument repeal statute line question accompany another congenial character equally former destitute foundation reason truth imputed measure originate conception extend limit slave labor beyond previously assign natural well intended effect baseless assumption make northern state grind unceasing assault upon constitutional right repeal term statute already obsolete also null unconstitutionality could influence obstruct promote propagation conflict view political social institution act organize territory kansas nebraska pass inherent effect upon portion public domain thus open legal settlement admit settler state union alike conviction public policy private interest find discretion subject limitation constitution act congress might prescribe new state hereafter admit union free field open alike whether statute line assume restriction repeal repeal open free competition diverse opinion domestic institution field without repeal would close find field competition already open fact law repeal relieve statute book objectionable enactment unconstitutional effect injurious term large portion state fact unsettled region united state emigration leave free act respect without legal prohibition either side slave labor spontaneously go everywhere preference free labor fact peculiar domestic institution southern state possess relatively much vigor wheresoever avenue freely open world penetrate exclusion northern state fact former enjoy compare latter irresistibly superior vitality independent climate soil accidental circumstance able produce suppose result spite assume moral natural obstacle accomplishment numerous population northern state argument advocate enactment new law restriction condemn repeal old one effect avers particular view government power go nowhere unless force act congress congress pause moment policy stern coercion venture try experiment leave men judge institution best suit strain perpetual legislative exertion point congress proceed thus act spirit liberty charge aim extend slave labor new territory unite state course imputation intention congress respect conceive prejudice disseminate passion utterly destitute justification nature thing contrary fundamental doctrine principle civil liberty therefore general people northern state never time arrogated federal government power interfere directly domestic condition person southern state contrary disavow intention shrink conspicuous affiliation pursue fanatical object avowedly contemplate mean revolutionary change government acceptance necessary consequence civil servile war yet many citizen suffer drawn one evanescent political issue agitation another appertaining set opinion subside rapidly arose come see uniformly incompatible compact constitution existence union thus act state nullify exist extradition law impose upon congress duty pass new one country invite agitator enter party organization repeal agitation speedily cease reason impracticability object statute restriction upon institution new state geographical line repeal country urge demand restoration project also die almost birth follow cry alarm north impute southern encroachmeats cry sprang reality spirit revolutionary attack domestic institution south troubled existence month rebuke voice patriotic people last agitation one lamentable feature carry immediate expense peace happiness people territory kansa make battlefield much opposing faction interest within conflict passion whole people united state revolutionary disorder kansa origin project intervention deliberately arrange certain member congress enact law organization territory propagandist colonization kansa thus undertaken one section union systematic promotion peculiar view policy ensue matter course counteraction opposite view section union consequence incident many act disorder undeniable perpetrate kansas occasional interruption rather permanent suspension regular government aggressive reprehensible incursion territory undertaken north south enter northern border way iowa well eastern way missouri exist within state insurrection constitute authority without countenance inconsiderate person great section union difficulty territory extravagantly exaggerated purpose political agitation elsewhere number gravity act violence magnify partly statement entirely untrue partly reiterate account rumor fact thus territory seemingly fill extreme violence whole amount act great occasionally pass u single city regret good citizen without regarded general permanent political consequence impute irregularity election kansas like occasional irregularity description state beyond sphere action executive incident actual violence organize obstruction law pertinaciously renew time time meet occurred mean available circumstance require nothing character remain affect general peace union attempt part inhabitant territory erect revolutionary government though sedulously encourage supply pecuniary aid active agent disorder state completely fail body arm men foreign territory prevent enter compel leave predatory band engage act rapine cover exist political disturbance arrest dispersed every person enable devote peace pursuits prosperous industry prosecution undertook participate settlement territory affords unmingled satisfaction thus announce peaceful condition thing kansas especially consider mean necessary recourse attainment end namely employment part military force united state withdrawal force proper duty defend country foreign foe savage frontier employ suppression domestic insurrection exigency occur matter earnest solicitude occasion imperative necessity do best result satisfaction attainment result mean greatly enhanced consideration wisdom energy present executive kansa prudence firmness vigilance military officer duty tranquillity restore without one drop blood would accomplishment force united state restoration comparative tranquillity territory furnishes mean observe calmly appreciate value event occur discussion government territory subject perceive controversy concern future domestic institution inevitable human prudence form legislation wisdom part congress could prevent idle suppose particular provision organic law agitation provision occasion pretext agitation inherent nature thing congress legislate upon subject term consonant principle popular sovereignty underlies government could legislate otherwise without violence another great principle institution imprescriptible right equality several state perceive also sectional interest party passion great impediment salutary operation organic principle adopt chief successive disturbance kansas assumption organization territory nebraska kansas congress abstain impose restraint upon certain territory subject therefore disorder occur latter territory emphatically contradict fact none occur former disorder consequence kansa freedom concede territory congress unjust interference part person inhabitant territory interference wherever exhibit act insurrectionary