President[ Franklin Pierce
Date[ 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
passion late hostility toward their fellow-citizens of those States, and
thus finally to fall into temporary fellowship with the avowed and active
enemies of the Constitution. Ardently attached to liberty in the abstract,
they do not stop to consider practically how the objects they would attain
can be accomplished, nor to reflect that, even if the evil were as great as
they deem it, they have no remedy to apply, and that it can be only
aggravated by their violence and unconstitutional action. A question which
is one of the most difficult of all the problems of social institution,
political economy, and statesmanship they treat with unreasoning
intemperance of thought and language. Extremes beget extremes. Violent
attack from the North finds its inevitable consequence in the growth of a
spirit of angry defiance at the South. Thus in the progress of events we
had reached that consummation, which the voice of the people has now so
pointedly rebuked, of the attempt of a portion of the States, by a
sectional organization and movement, to usurp the control of the Government
of the United States.
I confidently believe that the great body of those who inconsiderately took
this fatal step are sincerely attached to the Constitution and the Union.
They would upon deliberation shrink with unaffected horror from any
conscious act of disunion or civil war. But they have entered into a path
which leads nowhere unless it be to civil war and disunion, and which has
no other possible outlet. They have proceeded thus far in that direction in
consequence of the successive stages of their progress having consisted of
a series of secondary issues, each of which professed to be confined within
constitutional and peaceful limits, but which attempted indirectly what few
men were willing to do directly; that is, to act aggressively against the
constitutional rights of nearly one-half of the thirty-one States.
In the long series of acts of indirect aggression, the first was the
strenuous agitation by citizens of the Northern States, in Congress and out
of it, of the question of Negro emancipation in the Southern States.
The second step in this path of evil consisted of acts of the people of the
Northern States, and in several instances of their governments, aimed to
facilitate the escape of persons held to service in the Southern States and
to prevent their extradition when reclaimed according to law and in virtue
of express provisions of the Constitution. To promote this object,
legislative enactments and other means were adopted to take away or defeat
rights which the Constitution solemnly guaranteed. In order to nullify the
then existing act of Congress concerning the extradition of fugitives from
service, laws were enacted in many States forbidding their officers, under
the severest penalties, to participate in the execution of any act of
Congress whatever. In this way that system of harmonious cooperation
between the authorities of the United States and of the several States, for
the maintenance of their common institutions, which existed in the early
years of the Republic was destroyed; conflicts of jurisdiction came to be
frequent, and Congress found itself compelled, for the support of the
Constitution and the vindication of its power, to authorize the appointment
of new officers charged with the execution of its acts, as if they and the
officers of the States were the ministers, respectively, of foreign
governments in a state of mutual hostility rather than fellow-magistrates
of a common country peacefully subsisting under the protection of one
well-constituted Union. Thus here also aggression was followed by reaction,
and the attacks upon the Constitution at this point did but serve to raise
up new barriers for its defense and security.
The third stage of this unhappy sectional controversy was in connection
with the organization of Territorial governments and the admission of new
States into the Union. When it was proposed to admit the State of Maine, by
separation of territory from that of Massachusetts, and the State of
Missouri, formed of a portion of the territory ceded by France to the
United States, representatives in Congress objected to the admission of the
latter unless with conditions suited to particular views of public policy.
The imposition of such a condition was successfully resisted; but at the
same period the question was presented of imposing restrictions upon the
residue of the territory ceded by France. That question was for the time
disposed of by the adoption of a geographical line of limitation.
In this connection it should not be forgotten that when France, of her own
accord, resolved, for considerations of the most farsighted sagacity, to
cede Louisiana to the United States, and that accession was accepted by the
United States, the latter expressly engaged that "the inhabitants of the
ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and
admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal
Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and
immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall
be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty,
property, and the religion which they profess;" that is to say, while it
remains in a Territorial condition its inhabitants are maintained and
protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, with a right
then to pass into the condition of States on a footing of perfect equality
with the original States.
The enactment which established the restrictive geographical line was
acquiesced in rather than approved by the States of the Union. It stood on
the statute book, however, for a number of years; and the people of the
respective States acquiesced in the reenactment of the principle as applied
to the State of Texas, and it was proposed to acquiesce in its further
application to the territory acquired by the United States from Mexico. But
this proposition was successfully resisted by the representatives from the
Northern States, who, regardless of the statute line, insisted upon
applying restriction to the new territory generally, whether lying north or
south of it, thereby repealing it as a legislative compromise, and, on the
part of the North, persistently violating the compact, if compact there
was.
