WASHINGTON, _December 2, 1856_.
_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:
The Constitution requires that the President shall from time to time not
only recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as he may
judge necessary and expedient, but also that he shall give information
to them of the state of the Union. To do this fully involves exposition
of all matters in the actual condition of the country, domestic or
foreign, which essentially concern the general welfare. While performing
his constitutional duty in this respect, the President does not speak
merely to express personal convictions, but as the executive minister of
the Government, enabled by his position and called upon by his official
obligations to scan with an impartial eye the interests of the whole and
of every part of the United States.
Of the condition of the domestic interests of the Union--its agriculture,
mines, manufactures, navigation, and commerce--it is necessary only to
say that the internal prosperity of the country, its continuous and
steady advancement in wealth and population and in private as well
as public well-being, attest the wisdom of our institutions and the
predominant spirit of intelligence and patriotism which, notwithstanding
occasional irregularities of opinion or action resulting from popular
freedom, has distinguished and characterized the people of America.
In the brief interval between the termination of the last and the
commencement of the present session of Congress the public mind has been
occupied with the care of selecting for another constitutional term the
President and Vice-President of the United States.
The determination of the persons who are of right, or contingently, to
preside over the administration of the Government is under our system
committed to the States and the people. We appeal to them, by their
voice pronounced in the forms of law, to call whomsoever they will to
the high post of Chief Magistrate.
And thus it is that as the Senators represent the respective States of
the Union and the members of the House of Representatives the several
constituencies of each State, so the President represents the aggregate
population of the United States. Their election of him is the explicit
and solemn act of the sole sovereign authority of the Union.
It is impossible to misapprehend the great principles which by their
recent political action the people of the United States have sanctioned
and announced.
They have asserted the constitutional equality of each and all of the
States of the Union as States; they have affirmed the constitutional
equality of each and all of the citizens of the United States as
citizens, whatever their religion, wherever their birth or their
residence; they have maintained the inviolability of the constitutional
rights of the different sections of the Union, and they have proclaimed
their devoted and unalterable attachment to the Union and to the
Constitution, as objects of interest superior to all subjects of local
or sectional controversy, as the safeguard of the rights of all, as the
spirit and the essence of the liberty, peace, and greatness of the
Republic.
In doing this they have at the same time emphatically condemned the idea
of organizing in these United States mere geographical parties, of
marshaling in hostile array toward each other the different parts of the
country, North or South, East or West.
Schemes of this nature, fraught with incalculable mischief, and which
the considerate sense of the people has rejected, could have had
countenance in no part of the country had they not been disguised by
suggestions plausible in appearance, acting upon an excited state of the
public mind, induced by causes temporary in their character and, it is
to be hoped, transient in their influence.
Perfect liberty of association for political objects and the widest
scope of discussion are the received and ordinary conditions of
government in our country. Our institutions, framed in the spirit
of confidence in the intelligence and integrity of the people, do not
forbid citizens, either individually or associated together, to attack
by writing, speech, or any other methods short of physical force the
Constitution and the very existence of the Union. Under the shelter
of this great liberty, and protected by the laws and usages of the
Government they assail, associations have been formed in some of the
States of individuals who, pretending to seek only to prevent the spread
of the institution of slavery into the present or future inchoate States
of the Union, are really inflamed with desire to change the domestic
institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they
dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government
organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with
indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with
whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow-citizens
throughout the country who do not participate with them in their
assaults upon the Constitution, framed and adopted by our fathers, and
claiming for the privileges it has secured and the blessings it has
conferred the steady support and grateful reverence of their children.
They seek an object which they well know to be a revolutionary one.
They are perfectly aware that the change in the relative condition of
the white and black races in the slaveholding States which they would
promote is beyond their lawful authority; that to them it is a foreign
object; that it can not be effected by any peaceful instrumentality of
theirs; that for them and the States of which they are citizens the
only path to its accomplishment is through burning cities, and ravaged
fields, and slaughtered populations, and all there is most terrible in
foreign complicated with civil and servile war; and that the first step
in the attempt is the forcible disruption of a country embracing in its
broad bosom a degree of liberty and an amount of individual and public
prosperity to which there is no parallel in history, and substituting in
its place hostile governments, driven at once and inevitably into mutual
devastation and fratricidal carnage, transforming the now peaceful and
felicitous brotherhood into a vast permanent camp of armed men like the
rival monarchies of Europe and Asia. Well knowing that such, and such
only, are the means and the consequences of their plans and purposes,
they endeavor to prepare the people of the United States for civil war
by doing everything in their power to deprive the Constitution and the
laws of moral authority and to undermine the fabric of the Union by
appeals to passion and sectional prejudice, by indoctrinating its people
with reciprocal hatred, and by educating them to stand face to face as
enemies, rather than shoulder to shoulder as friends.
