the public lands, as a source of revenue, are of great importance, their
importance is far greater as furnishing homes for a hardy and independent
race of honest and industrious citizens who desire to subdue and cultivate
the soil. They ought to be administered mainly with a view of promoting
this wise and benevolent policy. In appropriating them for any other
purpose we ought to use even greater economy than if they had been
converted into money and the proceeds were already in the public Treasury.
To squander away this richest and noblest inheritance which any people have
ever enjoyed upon objects of doubtful constitutionality or expediency would
be to violate one of the most important trusts ever committed to any
people. Whilst I do not deny to Congress the power, when acting bona fide
as a proprietor, to give away portions of them for the purpose of
increasing the value of the remainder, yet, considering the great
temptation to abuse this power, we can not be too cautious in its exercise.
Actual settlers under existing laws are protected against other purchasers
at the public sales in their right of preemption to the extent of a quarter
section, or 160 acres, of land. The remainder may then be disposed of at
public or entered at private sale in unlimited quantities. Speculation has
of late years prevailed to a great extent in the public lands. The
consequence has been that large portions of them have become the property
of individuals and companies, and thus the price is greatly enhanced to
those who desire to purchase for actual settlement. In order to limit the
area of speculation as much as possible, the extinction of the Indian title
and the extension of the public surveys ought only to keep pace with the
tide of emigration.
If Congress should hereafter grant alternate sections to States or
companies, as they have done heretofore, I recommend that the intermediate
sections retained by the Government should be subject to preemption by
actual settlers.
It ought ever to be our cardinal policy to reserve the public lands as much
as may be for actual settlers, and this at moderate prices. We shall thus
not only best promote the prosperity of the new States and Territories and
the power of the Union, but shall secure homes for our posterity for many
generations.
The extension of our limits has brought within our jurisdiction many
additional and populous tribes of Indians, a large proportion of which are
wild, untractable, and difficult to control. Predatory and warlike in their
disposition and habits, it is impossible altogether to restrain them from
committing aggressions on each other, as well as upon our frontier citizens
and those emigrating to our distant States and Territories. Hence expensive
military expeditions are frequently necessary to overawe and chastise the
more lawless and hostile. The present system of making them valuable
presents to influence them to remain at peace has proved ineffectual. It is
believed to be the better policy to colonize them in suitable localities
where they can receive the rudiments of education and be gradually induced
to adopt habits of industry. So far as the experiment has been tried it has
worked well in practice, and it will doubtless prove to be less expensive
than the present system.
The whole number of Indians within our territorial limits is believed to
be, from the best data in the Interior Department, about 325,000. The
tribes of Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks settled in the
Territory set apart for them west of Arkansas are rapidly advancing in
education and in all the arts of civilization and self-government and we
may indulge the agreeable anticipation that at no very distant day they
will be incorporated into the Union as one of the sovereign States.
It will be seen from the report of the Postmaster-General that the
Post-Office Department still continues to depend on the Treasury, as it has
been compelled to do for several years past, for an important portion of
the means of sustaining and extending its operations. Their rapid growth
and expansion are shown by a decennial statement of the number of
post-offices and the length of post-roads, commencing with the year 1827.
In that year there were 7,000 post-offices; in 1837, 11,177; in 1847,
15,146, and in 1857 they number 26,586. In this year 1,725 post-offices
have been established and 704 discontinued, leaving a net increase of
1,021. The postmasters of 368 offices are appointed by the President.
The length of post-roads in 1827 was 105,336 miles; in 1837,141,242 miles;
in 1847, 153,818 miles, and in the year 1857 there are 242,601 miles of
post-road, including 22,530 miles of railroad on which the mails are
transported.
The expenditures of the Department for the fiscal year ending on the 30th
June, 1857, as adjusted by the Auditor, amounted to $11,507,670. To defray
these expenditures there was to the credit of the Department on the 1st
July, 1856, the sum of $789,599; the gross revenue of the year, including
the annual allowances for the transportation of free mail matter, produced
$8,053,951, and the remainder was supplied by the appropriation from the
Treasury of $2,250,000 granted by the act of Congress approved August 18,
1856, and by the appropriation of $666,883 made by the act of March 3,
1857, leaving $252,763 to be carried to the credit of the Department in the
accounts of the current year. I commend to your consideration the report of
the Department in relation to the establishment of the overland mail route
from the Mississippi River to San Francisco, Cal. The route was selected
with my full concurrence, as the one, in my judgment, best calculated to
attain the important objects contemplated by Congress.