Thereupon this enactment ceased to have binding virtue in any sense,
whether as respects the North or the South, and so in effect it was treated
on the occasion of the admission of the State of California and the
organization of the Territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Washington.
Such was the state of this question when the time arrived for the
organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. In the progress of
constitutional inquiry and reflection it had now at length come to be seen
clearly that Congress does not possess constitutional power to impose
restrictions of this character upon any present or future State of the
Union. In a long series of decisions, on the fullest argument and after the
most deliberate consideration, the Supreme Court of the United States had
finally determined this point in every form under which the question could
arise, whether as affecting public or private rights--in questions of the
public domain, of religion, of navigation, and of servitude.
The several States of the Union are by force of the Constitution coequal in
domestic legislative power. Congress can not change a law of domestic
relation in the State of Maine; no more can it in the State of Missouri.
Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere nullity; it takes away no
right, it confers none. If it remains on the statute book unrepealed, it
remains there only as a monument of error and a beacon of warning to the
legislator and the statesman. To repeal it will be only to remove
imperfection from the statutes, without affecting, either in the sense of
permission, or of prohibition, the action of the States or of their
citizens.
Still, when the nominal restriction of this nature, already a dead letter
in law, was in terms repealed by the last Congress, in a clause of the act
organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, that repeal was made the
occasion of a widespread and dangerous agitation. It was alleged that the
original enactment being a compact of perpetual moral obligation, its
repeal constituted an odious breach of faith. An act of Congress, while it
remains unrepealed, more especially if it be constitutionally valid in the
judgment of those public functionaries whose duty it is to pronounce on
that point, is undoubtedly binding on the conscience of each good citizen
of the Republic. But in what sense can it be asserted that the enactment in
question was invested with perpetuity and entitled to the respect of a
solemn Compact? Between whom was the compact? No distinct contending powers
of the Government, no separate sections of the Union treating as such,
entered into treaty stipulations on the subject. It was a mere clause of an
act of Congress, and, like any other controverted matter of legislation,
received its final shape and was passed by compromise of the conflicting
opinions or sentiments of the members of Congress. But if it had moral
authority over men's consciences, to whom did this authority attach? Not to
those of the North, who had repeatedly refused to confirm it by extension
and who had zealously striven to establish other and incompatible
regulations upon the subject. And if, as it thus appears, the supposed
compact had no obligatory force as to the North, of course it could not
have had any as to the South, for all such compacts must be mutual and of
reciprocal obligation.
It has not unfrequently happened that lawgivers, with undue estimation of
the value of the law they give or in the view of imparting to it peculiar
strength, make it perpetual in terms; but they can not thus bind the
conscience, the judgment, and the will of those who may succeed them,
invested with similar responsibilities and clothed with equal authority.
More careful investigation may prove the law to be unsound in principle.
Experience may show it to be imperfect in detail and impracticable in
execution. And then both reason and right combine not merely to justify but
to require its repeal.
The Constitution, supreme, as it is, over all the departments of the
Government--legislative, executive, and judicial--is open to amendment by
its very terms; and Congress or the States may, in their discretion,
propose amendment to it, solemn compact though it in truth is between the
sovereign States of the Union. In the present instance a political
enactment which had ceased to have legal power or authority of any kind was
repealed. The position assumed that Congress had no moral right to enact
such repeal was strange enough, and singularly so in view of the fact that
the argument came from those who openly refused obedience to existing laws
of the land, having the same popular designation and quality as compromise
acts; nay, more, who unequivocally disregarded and condemned the most
positive and obligatory injunctions of the Constitution itself, and sought
by every means within their reach to deprive a portion of their
fellow-citizens of the equal enjoyment of those rights and privileges
guaranteed alike to all by the fundamental compact of our Union.
This argument against the repeal of the statute line in question was
accompanied by another of congenial character and equally with the former
destitute of foundation in reason and truth. It was imputed that the
measure originated in the conception of extending the limits of slave labor
beyond those previously assigned to it, and that such was its natural as
well as intended effect; and these baseless assumptions were made, in the
Northern States, the ground of unceasing assault upon constitutional
right.