It is by the agency of such unwarrantable interference, foreign and
domestic, that the minds of many otherwise good citizens have been so
inflamed into the passionate condemnation of the domestic institutions
of the Southern States as at length to pass insensibly to almost equally
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 far-sighted
sagacity, to cede Louisiana to the United States, and that accession was
accepted by the United States, the latter expressly engaged that "the
inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union
of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according to the
principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the
rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States;
and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free
enjoyment of their _liberty, property_, and the religion which they
profess;" that is to say, while it remains in a Territorial condition
its inhabitants are maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of
their liberty and property, with a right then to pass into the condition
of States on a footing of perfect equality with the original States.
The enactment which established the restrictive geographical line was
acquiesced in rather than approved by the States of the Union. It stood
on the statute book, however, for a number of years; and the people of
the respective States acquiesced in the reenactment of the principle as
applied to the State of Texas, and it was proposed to acquiesce in its
further application to the territory acquired by the United States
from Mexico. But this proposition was successfully resisted by the
representatives from the Northern States, who, regardless of the statute
line, insisted upon applying restriction to the new territory generally,
whether lying north or south of it, thereby repealing it as a
legislative compromise, and, on the part of the North, persistently
violating the compact, if compact there was.
Thereupon this enactment ceased to have binding virtue in any sense,
whether as respects the North or the South, and so in effect it was
treated on the occasion of the admission of the State of California and
the organization of the Territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Washington.
Such was the state of this question when the time arrived for the
organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. In the progress
of constitutional inquiry and reflection it had now at length come to
be seen clearly that Congress does not possess constitutional power to
impose restrictions of this character upon any present or future State
of the Union. In a long series of decisions, on the fullest argument and
after the most deliberate consideration, the Supreme Court of the United
States had finally determined this point in every form under which the
question could arise, whether as affecting public or private rights--in
questions of the public domain, of religion, of navigation, and of
servitude.
The several States of the Union are by force of the Constitution coequal
in domestic legislative power. Congress can not change a law of domestic
relation in the State of Maine; no more can it in the State of Missouri.
Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere nullity; it takes away
no right, it confers none. If it remains on the statute book unrepealed,
it remains there only as a monument of error and a beacon of warning to
the legislator and the statesman. To repeal it will be only to remove
imperfection from the statutes, without affecting, either in the sense
of permission or of prohibition, the action of the States or of their
citizens.
Still, when the nominal restriction of this nature, already a dead
letter in law, was in terms repealed by the last Congress, in a clause
of the act organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, that
repeal was made the occasion of a widespread and dangerous agitation.
It was alleged that the original enactment being a compact of perpetual
moral obligation, its repeal constituted an odious breach of faith.
An act of Congress, while it remains unrepealed, more especially if it
be constitutionally valid in the judgment of those public functionaries
whose duty it is to pronounce on that point, is undoubtedly binding on
the conscience of each good citizen of the Republic. But in what sense
can it be asserted that the enactment in question was invested with
perpetuity and entitled to the respect of a solemn compact? Between whom
was the compact? No distinct contending powers of the Government, no
separate sections of the Union treating as such, entered into treaty
stipulations on the subject. It was a mere clause of an act of Congress,
and, like any other controverted matter of legislation, received its
final shape and was passed by compromise of the conflicting opinions or
sentiments of the members of Congress. But if it had moral authority
over men's consciences, to whom did this authority attach? Not to those
of the North, who had repeatedly refused to confirm it by extension
and who had zealously striven to establish other and incompatible
regulations upon the subject. And if, as it thus appears, the supposed
compact had no obligatory force as to the North, of course it could not
have had any as to the South, for all such compacts must be mutual and
of reciprocal obligation.
It has not unfrequently happened that lawgivers, with undue estimation
of the value of the law they give or in the view of imparting to it
peculiar strength, make it perpetual in terms; but they can not thus
bind the conscience, the judgment, and the will of those who may succeed
them, invested with similar responsibilities and clothed with equal
authority. More careful investigation may prove the law to be unsound
in principle. Experience may show it to be imperfect in detail and
impracticable in execution. And then both reason and right combine
not merely to justify but to require its repeal.
The Constitution, supreme, as it is, over all the departments of the
Government--legislative, executive, and judicial--is open to amendment
by its very terms; and Congress or the States may, in their discretion,
propose amendment to it, solemn compact though it in truth is between
the sovereign States of the Union. In the present instance a political
enactment which had ceased to have legal power or authority of any kind
was repealed. The position assumed that Congress had no moral right to
enact such repeal was strange enough, and singularly so in view of the
fact that the argument came from those who openly refused obedience
to existing laws of the land, having the same popular designation and
quality as compromise acts; nay, more, who unequivocally disregarded
and condemned the most positive and obligatory injunctions of the
Constitution itself, and sought by every means within their reach to
deprive a portion of their fellow-citizens of the equal enjoyment of
those rights and privileges guaranteed alike to all by the fundamental
compact of our Union.