The late disastrous monetary revulsion may have one good effect should it
cause both the Government and the people to return to the practice of a
wise and judicious economy both in public and private expenditures.
An overflowing Treasury has led to habits of prodigality and extravagance
in our legislation. It has induced Congress to make large appropriations to
objects for which they never would have provided had it been necessary to
raise the amount of revenue required to meet them by increased taxation or
by loans. We are now compelled to pause in our career and to scrutinize our
expenditures with the utmost vigilance; and in performing this duty I
pledge my cooperation to the extent of my constitutional competency.
It ought to be observed at the same time that true public economy does not
consist in withholding the means necessary to accomplish important national
objects intrusted to us by the Constitution, and especially such as may be
necessary for the common defense. In the present crisis of the country it
is our duty to confine our appropriations to objects of this character,
unless in cases where justice to individuals may demand a different course.
In all cases care ought to be taken that the money granted by Congress
shall be faithfully and economically applied.
Under the Federal Constitution "every bill which shall have passed the
House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it become a law," be
approved and signed by the President; and if not approved, "he shall return
it with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated." In
order to perform this high and responsible duty, sufficient time must be
allowed the President to read and examine every bill presented to him for
approval. Unless this be afforded, the Constitution becomes a dead letter
in this particular, and; even worse, it becomes a means of deception. Our
constituents, seeing the President's approval and signature attached to
each act of Congress, are induced to believe that he has actually performed
his duty, when in truth nothing is in many cases more unfounded.
From the practice of Congress such an examination of each bill as the
Constitution requires has been rendered impossible. The most important
business of each session is generally crowded into its last hours, and the
alternative presented to the President is either to violate the
constitutional duty which he owes to the people and approve bills which for
want of time it is impossible he should have examined, or by his refusal to
do this subject the country and individuals to great loss and
inconvenience.
Besides, a practice has grown up of late years to legislate in
appropriation bills at the last hours of the session on new and important
subjects. This practice constrains the President either to suffer measures
to become laws which he does not approve or to incur the risk of stopping
the wheels of the Government by vetoing an appropriation bill. Formerly
such bills were confined to specific appropriations for carrying into
effect existing laws and the well-established policy of the country, and
little time was then requited by the President for their examination.
For my own part, I have deliberately determined that I shall approve no
bills which I have not examined, and it will be a case of extreme and most
urgent necessity which shall ever induce me to depart from this rule. I
therefore respectfully but earnestly recommend that the two Houses would
allow the President at least two days previous to the adjournment of each
session within which no new bill shall be presented to him for approval.
Under the existing joint rule one day is allowed, but this rule has been
hitherto so constantly suspended in practice that important bills continue
to be presented to him up till the very last moments of the session. In a
large majority of cases no great public inconvenience can arise from the
want of time to examine their provisions, because the Constitution has
declared that if a bill be presented to the President within the last ten
days of the session he is not required to return it, either with an
approval or with a veto, "in which case it shall not be a law." It may then
lie over and be taken up and passed at the next session. Great
inconvenience would only be experienced in regard to appropriation bills,
but, fortunately, under the late excellent law allowing a salary instead of
a per diem to members of Congress the expense and inconvenience of a called
session will be greatly reduced.
I can not conclude without commending to your favorable consideration the
interest of the people of this District. Without a representative on the
floor of Congress, they have for this very reason peculiar claims upon our
just regard. To this I know, from my long acquaintance with them, they are
eminently entitled.
***
State of the Union Address
James Buchanan
December 6, 1858
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:
When we compare the condition of the country at the present day with what
it was one year ago at the meeting of Congress, we have much reason for
gratitude to that Almighty Providence which has never failed to interpose
for our relief at the most critical periods of our history. One year ago
the sectional strife between the North and the South on the dangerous
subject of slavery had again become so intense as to threaten the peace and
perpetuity of the Confederacy. The application for the admission of Kansas
as a State into the Union fostered this unhappy agitation and brought the
whole subject once more before Congress. It was the desire of every patriot
that such measures of legislation might be adopted as would remove the
excitement from the States and confine it to the Territory where it
legitimately belonged. Much has been done, I am happy to say, toward the
accomplishment of this object during the last session of Congress. The
Supreme Court of the United States had previously decided that all American
citizens have an equal right to take into the Territories whatever is held
as property under the laws of any of the States, and to hold such property
there under the guardianship of the Federal Constitution so long as the
Territorial condition shall remain.