The repeal in terms of a statute, which was already obsolete and also null
for unconstitutionality, could have no influence to obstruct or to promote
the propagation of conflicting views of political or social institution.
When the act organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska was passed,
the inherent effect upon that portion of the public domain thus opened to
legal settlement was to admit settlers from all the States of the Union
alike, each with his convictions of public policy and private interest,
there to found, in their discretion, subject to such limitations as the
Constitution and acts of Congress might prescribe, new States, hereafter to
be admitted into the Union. It was a free field, open alike to all, whether
the statute line of assumed restriction were repealed or not. That repeal
did not open to free competition of the diverse opinions and domestic
institutions a field which without such repeal would have been closed
against them; it found that field of competition already opened, in fact
and in law. All the repeal did was to relieve the statute book of an
objectionable enactment, unconstitutional in effect and injurious in terms
to a large portion of the States.
Is it the fact that in all the unsettled regions of the United States, if
emigration be left free to act in this respect for itself, without legal
prohibitions on either side, slave labor will spontaneously go everywhere
in preference to free labor? Is it the fact that the peculiar domestic
institutions of the Southern States possess relatively so much of vigor
that wheresoever an avenue is freely opened to all the world they will
penetrate to the exclusion of those of the Northern States? Is it the fact
that the former enjoy, compared with the latter, such irresistibly superior
vitality, independent of climate, soil, and all other accidental
circumstances, as to be able to produce the supposed result in spite of the
assumed moral and natural obstacles to its accomplishment and of the more
numerous population of the Northern States? The argument of those who
advocate the enactment of new laws of restriction and condemn the repeal of
old ones in effect avers that their particular views of government have no
self-extending or self-sustaining power of their own, and will go nowhere
unless forced by act of Congress. And if Congress do but pause for a moment
in the policy of stern coercion; if it venture to try the experiment of
leaving men to judge for themselves what institutions will best suit them;
if it be not strained up to perpetual legislative exertion on this
point--if Congress proceed thus to act in the very spirit of liberty, it is
at once charged with aiming to extend slave labor into all the new
Territories of the United States.
Of course these imputations on the intentions of Congress in this respect,
conceived, as they were, in prejudice and disseminated in passion, are
utterly destitute of any justification in the nature of things and contrary
to all the fundamental doctrines and principles of civil liberty and
self-government.
While, therefore, in general, the people of the Northern States have never
at any time arrogated for the Federal Government the power to interfere
directly with the domestic condition of persons in the Southern States,
but, on the contrary, have disavowed all such intentions and have shrunk
from conspicuous affiliation with those few who pursue their fanatical
objects avowedly through the contemplated means of revolutionary change of
the Government and with acceptance of the necessary consequences--a civil
and servile war--yet many citizens have suffered themselves to be drawn
into one evanescent political issue of agitation after another,
appertaining to the same set of opinions, and which subsided as rapidly as
they arose when it came to be seen, as it uniformly did, that they were
incompatible with the compacts of the Constitution and the existence of the
Union. Thus when the acts of some of the States to nullify the existing
extradition law imposed upon Congress the duty of passing a new one, the
country was invited by agitators to enter into party organization for its
repeal; but that agitation speedily ceased by reason of the
impracticability of its object. So when the statute restriction upon the
institutions of new States by a geographical line had been repealed, the
country was urged to demand its restoration, and that project also died
almost with its birth. Then followed the cry of alarm from the North
against imputed Southern encroachments, which cry sprang in reality from
the spirit of revolutionary attack on the domestic institutions of the
South, and, after a troubled existence of a few months, has been rebuked by
the voice of a patriotic people.
Of this last agitation, one lamentable feature was that it was carried on
at the immediate expense of the peace and happiness of the people of the
Territory of Kansas. That was made the battlefield, not so much of opposing
factions or interests within itself as of the conflicting passions of the
whole people of the United States. Revolutionary disorder in Kansas had its
origin in projects of intervention deliberately arranged by certain members
of that Congress which enacted the law for the organization of the
Territory; and when propagandist colonization of Kansas had thus been
undertaken in one section of the Union for the systematic promotion of its
peculiar views of policy there ensued as a matter of course a counteraction
with opposite views in other sections of the Union.