character obstruction process law repel suppressed mean constitution law place hand executive part united state reason inflamed state public mind false rumor misrepresentation great currency assume duty executive suppress insurrectionary movement kansas also see regularity local election need little argument show president power government unite state rest substantially upon popular election freedom election liable impaired intrusion unlawful vote exclusion lawful one improper influence violence fraud people united state sufficient guardian right suppose remedy due season incident civil freedom suppose cease capable president unite state power interpose election see freedom canvas vote pass upon legality territory state power government might republican form would monarchy fact undertaken exercise case kansa would justly subject charge usurpation violation dear right people united state unwise law equally irregularity election period great excitement occasional incident even freest best political institution experience demonstrate country like right exists completest form attempt remedy unwise legislation resort revolution totally place inasmuch exist legal institution afford prompt efficacious mean redress wrong confidently trust peaceful condition kansa affords opportunity calm reflection wise legislation either legislative assembly territory congress see act shall remain statute book violative provision constitution subversive great object ordain establish take necessary step assure inhabitant enjoyment without obstruction abridgment constitutional right privilege immunity citizen united state contemplate organic law territory full information relation recent event territory find document communicate herewith department state war refer report secretary treasury particular information concern financial condition government various branch public service connect treasury department last fiscal year receipt custom first time source balance hand 1st july 1855 make total resource year amount expenditures include execution treaty mexico exclude sum pay account public debt amount include latter payment account amount 4th march 1853 amount public debt subsequent increase debt texas make total sum include premium discharge reduce debt might pay within year without embarrass public service yet due redeemable option holder press payment government examine expenditure last five year see average deducting payment account public debt pay treaty mexico believe economical administration government average expenditure ensue five year exceed sum unless extraordinary occasion increase occur act grant bounty land soon execute extension frontier settlement continue demand land augment receipt probably source consideration justify reduction revenue custom exceed fifty million dollar think exigency reduction imperative urge upon consideration congress amount reduction well manner effect question great general interest essential industrial enterprise public prosperity well dictate obvious justice burden taxation make rest equally possible upon class section interest country heretofore recommended consideration revision revenue law prepared direction secretary treasury also legislation upon special question affect business department especially enactment law punish abstraction official book paper file government require book paper public property turn outgoing officer successor law require disburse officer deposit public money vault treasury legal depository conveniently accessible law extend exist penal provision person may become possessed public money deposit otherwise shall refuse neglect due demand pay treasury invite attention anew object army past year constantly employ hostile indian various quarter scarcely say propriety language peace establishment duty satisfactorily perform reason expect result year operation great security frontier inhabitant hitherto enjoy extensive combination among hostile indian territory washington oregon one time threaten devastation newly form settlement remote portion country recent information permit hope energetic successful operation conduct prevent combination future secure territory opportunity make steady progress development agricultural mineral resource legislation recommend previous occasion cure defect exist organization increase efficiency army observation serve confirm view express enforce mind conviction measure proper necessary addition invite attention congress change policy distribution troop necessity provide rapid increase military armament detail subject relate army refer report secretary war condition navy merely satisfactory exhibit gratify evidence increase vigor comparatively small important complete possible element strength efficient character officer zeal discipline men reliability ordnance capacity ship various quality navy make great progress within last year execution law congress february 28 1855 promote efficiency navy attend advantageous result law promote discipline among men find convenient salutary system grant honorable discharge faithful seaman expiration period enlistment permit reenlist leave absence month without cessation pay highly beneficial influence apprentice system recently adopt evidently destine incorporate service large number countryman hitherto difficult procure several hundred american boy three year cruise national vessel return seaman ordnance department decide gratify indication progress creditable country suggestion secretary navy regard improvement branch service commend favorable action new frigate order congress afloat two active service superior model naval architecture formidable battery add largely public strength security concur view express secretary department favor still increase naval force report secretary interior present facts view relation internal affair supervision department extend much interest importance aggregate sale public land last fiscal year amount acre receive sum period locate military scrip land warrant purpose acre thus make total aggregate acre 30th september last survey make acre large proportion ready market suggestion report regard complication progressive expansion business different bureau department pension system colonization indian tribes recommendation relation various improvement district columbia especially commended consideration report present fully condition department government expenditure last fiscal year gross receipt make excess expenditure receipt deficiency department thus great year end june 30 1853 deficiency attribute additional compensation allow postmaster act congress june 22 1854 mail facility every part country much increase period large addition railroad service amount mile add largely cost transportation inconsiderable augmentation income department reduce rate postage increase expenditure must present make dependent extent upon treasury support recommendation relation abolition frank privilege view establishment mail