This argument against the repeal of the statute line in question was
accompanied by another of congenial character and equally with the
former destitute of foundation in reason and truth. It was imputed that
the measure originated in the conception of extending the limits of
slave labor beyond those previously assigned to it, and that such was
its natural as well as intended effect; and these baseless assumptions
were made, in the Northern States, the ground of unceasing assault upon
constitutional right.
The repeal in terms of a statute, which was already obsolete and also
null for unconstitutionality, could have no influence to obstruct or
to promote the propagation of conflicting views of political or social
institution. When the act organizing the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska was passed, the inherent effect upon that portion of the
public domain thus opened to legal settlement was to admit settlers
from all the States of the Union alike, each with his convictions of
public policy and private interest, there to found, in their discretion,
subject to such limitations as the Constitution and acts of Congress
might prescribe, new States, hereafter to be admitted into the Union.
It was a free field, open alike to all, whether the statute line of
assumed restriction were repealed or not. That repeal did not open to
free competition of the diverse opinions and domestic institutions a
field which without such repeal would have been closed against them;
it found that field of competition already opened, in fact and in law.
All the repeal did was to relieve the statute book of an objectionable
enactment, unconstitutional in effect and injurious in terms to a large
portion of the States.
Is it the fact that in all the unsettled regions of the United States,
if emigration be left free to act in this respect for itself, without
legal prohibitions on either side, slave labor will spontaneously go
everywhere in preference to free labor? Is it the fact that the peculiar
domestic institutions of the Southern States possess relatively so much
of vigor that wheresoever an avenue is freely opened to all the world
they will penetrate to the exclusion of those of the Northern States?
Is it the fact that the former enjoy, compared with the latter, such
irresistibly superior vitality, independent of climate, soil, and all
other accidental circumstances, as to be able to produce the supposed
result in spite of the assumed moral and natural obstacles to its
accomplishment and of the more numerous population of the Northern
States?
The argument of those who advocate the enactment of new laws of
restriction and condemn the repeal of old ones in effect avers that
their particular views of government have no self-extending or
self-sustaining power of their own, and will go nowhere unless forced by
act of Congress. And if Congress do but pause for a moment in the policy
of stern coercion; if it venture to try the experiment of leaving men to
judge for themselves what institutions will best suit them; if it be not
strained up to perpetual legislative exertion on this point--if Congress
proceed thus to act in the very spirit of liberty, it is at once charged
with aiming to extend slave labor into all the new Territories of the
United States.
Of course these imputations on the intentions of Congress in this
respect, conceived, as they were, in prejudice and disseminated in
passion, are utterly destitute of any justification in the nature of
things and contrary to all the fundamental doctrines and principles of
civil liberty and self-government.
While, therefore, in general, the people of the Northern States
have never at any time arrogated for the Federal Government the
power to interfere directly with the domestic condition of persons
in the Southern States, but, on the contrary, have disavowed all such
intentions and have shrunk from conspicuous affiliation with those few
who pursue their fanatical objects avowedly through the contemplated
means of revolutionary change of the Government and with acceptance of
the necessary consequences--a civil and servile war--yet many citizens
have suffered themselves to be drawn into one evanescent political issue
of agitation after another, appertaining to the same set of opinions,
and which subsided as rapidly as they arose when it came to be seen, as
it uniformly did, that they were incompatible with the compacts of the
Constitution and the existence of the Union. Thus when the acts of some
of the States to nullify the existing extradition law imposed upon
Congress the duty of passing a new one, the country was invited by
agitators to enter into party organization for its repeal; but that
agitation speedily ceased by reason of the impracticability of its
object. So when the statute restriction upon the institutions of new
States by a geographical line had been repealed, the country was urged
to demand its restoration, and that project also died almost with its
birth. Then followed the cry of alarm from the North against imputed
Southern encroachments, which cry sprang in reality from the spirit of
revolutionary attack on the domestic institutions of the South, and,
after a troubled existence of a few months, has been rebuked by the
voice of a patriotic people.
Of this last agitation, one lamentable feature was that it was carried
on at the immediate expense of the peace and happiness of the people of
the Territory of Kansas. That was made the battlefield, not so much of
opposing factions or interests within itself as of the conflicting
passions of the whole people of the United States. Revolutionary
disorder in Kansas had its origin in projects of intervention
deliberately arranged by certain members of that Congress which enacted
the law for the organization of the Territory; and when propagandist
colonization of Kansas had thus been undertaken in one section of the
Union for the systematic promotion of its peculiar views of policy there
ensued as a matter of course a counteraction with opposite views in
other sections of the Union.