In consequence of these and other incidents, many acts of disorder, it is
undeniable, have been perpetrated in Kansas, to the occasional interruption
rather than the permanent suspension of regular government. Aggressive and
most reprehensible incursions into the Territory were undertaken both in
the North and the South, and entered it on its northern border by the way
of Iowa, as well as on the eastern by way of Missouri; and there has
existed within it a state of insurrection against the constituted
authorities, not without countenance from inconsiderate persons in each of
the great sections of the Union. But the difficulties in that Territory
have been extravagantly exaggerated for purposes of political agitation
elsewhere. The number and gravity of the acts of violence have been
magnified partly by statements entirely untrue and partly by reiterated
accounts of the same rumors or facts. Thus the Territory has been seemingly
filled with extreme violence, when the whole amount of such acts has not
been greater than what occasionally passes before us in single cities to
the regret of all good citizens, but without being regarded as of general
or permanent political consequence.
Imputed irregularities in the elections had in Kansas, like occasional
irregularities of the same description in the States, were beyond the
sphere of action of the Executive. But incidents of actual violence or of
organized obstruction of law, pertinaciously renewed from time to time,
have been met as they occurred by such means as were available and as the
circumstances required, and nothing of this character now remains to affect
the general peace of the Union. The attempt of a part of the inhabitants of
the Territory to erect a revolutionary government, though sedulously
encouraged and supplied with pecuniary aid from active agents of disorder
in some of the States, has completely failed. Bodies of armed men, foreign
to the Territory, have been prevented from entering or compelled to leave
it; predatory bands, engaged in acts of rapine under cover of the existing
political disturbances, have been arrested or dispersed, and every
well-disposed person is now enabled once more to devote himself in peace to
the pursuits of prosperous industry, for the prosecution of which he
undertook to participate in the settlement of the Territory.
It affords me unmingled satisfaction thus to announce the peaceful
condition of things in Kansas, especially considering the means to which it
was necessary to have recourse for the attainment of the end, namely, the
employment of a part of the military force of the United States. The
withdrawal of that force from its proper duty of defending the country
against foreign foes or the savages of the frontier to employ it for the
suppression of domestic insurrection is, when the exigency occurs, a matter
of the most earnest solicitude. On this occasion of imperative necessity it
has been done with the best results, and my satisfaction in the attainment
of such results by such means is greatly enhanced by the consideration
that, through the wisdom and energy of the present executive of Kansas and
the prudence, firmness, and vigilance of the military officers on duty
there tranquillity has been restored without one drop of blood having been
shed in its accomplishment by the forces of the United States.
The restoration of comparative tranquillity in that Territory furnishes the
means of observing calmly and appreciating at their just value the events
which have occurred there and the discussions of which the government of
the Territory has been the subject. We perceive that controversy concerning
its future domestic institutions was inevitable; that no human prudence, no
form of legislation, no wisdom on the part of Congress, could have
prevented it.
It is idle to suppose that the particular provisions of their organic law
were the cause of agitation. Those provisions were but the occasion, or the
pretext, of an agitation which was inherent in the nature of things.
Congress legislated upon the subject in such terms as were most consonant
with the principle of popular sovereignty which underlies our Government.
It could not have legislated otherwise without doing violence to another
great principle of our institutions--the imprescriptible right of equality
of the several States.
We perceive also that sectional interests and party passions have been the
great impediment to the salutary operation of the organic principles
adopted and the chief cause of the successive disturbances in Kansas. The
assumption that because in the organization of the Territories of Nebraska
and Kansas Congress abstained from imposing restraints upon them to which
certain other Territories had been subject, therefore disorders occurred in
the latter Territory, is emphatically contradicted by the fact that none
have occurred in the former. Those disorders were not the consequence, in
Kansas, of the freedom of self-government conceded to that Territory by
Congress, but of unjust interference on the part of persons not inhabitants
of the Territory. Such interference, wherever it has exhibited itself by
acts of insurrectionary character or of obstruction to process of law, has
been repelled or suppressed by all the means which the Constitution and the
laws place in the hands of the Executive.