This is now a well-established position, and the proceedings of the last
session were alone wanting to give it practical effect. The principle has
been recognized in some form or other by an almost unanimous vote of both
Houses of Congress that a Territory has a right to come into the Union
either as a free or a slave State, according to the will of a majority of
its people. The just equality of all the States has thus been vindicated
and a fruitful source of dangerous dissension among them has been removed.
Whilst such has been the beneficial tendency of your legislative
proceedings outside of Kansas, their influence has nowhere been so happy as
within that Territory itself. Left to manage and control its own affairs in
its own way, without the pressure of external influence, the revolutionary
Topeka organization and all resistance to the Territorial government
established by Congress have been finally abandoned. As a natural
consequence that fine Territory now appears to be tranquil and prosperous
and is attracting increasing thousands of immigrants to make it their happy
home.
The past unfortunate experience of Kansas has enforced the lesson, so often
already taught, that resistance to lawful authority under our form of
government can not fail in the end to prove disastrous to its authors. Had
the people of the Territory yielded obedience to the laws enacted by their
legislature, it would at the present moment have contained a large
additional population of industrious and enterprising citizens, who have
been deterred from entering its borders by the existence of civil strife
and organized rebellion.
It was the resistance to rightful authority and the persevering attempts to
establish a revolutionary government under the Topeka constitution which
caused the people of Kansas to commit the grave error of refusing to vote
for delegates to the convention to frame a constitution under a law not
denied to be fair and just in its provisions. This refusal to vote has been
the prolific source of all the evils which have followed, In their
hostility to the Territorial government they disregarded the principle,
absolutely essential to the working of our form of government, that a
majority of those who vote, not the majority who may remain at home, from
whatever cause, must decide the result of an election. For this reason,
seeking to take advantage of their own error, they denied the authority of
the convention thus elected to frame a constitution.
The convention, notwithstanding, proceeded to adopt a constitution
unexceptionable in its general features, and providing for the submission
of the slavery question to a vote of the people, which, in my opinion, they
were bound to do under the Kansas and Nebraska act. This was the
all-important question which had alone convulsed the Territory; and yet the
opponents of the lawful government, persisting in their first error,
refrained from exercising their right to vote, and preferred that slavery
should continue rather than surrender their revolutionary Topeka
organization.
A wiser and better spirit seemed to prevail before the first Monday of
January last, when an election was held under the constitution. A majority
of the people then voted for a governor and other State officers, for a
Member of Congress and members of the State legislature. This election was
warmly contested by the two political parties in Kansas, and a greater vote
was polled than at any previous election. A large majority of the members
of the legislature elect belonged to that party which had previously
refused to vote. The antislavery party were thus placed in the ascendant,
and the political power of the State was in their own hands. Had Congress
admitted Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton constitution, the
legislature might at its very first session have submitted the question to
a vote of the people whether they would or would not have a convention to
amend their constitution, either on the slavery or any other question, and
have adopted all necessary means for giving speedy effect to the will of
the majority. Thus the Kansas question would have been immediately and
finally settled.
Under these circumstances I submitted to Congress the constitution thus
framed, with all the officers already elected necessary to put the State
government into operation, accompanied by a strong recommendation in favor
of the admission of Kansas as a State. In the course of my long public life
I have never performed any official act which in the retrospect has
afforded me more heartfelt satisfaction. Its admission could have inflicted
no possible injury on any human being, whilst it would within a brief
period have restored peace to Kansas and harmony to the Union. In that
event the slavery question would ere this have been finally settled
according to the legally expressed will of a majority of the voters, and
popular sovereignty would thus have been vindicated in a constitutional
manner.
With my deep convictions of duty I could have pursued no other course. It
is true that as an individual I had expressed an opinion, both before and
during the session of the convention, in favor of submitting the remaining
clauses of the constitution, as well as that concerning slavery, to the
people. But, acting in an official character, neither myself nor any human
authority had the power to rejudge the proceedings of the convention and
declare the constitution which it had framed to be a nullity. To have done
this would have been a violation of the Kansas and Nebraska act, which left
the people of the Territory "perfectly free to form and regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of
the United States." It would equally have violated the great principle of
popular sovereignty, at the foundation of our institutions, to deprive the
people of the power, if they thought proper to exercise it, of confiding to
delegates elected by themselves the trust of framing a constitution without
requiring them to subject their constituents to the trouble, expense, and
delay of a second election. It would have been in opposition to many
precedents in our history, commencing in the very best age of the Republic,
of the admission of Territories as States into the Union without a previous
vote of the people approving their constitution.