In consequence of these and other incidents, many acts of disorder,
it is undeniable, have been perpetrated in Kansas, to the occasional
interruption rather than the permanent suspension of regular government.
Aggressive and most reprehensible incursions into the Territory were
undertaken both in the North and the South, and entered it on its
northern border by the way of Iowa, as well as on the eastern by way
of Missouri; and there has existed within it a state of insurrection
against the constituted authorities, not without countenance from
inconsiderate persons in each of the great sections of the Union. But
the difficulties in that Territory have been extravagantly exaggerated
for purposes of political agitation elsewhere. The number and gravity of
the acts of violence have been magnified partly by statements entirely
untrue and partly by reiterated accounts of the same rumors or facts.
Thus the Territory has been seemingly filled with extreme violence,
when the whole amount of such acts has not been greater than what
occasionally passes before us in single cities to the regret of all
good citizens, but without being regarded as of general or permanent
political consequence.
Imputed irregularities in the elections had in Kansas, like occasional
irregularities of the same description in the States, were beyond the
sphere of action of the Executive. But incidents of actual violence or
of organized obstruction of law, pertinaciously renewed from time to
time, have been met as they occurred by such means as were available and
as the circumstances required, and nothing of this character now remains
to affect the general peace of the Union. The attempt of a part of the
inhabitants of the Territory to erect a revolutionary government, though
sedulously encouraged and supplied with pecuniary aid from active agents
of disorder in some of the States, has completely failed. Bodies of
armed men, foreign to the Territory, have been prevented from entering
or compelled to leave it; predatory bands, engaged in acts of rapine
under cover of the existing political disturbances, have been arrested
or dispersed, and every well-disposed person is now enabled once more to
devote himself in peace to the pursuits of prosperous industry, for the
prosecution of which he undertook to participate in the settlement of
the Territory.
It affords me unmingled satisfaction thus to announce the peaceful
condition of things in Kansas, especially considering the means to which
it was necessary to have recourse for the attainment of the end, namely,
the employment of a part of the military force of the United States. The
withdrawal of that force from its proper duty of defending the country
against foreign foes or the savages of the frontier to employ it for
the suppression of domestic insurrection is, when the exigency occurs,
a matter of the most earnest solicitude. On this occasion of imperative
necessity it has been done with the best results, and my satisfaction
in the attainment of such results by such means is greatly enhanced by
the consideration that, through the wisdom and energy of the present
executive of Kansas and the prudence, firmness, and vigilance of the
military officers on duty there tranquillity has been restored without
one drop of blood having been shed in its accomplishment by the forces
of the United States.
The restoration of comparative tranquillity in that Territory furnishes
the means of observing calmly and appreciating at their just value the
events which have occurred there and the discussions of which the
government of the Territory has been the subject.
We perceive that controversy concerning its future domestic institutions
was inevitable; that no human prudence, no form of legislation, no
wisdom on the part of Congress, could have prevented it.
It is idle to suppose that the particular provisions of their organic
law were the cause of agitation. Those provisions were but the occasion,
or the pretext, of an agitation which was inherent in the nature of
things. Congress legislated upon the subject in such terms as were most
consonant with the principle of popular sovereignty which underlies our
Government. It could not have legislated otherwise without doing
violence to another great principle of our institutions--the
imprescriptible right of equality of the several States.
We perceive also that sectional interests and party passions have been
the great impediment to the salutary operation of the organic principles
adopted and the chief cause of the successive disturbances in Kansas,
The assumption that because in the organization of the Territories of
Nebraska and Kansas Congress abstained from imposing restraints upon
them to which certain other Territories had been subject, therefore
disorders occurred in the latter Territory, is emphatically contradicted
by the fact that none have occurred in the former. Those disorders were
not the consequence, in Kansas, of the freedom of self-government
conceded to that Territory by Congress, but of unjust interference on
the part of persons not inhabitants of the Territory. Such interference,
wherever it has exhibited itself by acts of insurrectionary character or
of obstruction to process of law, has been repelled or suppressed by all
the means which the Constitution and the laws place in the hands of the
Executive.