In those parts of the United States where, by reason of the inflamed state
of the public mind, false rumors and misrepresentations have the greatest
currency it has been assumed that it was the duty of the Executive not only
to suppress insurrectionary movements in Kansas, but also to see to the
regularity of local elections. It needs little argument to show that the
President has no such power. All government in the United States rests
substantially upon popular election. The freedom of elections is liable to
be impaired by the intrusion of unlawful votes or the exclusion of lawful
ones, by improper influences, by violence, or by fraud. But the people of
the United States are themselves the all sufficient guardians of their own
rights, and to suppose that they will not remedy in due season any such
incidents of civil freedom is to suppose them to have ceased to be capable
of self-government. The President of the United States has not power to
interpose in elections, to see to their freedom, to canvass their votes, or
to pass upon their legality in the Territories any more than in the States.
If he had such power the Government might be republican in form, but it
would be a monarchy in fact; and if he had undertaken to exercise it in the
case of Kansas he would have been justly subject to the charge of
usurpation and of violation of the dearest rights of the people of the
United States.
Unwise laws, equally with irregularities at elections, are in periods of
great excitement the occasional incidents of even the freest and best
political institutions; but all experience demonstrates that in a country
like ours, where the right of self-constitution exists in the completest
form, the attempt to remedy unwise legislation by resort to revolution is
totally out of place, inasmuch as existing legal institutions afford more
prompt and efficacious means for the redress of wrong.
I confidently trust that now, when the peaceful condition of Kansas affords
opportunity for calm reflection and wise legislation, either the
legislative assembly of the Territory or Congress will see that no act
shall remain on its statute book violative of the provisions of the
Constitution or subversive of the great objects for which that was ordained
and established, and will take all other necessary steps to assure to its
inhabitants the enjoyment, without obstruction or abridgment, of all the
constitutional rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens of the United
States, as contemplated by the organic law of the Territory.
Full information in relation to recent events in this Territory will be
found in the documents communicated herewith from the Departments of State
and War.
I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury for particular
information concerning the financial condition of the Government and the
various branches of the public service connected with the Treasury
Department.
During the last fiscal year the receipts from customs were for the first
time more than $64,000,000, and from all sources $73,918,141, which, with
the balance on hand up to the 1st of July, 1855, made the total resources
of the year amount to $92,850,117. The expenditures, including $3,000,000
in execution of the treaty with Mexico and excluding sums paid on account
of the public debt, amounted to $60,172,401, and including the latter to
$72,948,792, the payment on this account having amounted to $12,776,390.
On the 4th of March, 1853, the amount of the public debt was $69,129,937.
There was a subsequent increase of $2,750,000 for the debt of Texas, making
a total of $71,879,937. Of this the sum of $45,525,319, including premium,
has been discharged, reducing the debt to $30,963,909, all which might be
paid within a year without embarrassing the public service, but being not
yet due and only redeemable at the option of the holder, can not be pressed
to payment by the Government.
On examining the expenditures of the last five years it will be seen that
the average, deducting payments on account of the public debt and
$10,000,000 paid by treaty to Mexico, has been but about $48,000,000. It is
believed that under an economical administration of the Government the
average expenditure for the ensuing five years will not exceed that sum,
unless extraordinary occasion for its increase should occur. The acts
granting bounty lands will soon have been executed, while the extension of
our frontier settlements will cause a continued demand for lands and
augmented receipts, probably, from that source. These considerations will
justify a reduction of the revenue from customs so as not to exceed
forty-eight or fifty million dollars. I think the exigency for such
reduction is imperative, and again urge it upon the consideration of
Congress.
The amount of reduction, as well as the manner of effecting it, are
questions of great and general interest, it being essential to industrial
enterprise and the public prosperity, as well as the dictate of obvious
justice, that the burden of taxation be made to rest as equally as possible
upon all classes and all sections and interests of the country.
I have heretofore recommended to your consideration the revision of the
revenue laws, prepared under the direction of the Secretary of the
Treasury, and also legislation upon some special questions affecting the
business of that Department, more especially the enactment of a law to
punish the abstraction of official books or papers from the files of the
Government and requiring all such books and papers and all other public
property to be turned over by the outgoing officer to his successor; of a
law requiring disbursing officers to deposit all public money in the vaults
of the Treasury or in other legal depositories, where the same are
conveniently accessible, and a law to extend existing penal provisions to
all persons who may become possessed of public money by deposit or
otherwise and who shall refuse or neglect on due demand to pay the same
into the Treasury. I invite your attention anew to each of these objects.