It is to be lamented that a question so insignificant when viewed in its
practical effects on the people of Kansas, whether decided one way or the
other, should have kindled such a flame of excitement throughout the
country. This reflection may prove to be a lesson of wisdom and of warning
for our future guidance. Practically considered, the question is simply
whether the people of that Territory should first come into the Union and
then change any provision in their constitution not agreeable to
themselves, or accomplish the very same object by remaining out of the
Union and framing another constitution in accordance with their will. In
either case the result would be precisely the same. The only difference, in
point of fact, is that the object would have been much sooner attained and
the pacification of Kansas more speedily effected had it been admitted as a
State during the last session of Congress.
My recommendation, however, for the immediate admission of Kansas failed to
meet the approbation of Congress. They deemed it wiser to adopt a different
measure for the settlement of the question. For my own part, I should have
been willing to yield my assent to almost any constitutional measure to
accomplish this object. I therefore cordially acquiesced in what has been
called the English compromise and approved the "act for the admission of
the State of Kansas into the Union" upon the terms therein prescribed.
Under the ordinance which accompanied the Lecompton constitution the people
of Kansas had claimed double the quantity of public lands for the support
of common schools which had ever been previously granted to any State upon
entering the Union, and also the alternate sections of land for 12 miles on
each side of two railroads proposed to be constructed from the northern to
the southern boundary and from the eastern to the western boundary of the
State. Congress, deeming these claims unreasonable, provided by the act of
May 4, 1858, to which I have just referred, for the admission of the State
on an equal footing with the original States, but "upon the fundamental
condition precedent" that a majority of the people thereof, at an election
to be held for that purpose, should, in place of the very large grants of
public lands which they had demanded under the ordinance, accept such
grants as had been made to Minnesota and other new States. Under this act,
should a majority reject the proposition offered them, "it shall be deemed
and held that the people of Kansas do not desire admission into the Union
with said constitution under the conditions set forth in said proposition."
In that event the act authorizes the people of the Territory to elect
delegates to form a constitution and State government for themselves
"whenever, and not before, it is ascertained by a census, duly and legally
taken, that the population of said Territory equals or exceeds the ratio of
representation required for a member of the House of Representatives of the
Congress of the United States." The delegates thus assembled "shall first
determine by a vote whether it is the wish of the people of the proposed
State to be admitted into the Union at that time, and, if so, shall proceed
to form a constitution and take all necessary steps for the establishment
of a State government in conformity with the Federal Constitution." After
this constitution shall have been formed, Congress, carrying out the
principles of popular sovereignty and nonintervention, have left "the mode
and manner of its approval or ratification by the people of the proposed
State" to be "prescribed by law," and they "shall then be admitted into the
Union as a State under such constitution, thus fairly and legally made,
with or without slavery, as said constitution may prescribe."
An election was held throughout Kansas, in pursuance of the provisions of
this act, on the 2d day of August last, and it resulted in the rejection by
a large majority of the proposition submitted to the people by Congress.
This being the case, they are now authorized to form another constitution,
preparatory to admission into the Union, but not until their number, as
ascertained by a census, shall equal or exceed the ratio required to elect
a member to the House of Representatives.
It is not probable, in the present state of the case, that a third
constitution can be lawfully framed and presented to Congress by Kansas
before its population shall have reached the designated number. Nor is it
to be presumed that after their sad experience in resisting the Territorial
laws they will attempt to adopt a constitution in express violation of the
provisions of an act of Congress. During the session of 1856 much of the
time of Congress was occupied on the question of admitting Kansas under the
Topeka constitution. Again, nearly the whole of the last session was
devoted to the question of its admission under the Lecompton constitution.
Surely it is not unreasonable to require the people of Kansas to wait
before making a third attempt until the number of their inhabitants shall
amount to 93,420. During this brief period the harmony of the States as
well as the great business interests of the country demand that the people
of the Union shall not for a third time be convulsed by another agitation
on the Kansas question. By waiting for a short time and acting in obedience
to law Kansas will glide into the Union without the slightest impediment.
This excellent provision, which Congress have applied to Kansas, ought to
be extended and rendered applicable to all Territories which may hereafter
seek admission into the Union.
Whilst Congress possess the undoubted power of admitting a new State into
the Union, however small may be the number of its inhabitants, yet this
power ought not, in my opinion, to be exercised before the population shall
amount to the ratio required by the act for the admission of Kansas. Had
this been previously the rule, the country would have escaped all the evils
and misfortunes to which it has been exposed by the Kansas question.