In those parts of the United States where, by reason of the inflamed
state of the public mind, false rumors and misrepresentations have
the greatest currency it has been assumed that it was the duty of the
Executive not only to suppress insurrectionary movements in Kansas,
but also to see to the regularity of local elections. It needs little
argument to show that the President has no such power. All government in
the United States rests substantially upon popular election. The freedom
of elections is liable to be impaired by the intrusion of unlawful votes
or the exclusion of lawful ones, by improper influences, by violence,
or by fraud. But the people of the United States are themselves the
all-sufficient guardians of their own rights, and to suppose that they
will not remedy in due season any such incidents of civil freedom is
to suppose them to have ceased to be capable of self-government. The
President of the United States has not power to interpose in elections,
to see to their freedom, to canvass their votes, or to pass upon their
legality in the Territories any more than in the States. If he had such
power the Government might be republican in form, but it would be a
monarchy in fact; and if he had undertaken to exercise it in the case of
Kansas he would have been justly subject to the charge of usurpation and
of violation of the dearest rights of the people of the United States.
Unwise laws, equally with irregularities at elections, are in periods
of great excitement the occasional incidents of even the freest and
best political institutions; but all experience demonstrates that in a
country like ours, where the right of self-constitution exists in the
completest form, the attempt to remedy unwise legislation by resort
to revolution is totally out of place, inasmuch as existing legal
institutions afford more prompt and efficacious means for the redress
of wrong.
I confidently trust that now, when the peaceful condition of Kansas
affords opportunity for calm reflection and wise legislation, either
the legislative assembly of the Territory or Congress will see that
no act shall remain on its statute book violative of the provisions
of the Constitution or subversive of the great objects for which
that was ordained and established, and will take all other necessary
steps to assure to its inhabitants the enjoyment, without obstruction or
abridgment, of all the constitutional rights, privileges, and immunities
of citizens of the United States, as contemplated by the organic law of
the Territory.
Full information in relation to recent events in this Territory will be
found in the documents communicated herewith from the Departments of
State and War.
I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury for
particular information concerning the financial condition of the
Government and the various branches of the public service connected
with the Treasury Department.
During the last fiscal year the receipts from customs were for the first
time more than $64,000,000, and from all sources $73,918,141, which,
with the balance on hand up to the 1st of July, 1855, made the total
resources of the year amount to $92,850,117. The expenditures, including
$3,000,000 in execution of the treaty with Mexico and excluding sums
paid on account of the public debt, amounted to $60,172,401, and
including the latter to $72,948,792, the payment on this account having
amounted to $12,776,390.
On the 4th of March, 1853, the amount of the public debt was
$69,129,937. There was a subsequent increase of $2,750,000 for the debt
of Texas, making a total of $71,879,937. Of this the sum of $45,525,319,
including premium, has been discharged, reducing the debt to
$30,963,909, all which might be paid within a year without embarrassing
the public service, but being not yet due and only redeemable at the
option of the holder, can not be pressed to payment by the Government.
On examining the expenditures of the last five years it will be seen
that the average, deducting payments on account of the public debt and
$10,000,000 paid by treaty to Mexico, has been but about $48,000,000.
It is believed that under an economical administration of the Government
the average expenditure for the ensuing five years will not exceed that
sum, unless extraordinary occasion for its increase should occur. The
acts granting bounty lands will soon have been executed, while the
extension of our frontier settlements will cause a continued demand
for lands and augmented receipts, probably, from that source. These
considerations will justify a reduction of the revenue from customs
so as not to exceed forty-eight or fifty million dollars. I think the
exigency for such reduction is imperative, and again urge it upon the
consideration of Congress.
The amount of reduction, as well as the manner of effecting it,
are questions of great and general interest, it being essential to
industrial enterprise and the public prosperity, as well as the dictate
of obvious justice, that the burden of taxation be made to rest as
equally as possible upon all classes and all sections and interests
of the country.
I have heretofore recommended to your consideration the revision of
the revenue laws, prepared under the direction of the Secretary of the
Treasury, and also legislation upon some special questions affecting the
business of that Department, more especially the enactment of a law to
punish the abstraction of official books or papers from the files of the
Government and requiring all such books and papers and all other public
property to be turned over by the outgoing officer to his successor;
of a law requiring disbursing officers to deposit all public money in
the vaults of the Treasury or in other legal depositories, where the
same are conveniently accessible, and a law to extend existing penal
provisions to all persons who may become possessed of public money by
deposit or otherwise and who shall refuse or neglect on due demand to
pay the same into the Treasury. I invite your attention anew to each
of these objects.
The Army during the past year has been so constantly employed against
hostile Indians in various quarters that it can scarcely be said, with
propriety of language, to have been a peace establishment. Its duties
have been satisfactorily performed, and we have reason to expect as
a result of the year's operations greater security to the frontier
inhabitants than has been hitherto enjoyed. Extensive combinations among
the hostile Indians of the Territories of Washington and Oregon at one
time threatened the devastation of the newly formed settlements of that
remote portion of the country. From recent information we are permitted
to hope that the energetic and successful operations conducted there
will prevent such combinations in future and secure to those Territories
an opportunity to make steady progress in the development of their
agricultural and mineral resources.