The Army during the past year has been so constantly employed against
hostile Indians in various quarters that it can scarcely be said, with
propriety of language, to have been a peace establishment. Its duties have
been satisfactorily performed, and we have reason to expect as a result of
the year's operations greater security to the frontier inhabitants than has
been hitherto enjoyed. Extensive combinations among the hostile Indians of
the Territories of Washington and Oregon at one time threatened the
devastation of the newly formed settlements of that remote portion of the
country. From recent information we are permitted to hope that the
energetic and successful operations conducted there will prevent such
combinations in future and secure to those Territories an opportunity to
make steady progress in the development of their agricultural and mineral
resources.
Legislation has been recommended by me on previous occasions to cure
defects in the existing organization and to increase the efficiency of the
Army, and further observation has but served to confirm me in the views
then expressed and to enforce on my mind the conviction that such measures
are not only proper, but necessary.
I have, in addition, to invite the attention of Congress to a change of
policy in the distribution of troops and to the necessity of providing a
more rapid increase of the military armament. For details of these and
other subjects relating to the Army I refer to the report of the Secretary
of War.
The condition of the Navy is not merely satisfactory, but exhibits the most
gratifying evidences of increased vigor. As it is comparatively small, it
is more important that it should be as complete as possible in all the
elements of strength; that it should be efficient in the character of its
officers, in the zeal and discipline of its men, in the reliability of its
ordnance, and in the capacity of its ships. In all these various qualities
the Navy has made great progress within the last few years. The execution
of the law of Congress of February 28, 1855, "to promote the efficiency of
the Navy," has been attended by the most advantageous results. The law for
promoting discipline among the men is found convenient and salutary. The
system of granting an honorable discharge to faithful seamen on the
expiration of the period of their enlistment and permitting them to
reenlist after a leave of absence of a few months without cessation of pay
is highly beneficial in its influence. The apprentice system recently
adopted is evidently destined to incorporate into the service a large
number of our countrymen, hitherto so difficult to procure. Several hundred
American boys are now on a three years' cruise in our national vessels and
will return well-trained seamen. In the Ordnance Department there is a
decided and gratifying indication of progress, creditable to it and to the
country. The suggestions of the Secretary of the Navy in regard to further
improvement in that branch of the service I commend to your favorable
action. The new frigates ordered by Congress are now afloat and two of them
in active service. They are superior models of naval architecture, and with
their formidable battery add largely to public strength and security. I
concur in the views expressed by the Secretary of the Department in favor
of a still further increase of our naval force.
The report of the Secretary of the Interior presents facts and views in
relation to internal affairs over which the supervision of his Department
extends of much interest and importance.
The aggregate sales of the public lands during the last fiscal year amount
to 9,227,878 acres, for which has been received the sum of $8,821,414.
During the same period there have been located with military scrip and land
warrants and for other purposes 30,100,230 acres, thus making a total
aggregate of 39,328,108 acres. On the 30th of September last surveys had
been made of 16,873,699 acres, a large proportion of which is ready for
market.
The suggestions in this report in regard to the complication and
progressive expansion of the business of the different bureaus of the
Department, to the pension system, to the colonization of Indian tribes,
and the recommendations in relation to various improvements in the District
of Columbia are especially commended to your consideration.
The report of the Postmaster-General presents fully the condition of that
Department of the Government. Its expenditures for the last fiscal year
were $10,407,868 and its gross receipts $7,620,801, making an excess of
expenditure over receipts of $2,787,046. The deficiency of this Department
is thus $744,000 greater than for the year ending June 30, 1853. Of this
deficiency $330,000 is to be attributed to the additional compensation
allowed to postmasters by the act of Congress of June 22, 1854. The mail
facilities in every part of the country have been very much increased in
that period, and the large addition of railroad service, amounting to 7,908
miles, has added largely to the cost of transportation.
The inconsiderable augmentation of the income of the Post-Office Department
under the reduced rates of postage and its increasing expenditures must for
the present make it dependent to some extent upon the Treasury for support.