steamship line deserve consideration congress also call special attention congress statement respect sum pay transportation mail panama railroad company commend early favorable consideration suggestion officer relation new contract mail transportation upon route also upon tehuantepec nicaragua route united state continue enjoyment amicable relation foreign power last annual message transmit congress two subject controversy one relate enlistment soldier country foreign service central america threaten disturb good understanding united state great britain progress termination former question inform time way satisfactory adjustment object convention united state great britain 19th april 1850 secure benefit nation neutrality common use transit way interoceanic communication across isthmus panama might open within limit central america pretension subsequently assert great britain dominion control territory near two route nicaragua honduras deem united state merely incompatible main object treaty oppose even express stipulation occasion controversy point remove additional treaty minister london conclude immediately submit senate consideration propose supplemental arrangement concur party affected object contemplate original convention fully attain treaty united state great britain 5th june 1854 go effective operation 1855 put end cause irritation two country secure united state right fishery coast british north american province advantage equal enjoyed british subject besides signal benefit treaty large class citizen engage pursuit connect inconsiderable degree national prosperity strength favorable effect upon interest provision make reciprocal freedom trade unite state british province america export domestic article province last year amount exceed precede year nearly import therefrom period amount million increase six million upon previous year improve condition branch commerce mainly attributable treaty provision make first article treaty commission designate mouth river common right fishery coast united state british province extend commission employ part two season without much progress accomplish object institute consequence serious difference opinion commissioner precise point river terminate many instance constitutes river difficulty however may overcome resort umpirage provide treaty effort perseveringly prosecute since commencement administration relieve trade baltic exaction sound dues denmark yet attend success government also seek obtain like relief commerce denmark thus induce propose arrangement european power interested subject manner proposition receive warrant believe satisfactory arrangement could soon conclude make strong appeal government temporary suspension definite action part consideration embarrassment might result european negotiation immediate adjustment question unite state request accede upon condition sum collect 16th june last 16th june next vessel cargo belong merchant consider pay protest subject future adjustment reason believe arrangement denmark maritime power europe subject soon conclude pending negotiation united state may resume terminated satisfactory manner spain new difficulty arise much progress make adjustment pending one negotiation enter purpose relieve commercial intercourse island cuba burden provide speedy settlement local dispute grow intercourse yet attend result soon commencement late war europe government submit consideration maritime nation two principle security neutral commerce one neutral flag cover enemy good except article contraband war neutral property board merchant vessel belligerent exempt condemnation exception contraband article present new rule international law generally claim neutral though always admit belligerent one party war russia well several neutral power promptly accede proposition two principal belligerent great britain france consent observe present occasion favorable opportunity seem present obtain general recognition europe america great britain france common state europe forbear reject affirmatively act upon overture united state question position representative russia france great britain austria prussia sardinia turkey assemble paris take consideration subject maritime right put forth declaration contain two principle government submit nearly two year consideration maritime power add thereto follow proposition privateering remains abolish blockade order bind must effective say maintain force sufficient really prevent access coast enemy declaration thus compose four point two already propose united state government invite accede power represent paris except great britain turkey last two additional proposition relation blockade certainly objection merely definition shall constitute effectual investment blockade place definition government always contend claim indemnity loss practical violation rule thus define injurious commerce remain article declaration conference paris privateering remains abolish certainly ascribe power represent conference paris liberal philanthropic view attempt change unquestionable rule maritime law regard privateering proposition doubtless intend imply approval principle private property upon ocean although might belong citizen belligerent state exempt capture proposition frame give full effect principle would receive ready assent behalf united state measure propose inadequate purpose true adopted private property upon ocean would withdraw one mode plunder leave expose meanwhile another mode could use increase effectiveness aggressive capacity great naval power would thereby augment defensive ability others would reduce though surrender mean prosecute hostility employ privateer propose conference paris mutual term yet practical effect would relinquishment right little value one class state essential importance another far large class ought anticipate measure inadequate accomplishment propose object unequal operation would receive assent maritime power private property would still leave depredation public arm cruiser express readiness part government accede principle contain declaration conference paris provide one relate abandonment privateering amend effect object presume intend immunity private property ocean hostile capture effect object propose add declaration privateering remains abolish follow amendment private property subject citizens belligerent high sea shall exempt seizure public arm vessel belligerent except contraband amendment present power ask assent declaration abolish privateering maritime state thus far reject favorably entertain make communication reply several government regard favor proposition united state delay definitive action upon purpose consult others party conference paris satisfaction state however emperor russia entirely explicitly approve modification cooperate endeavor obtain assent power assurance similar purport receive relation disposition emperor french present aspect important subject allow u cherish hope principle humane