Legislation has been recommended by me on previous occasions to cure
defects in the existing organization and to increase the efficiency of
the Army, and further observation has but served to confirm me in the
views then expressed and to enforce on my mind the conviction that such
measures are not only proper, but necessary.
I have, in addition, to invite the attention of Congress to a change of
policy in the distribution of troops and to the necessity of providing
a more rapid increase of the military armament. For details of these
and other subjects relating to the Army I refer to the report of the
Secretary of War.
The condition of the Navy is not merely satisfactory, but exhibits the
most gratifying evidences of increased vigor. As it is comparatively
small, it is more important that it should be as complete as possible
in all the elements of strength; that it should be efficient in the
character of its officers, in the zeal and discipline of its men, in the
reliability of its ordnance, and in the capacity of its ships. In all
these various qualities the Navy has made great progress within the last
few years. The execution of the law of Congress of February 28, 1855,
"to promote the efficiency of the Navy," has been attended by the most
advantageous results. The law for promoting discipline among the men
is found convenient and salutary. The system of granting an honorable
discharge to faithful seamen on the expiration of the period of their
enlistment and permitting them to reenlist after a leave of absence
of a few months without cessation of pay is highly beneficial in its
influence. The apprentice system recently adopted is evidently destined
to incorporate into the service a large number of our countrymen,
hitherto so difficult to procure. Several hundred American boys are
now on a three years' cruise in our national vessels and will return
well-trained seamen. In the Ordnance Department there is a decided and
gratifying indication of progress, creditable to it and to the country.
The suggestions of the Secretary of the Navy in regard to further
improvement in that branch of the service I commend to your favorable
action.
The new frigates ordered by Congress are now afloat and two of them in
active service. They are superior models of naval architecture, and with
their formidable battery add largely to public strength and security.
I concur in the views expressed by the Secretary of the Department in
favor of a still further increase of our naval force.
The report of the Secretary of the Interior presents facts and views
in relation to internal affairs over which the supervision of his
Department extends of much interest and importance.
The aggregate sales of the public lands during the last fiscal year
amount to 9,227,878 acres, for which has been received the sum of
$8,821,414. During the same period there have been located with military
scrip and land warrants and for other purposes 30,100,230 acres, thus
making a total aggregate of 39,328,108 acres. On the 30th of September
last surveys had been made of 16,873,699 acres, a large proportion of
which is ready for market.
The suggestions in this report in regard to the complication and
progressive expansion of the business of the different bureaus of the
Department, to the pension system, to the colonization of Indian tribes,
and the recommendations in relation to various improvements in the
District of Columbia are especially commended to your consideration.
The report of the Postmaster-General presents fully the condition of
that Department of the Government. Its expenditures for the last fiscal
year were $10,407,868 and its gross receipts $7,620,801, making an
excess of expenditure over receipts of $2,787,046. The deficiency
of this Department is thus $744,000 greater than for the year ending
June 30, 1853. Of this deficiency $330,000 is to be attributed to the
additional compensation allowed to postmasters by the act of Congress
of June 22, 1854. The mail facilities in every part of the country have
been very much increased in that period, and the large addition of
railroad service, amounting to 7,908 miles, has added largely to the
cost of transportation.
The inconsiderable augmentation of the income of the Post-Office
Department under the reduced rates of postage and its increasing
expenditures must for the present make it dependent to some extent
upon the Treasury for support. The recommendations of the
Postmaster-General in relation to the abolition of the franking
privilege and his views on the establishment of mail steamship lines
deserve the consideration of Congress. I also call the special attention
of Congress to the statement of the Postmaster-General respecting the
sums now paid for the transportation of mails to the Panama Railroad
Company, and commend to their early and favorable consideration the
suggestions of that officer in relation to new contracts for mail
transportation upon that route, and also upon the Tehuantepec and
Nicaragua routes.
The United States continue in the enjoyment of amicable relations with
all foreign powers.
When my last annual message was transmitted to Congress two subjects of
controversy, one relating to the enlistment of soldiers in this country
for foreign service and the other to Central America, threatened to
disturb the good understanding between the United States and Great
Britain. Of the progress and termination of the former question you were
informed at the time, and the other is now in the way of satisfactory
adjustment.
The object of the convention between the United States and Great Britain
of the 19th of April, 1850, was to secure for the benefit of all nations
the neutrality and the common use of any transit way or interoceanic
communication across the Isthmus of Panama which might be opened within
the limits of Central America. The pretensions subsequently asserted by
Great Britain to dominion or control over territories in or near two of
the routes, those of Nicaragua and Honduras, were deemed by the United
States not merely incompatible with the main object of the treaty, but
opposed even to its express stipulations. Occasion of controversy on
this point has been removed by an additional treaty, which our minister
at London has concluded, and which will be immediately submitted to
the Senate for its consideration. Should the proposed supplemental
arrangement be concurred in by all the parties to be affected by it,
the objects contemplated by the original convention will have been
fully attained.