The recommendations of the Postmaster-General in relation to the abolition
of the franking privilege and his views on the establishment of mail
steamship lines deserve the consideration of Congress. I also call the
special attention of Congress to the statement of the Postmaster-General
respecting the sums now paid for the transportation of mails to the Panama
Railroad Company, and commend to their early and favorable consideration
the suggestions of that officer in relation to new contracts for mail
transportation upon that route, and also upon the Tehuantepec and Nicaragua
routes.
The United States continue in the enjoyment of amicable relations with all
foreign powers.
When my last annual message was transmitted to Congress two subjects of
controversy, one relating to the enlistment of soldiers in this country for
foreign service and the other to Central America, threatened to disturb the
good understanding between the United States and Great Britain. Of the
progress and termination of the former question you were informed at the
time, and the other is now in the way of satisfactory adjustment.
The object of the convention between the United States and Great Britain of
the 19th of April, 1850, was to secure for the benefit of all nations the
neutrality and the common use of any transit way or interoceanic
communication across the Isthmus of Panama which might be opened within the
limits of Central America. The pretensions subsequently asserted by Great
Britain to dominion or control over territories in or near two of the
routes, those of Nicaragua and Honduras, were deemed by the United States
not merely incompatible with the main object of the treaty, but opposed
even to its express stipulations. Occasion of controversy on this point has
been removed by an additional treaty, which our minister at London has
concluded, and which will be immediately submitted to the Senate for its
consideration. Should the proposed supplemental arrangement be concurred in
by all the parties to be affected by it, the objects contemplated by the
original convention will have been fully attained.
The treaty between the United States and Great Britain of the 5th of June,
1854, which went into effective operation in 1855, put an end to causes of
irritation between the two countries, by securing to the United States the
right of fishery on the coast of the British North American Provinces, with
advantages equal to those enjoyed by British subjects. Besides the signal
benefits of this treaty to a large class of our citizens engaged in a
pursuit connected to no inconsiderable degree with our national prosperity
and strength, it has had a favorable effect upon other interests in the
provision it made for reciprocal freedom of trade between the United States
and the British Provinces in America. The exports of domestic articles to
those Provinces during the last year amounted to more than $22,000,000,
exceeding those of the preceding year by nearly $7,000,000; and the imports
therefrom during the same period amounted to more than twenty-one million,
an increase of six million upon those of the previous year.
The improved condition of this branch of our commerce is mainly
attributable to the above-mentioned treaty.
Provision was made in the first article of that treaty for a commission to
designate the mouths of rivers to which the common right of fishery on the
coast of the United States and the British Provinces was not to extend.
This commission has been employed a part of two seasons, but without much
progress in accomplishing the object for which it was instituted, in
consequence of a serious difference of opinion between the commissioners,
not only as to the precise point where the rivers terminate, but in many
instances as to what constitutes a river. These difficulties, however, may
be overcome by resort to the umpirage provided for by the treaty.
The efforts perseveringly prosecuted since the commencement of my
Administration to relieve our trade to the Baltic from the exaction of
Sound dues by Denmark have not yet been attended with success. Other
governments have also sought to obtain a like relief to their commerce, and
Denmark was thus induced to propose an arrangement to all the European
powers interested in the subject, and the manner in which her proposition
was received warranting her to believe that a satisfactory arrangement with
them could soon be concluded, she made a strong appeal to this Government
for temporary suspension of definite action on its part, in consideration
of the embarrassment which might result to her European negotiations by an
immediate adjustment of the question with the United States. This request
has been acceded to upon the condition that the sums collected after the
16th of June last and until the 16th of June next from vessels and cargoes
belonging to our merchants are to be considered as paid under protest and
subject to future adjustment. There is reason to believe that an
arrangement between Denmark and the maritime powers of Europe on the
subject will be soon concluded, and that the pending negotiation with the
United States may then be resumed and terminated in a satisfactory manner.
With Spain no new difficulties have arisen, nor has much progress been made
in the adjustment of pending ones.