character equal operation essential prosperity commercial nation consonant sentiment enlighten period world command approbation maritime power thus incorporate code international law view subject fully set forth reply secretary state copy herewith transmit communication subject make government especially communication france government unite state time regard friendly interest state america formerly like country european colony independent member great family nation unsettled condition distract frequent revolution thus incapable regular firm internal administration tend embarrass occasionally public intercourse reason wrong citizen suffer hand slow redress unfortunately republic mexico special desire maintain good understanding complaint numerous although earnestly urge upon attention yet receive consideration government right expect reparation past injury withhold others add political condition country however demand forbearance part united state shall continue effort procure wrong citizen redress indispensable continue friendly association two republic peculiar condition affair nicaragua early part present year render important government diplomatic relation state territory open one principal thoroughfares across isthmus connect north south america vast amount property transport citizen resort great number pass atlantic pacific coast unite state protection require exist power state regard responsible government minister accordingly receive remain short time soon thereafter political affair nicaragua underwent unfavorable change become involved much uncertainty confusion diplomatic representative two contend party recently send government imperfect information possess possible decide government de facto await development refuse receive either question serious nature pending united state republic new granada government republic undertook year since impose tonnage duty foreign vessel port purpose resist government contrary exist treaty stipulation united state right confer charter upon panama railroad company accordingly refurbish time admit vessel entitle exempt tonnage duty free port panama aspinwall purpose recently revive part new granada enactment law subject vessel visit port tonnage duty 40 cent per ton although law put force yet right enforce still assert may time acted government republic congress new granada also enact law last year levy tax 3 every pound mail matter transport across isthmus sum thus require pay mail united state would nearly annually addition large sum payable contract panama railroad company objection exaction exorbitancy amount could submit united state imposition however would obviously contravene treaty new granada infringe contract republic panama railroad company law provide tax term take effect 1st september last local authority isthmus induced suspend execution await instruction subject government republic yet advise determination government measure extraordinary character clearly contrary treaty stipulation contract right panama railroad company compose mostly american citizen persist duty united state resist execution regret exceedingly occasion exists invite attention subject still grave import relation republic new granada 15th day april last riotous assemblage inhabitant panama committed violent outrageous attack premise railroad company passenger person near involve death several citizen united state pillage many others destruction large amount property belong railroad company cause full investigation event make result show satisfactorily complete responsibility occur attache government new granada therefore demand government perpetrator wrong question punish provision make family citizen united state kill full indemnity property pillage destroyed present condition isthmus panama far regard security person property passing require serious consideration recent incident tend show local authority rely maintain public peace panama ground apprehension portion inhabitant meditate outrage without adequate measure security protection person property take either state panama general government new granada guaranty treaty citizen united state outlay several million dollar construct railroad across isthmus become main route atlantic pacific possession multitude citizen vast amount property constantly pass security protection continuance public advantage involve impossible government unite state indifferent deem danger recurrence scene lawless violence quarter imminent make duty station part naval force harbor panama aspinwall order protect person property citizen united state port insure safe passage across isthmus would judgment unwise withdraw naval force port spontaneous action republic new granada otherwise adequate arrangement shall make protection security line interoceanic communication important time united state maritime state europe america meanwhile negotiation institute mean special commission obtain new granada full indemnity injury sustain citizen isthmus satisfactory security general interest unite state address last annual message occasion seem appropriate one express congratulation view peace greatness felicity united state possess enjoy point state various department government great branch public service civil military order speak intelligence integrity pervades whole would indicate imperfectly administrative condition country beneficial effect general welfare would suffice say nation actually peace home abroad industrial interest prosperous canvas mariner whiten every sea plow husbandman march steadily onward bloodless conquest continent city populous state spring enchantment bosom western wild courageous energy people make united state great republic world result attain without pass trial peril experience thus nation harden manhood forefather train wisdom conceive courage achieve independence circumstance surround thus make capable creation republic devolve next generation consolidate work revolution deliver country entirely influence conflict transatlantic partiality antipathy attach colonial revolutionary history organize practical operation constitutional legal institution union u generation remain less noble task maintain extend national power length reach stage country career danger encounter exertion make incident weakness strength foreign relation attemper power less happy condition republic america place calmness conscious dignity right side great wealthiest empires europe domestic relation guard shock discontent ambition interest exuberant therefore sometimes irregular impulse opinion action natural product present political elevation restless spirit enterprise people united state shall prepare surrender executive trust successor retire private life sentiment profound gratitude good providence period administration vouchsafed carry country many difficulty domestic foreign enables contemplate spectacle amicable respectful relation government establishment constitutional order tranquillity throughout union