The treaty between the United States and Great Britain of the 5th of
June, 1854, which went into effective operation in 1855, put an end to
causes of irritation between the two countries, by securing to the
United States the right of fishery on the coast of the British North
American Provinces, with advantages equal to those enjoyed by British
subjects. Besides the signal benefits of this treaty to a large class of
our citizens engaged in a pursuit connected to no inconsiderable degree
with our national prosperity and strength, it has had a favorable effect
upon other interests in the provision it made for reciprocal freedom of
trade between the United States and the British Provinces in America.
The exports of domestic articles to those Provinces during the last year
amounted to more than $22,000,000, exceeding those of the preceding year
by nearly $7,000,000; and the imports therefrom during the same period
amounted to more than twenty-one million, an increase of six million
upon those of the previous year.
The improved condition of this branch of our commerce is mainly
attributable to the above-mentioned treaty.
Provision was made in the first article of that treaty for a commission
to designate the mouths of rivers to which the common right of fishery
on the coast of the United States and the British Provinces was not to
extend. This commission has been employed a part of two seasons, but
without much progress in accomplishing the object for which it was
instituted, in consequence of a serious difference of opinion between
the commissioners, not only as to the precise point where the rivers
terminate, but in many instances as to what constitutes a river. These
difficulties, however, may be overcome by resort to the umpirage
provided for by the treaty.
The efforts perseveringly prosecuted since the commencement of my
Administration to relieve our trade to the Baltic from the exaction of
Sound dues by Denmark have not yet been attended with success. Other
governments have also sought to obtain a like relief to their commerce,
and Denmark was thus induced to propose an arrangement to all the
European powers interested in the subject, and the manner in which her
proposition was received warranting her to believe that a satisfactory
arrangement with them could soon be concluded, she made a strong appeal
to this Government for temporary suspension of definite action on its
part, in consideration of the embarrassment which might result to her
European negotiations by an immediate adjustment of the question with
the United States. This request has been acceded to upon the condition
that the sums collected after the 16th of June last and until the 16th
of June next from vessels and cargoes belonging to our merchants are to
be considered as paid under protest and subject to future adjustment.
There is reason to believe that an arrangement between Denmark and the
maritime powers of Europe on the subject will be soon concluded, and
that the pending negotiation with the United States may then be resumed
and terminated in a satisfactory manner.
With Spain no new difficulties have arisen, nor has much progress been
made in the adjustment of pending ones.
Negotiations entered into for the purpose of relieving our commercial
intercourse with the island of Cuba of some of its burdens and providing
for the more speedy settlement of local disputes growing out of that
intercourse have not yet been attended with any results.
Soon after the commencement of the late war in Europe this Government
submitted to the consideration of all maritime nations two principles
for the security of neutral commerce--one that the neutral flag should
cover enemies' goods, except articles contraband of war, and the other
that neutral property on board merchant vessels of belligerents should
be exempt from condemnation, with the exception of contraband articles.
These were not presented as new rules of international law, having
been generally claimed by neutrals, though not always admitted by
belligerents. One of the parties to the war (Russia), as well as several
neutral powers, promptly acceded to these propositions, and the two
other principal belligerents (Great Britain and France) having consented
to observe them for the present occasion, a favorable opportunity seemed
to be presented for obtaining a general recognition of them, both in
Europe and America.
But Great Britain and France, in common with most of the States of
Europe, while forbearing to reject, did not affirmatively act upon the
overtures of the United States.
While the question was in this position the representatives of Russia,
France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, and Turkey, assembled
at Paris, took into consideration the subject of maritime rights,
and put forth a declaration containing the two principles which this
Government had submitted nearly two years before to the consideration
of maritime powers, and adding thereto the following propositions:
"Privateering is and remains abolished," and "Blockades in order to
be binding must be effective; that is to say, maintained by a force
sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy;" and to
the declaration thus composed of four points, two of which had already
been proposed by the United States, this Government has been invited to
accede by all the powers represented at Paris except Great Britain and
Turkey. To the last of the two additional propositions--that in relation
to blockades--there can certainly be no objection. It is merely the
definition of what shall constitute the effectual investment of a
blockaded place, a definition for which this Government has always
contended, claiming indemnity for losses where a practical violation
of the rule thus defined has been injurious to our commerce. As to the
remaining, article of the declaration of the conference of Paris, that
"privateering is and remains abolished," I certainly can not ascribe to
the powers represented in the conference of Paris any but liberal and
philanthropic views in the attempt to change the unquestionable rule of
maritime law in regard to privateering. Their proposition was doubtless
intended to imply approval of the principle that private property upon
the ocean, although it might belong to the citizens of a belligerent
state, should be exempted from capture; and had that proposition been so
framed as to give full effect to the principle, it would have received
my ready assent on behalf of the United States. But the measure proposed
is inadequate to that purpose. It is true that if adopted private
property upon the ocean would be withdrawn from one mode of plunder,
but left exposed meanwhile to another mode, which could be used with
increased effectiveness. The aggressive capacity of great naval powers
would be thereby augmented, while the defensive ability of others would
be reduced. Though the surrender of the means of prosecuting hostilities
by employing privateers, as proposed by the conference of Paris, is
mutual in terms, yet in practical effect it would be the relinquishment
of a right of little value to one class of states, but of essential
importance to another and a far larger class. It ought not to have been
anticipated that a measure so inadequate to the accomplishment of the
proposed object and so unequal in its operation would receive the assent
of all maritime powers. Private property would be still left to the
depredations of the public armed cruisers.
I have expressed a readiness on the part of this Government to accede
to all the principles contained in the declaration of the conference of
Paris provided that the one relating to the abandonment of privateering
can be so amended as to effect the object for which, as is presumed, it
was intended--the immunity of private property on the ocean from hostile
capture. To effect this object, it is proposed to add to the declaration
that "privateering is and remains abolished" the following amendment:
And that the private property of subjects and citizens of a belligerent
on the high seas shall be exempt from seizure by the public armed
vessels of the other belligerent, except it be contraband.
This amendment has been presented not only to the powers which have
asked our assent to the declaration to abolish privateering, but to all
other maritime states. Thus far it has not been rejected by any, and is
favorably entertained by all which have made any communication in reply.
Several of the governments regarding with favor the proposition of
the United States have delayed definitive action upon it only for the
purpose of consulting with others, parties to the conference of Paris.
I have the satisfaction of stating, however, that the Emperor of Russia
has entirely and explicitly approved of that modification and will
cooperate in endeavoring to obtain the assent of other powers, and that
assurances of a similar purport have been received in relation to the
disposition of the Emperor of the French.
The present aspect of this important subject allows us to cherish the
hope that a principle so humane in its character, so just and equal in
its operation, so essential to the prosperity of commercial nations, and
so consonant to the sentiments of this enlightened period of the world
will command the approbation of all maritime powers, and thus be
incorporated into the code of international law.
My views on the subject are more fully set forth in the reply of the
Secretary of State, a copy of which is herewith transmitted, to the
communications on the subject made to this Government, especially to
the communication of France.
The Government of the United States has at all times regarded with
friendly interest the other States of America, formerly, like this
country, European colonies, and now independent members of the great
family of nations. But the unsettled condition of some of them,
distracted by frequent revolutions, and thus incapable of regular and
firm internal administration, has tended to embarrass occasionally our
public intercourse by reason of wrongs which our citizens suffer at
their hands, and which they are slow to redress.
Unfortunately, it is against the Republic of Mexico, with which it
is our special desire to maintain a good understanding, that such
complaints are most numerous; and although earnestly urged upon its
attention, they have not as yet received the consideration which this
Government had a right to expect. While reparation for past injuries has
been withheld, others have been added. The political condition of that
country, however, has been such as to demand forbearance on the part of
the United States. I shall continue my efforts to procure for the wrongs
of our citizens that redress which is indispensable to the continued
friendly association of the two Republics.
The peculiar condition of affairs in Nicaragua in the early part of the
present year rendered it important that this Government should have
diplomatic relations with that State. Through its territory had been
opened one of the principal thoroughfares across the isthmus connecting
North and South America, on which a vast amount of property was
transported and to which our citizens resorted in great numbers in
passing between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States.
The protection of both required that the existing power in that State
should be regarded as a responsible Government, and its minister was
accordingly received. But he remained here only a short time. Soon
thereafter the political affairs of Nicaragua underwent unfavorable
change and became involved in much uncertainty and confusion. Diplomatic
representatives from two contending parties have been recently sent to
this Government, but with the imperfect information possessed it was not
possible to decide which was the Government _de facto_, and, awaiting
further developments, I have refused to receive either.
Questions of the most serious nature are pending between the United
States and the Republic of New Granada. The Government of that Republic
undertook a year since to impose tonnage duties on foreign vessels in
her ports, but the purpose was resisted by this Government as being
contrary to existing treaty stipulations with the United States and
to rights conferred by charter upon the Panama Railroad Company, and
was accordingly relinquished 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 ist 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.