Negotiations entered into for the purpose of relieving our commercial
intercourse with the island of Cuba of some of its burdens and providing
for the more speedy settlement of local disputes growing out of that
intercourse have not yet been attended with any results. Soon after the
commencement of the late war in Europe this Government submitted to the
consideration of all maritime nations two principles for the security of
neutral commerce--one that the neutral flag should cover enemies' goods,
except articles contraband of war, and the other that neutral property on
board merchant vessels of belligerents should be exempt from condemnation,
with the exception of contraband articles. These were not presented as new
rules of international law, having been generally claimed by neutrals,
though not always admitted by belligerents. One of the parties to the war
(Russia), as well as several neutral powers, promptly acceded to these
propositions, and the two other principal belligerents (Great Britain and
France) having consented to observe them for the present occasion, a
favorable opportunity seemed to be presented for obtaining a general
recognition of them, both in Europe and America. But Great Britain and
France, in common with most of the States of Europe, while forbearing to
reject, did not affirmatively act upon the overtures of the United States.
While the question was in this position the representatives of Russia,
France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, and Turkey, assembled at
Paris, took into consideration the subject of maritime rights, and put
forth a declaration containing the two principles which this Government had
submitted nearly two years before to the consideration of maritime powers,
and adding thereto the following propositions: "Privateering is and remains
abolished," and "Blockades in order to be binding must be effective; that
is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the
coast of the enemy;" and to the declaration thus composed of four points,
two of which had already been proposed by the United States, this
Government has been invited to accede by all the powers represented at
Paris except Great Britain and Turkey. To the last of the two additional
propositions--that in relation to blockades--there can certainly be no
objection. It is merely the definition of what shall constitute the
effectual investment of a blockaded place, a definition for which this
Government has always contended, claiming indemnity for losses where a
practical violation of the rule thus defined has been injurious to our
commerce. As to the remaining article of the declaration of the conference
of Paris, that "privateering is and remains abolished," I certainly can not
ascribe to the powers represented in the conference of Paris any but
liberal and philanthropic views in the attempt to change the unquestionable
rule of maritime law in regard to privateering. Their proposition was
doubtless intended to imply approval of the principle that private property
upon the ocean, although it might belong to the citizens of a belligerent
state, should be exempted from capture; and had that proposition been so
framed as to give full effect to the principle, it would have received my
ready assent on behalf of the United States. But the measure proposed is
inadequate to that purpose. It is true that if adopted private property
upon the ocean would be withdrawn from one mode of plunder, but left
exposed meanwhile to another mode, which could be used with increased
effectiveness. The aggressive capacity of great naval powers would be
thereby augmented, while the defensive ability of others would be reduced.
Though the surrender of the means of prosecuting hostilities by employing
privateers, as proposed by the conference of Paris, is mutual in terms, yet
in practical effect it would be the relinquishment of a right of little
value to one class of states, but of essential importance to another and a
far larger class. It ought not to have been anticipated that a measure so
inadequate to the accomplishment of the proposed object and so unequal in
its operation would receive the assent of all maritime powers. Private
property would be still left to the depredations of the public armed
cruisers.
I have expressed a readiness on the part of this Government to accede to
all the principles contained in the declaration of the conference of Paris
provided that the one relating to the abandonment of privateering can be so
amended as to effect the object for which, as is presumed, it was
intended--the immunity of private property on the ocean from hostile
capture. To effect this object, it is proposed to add to the declaration
that "privateering is and remains abolished" the following amendment:
And that the private property of subjects and citizens of a belligerent on
the high seas shall be exempt from seizure by the public armed vessels of
the other belligerent, except it be contraband.
This amendment has been presented not only to the powers which have asked
our assent to the declaration to abolish privateering, but to all other
maritime states. Thus far it has not been rejected by any, and is favorably
entertained by all which have made any communication in reply.
Several of the governments regarding with favor the proposition of the
United States have delayed definitive action upon it only for the purpose
of consulting with others, parties to the conference of Paris. I have the
satisfaction of stating, however, that the Emperor of Russia has entirely
and explicitly approved of that modification and will cooperate in
endeavoring to obtain the assent of other powers, and that assurances of a
similar purport have been received in relation to the disposition of the
Emperor of the French. The present aspect of this important subject allows
us to cherish the hope that a principle so humane in its character, so just
and equal in its operation, so essential to the prosperity of commercial
nations, and so consonant to the sentiments of this enlightened period of
the world will command the approbation of all maritime powers, and thus be
incorporated into the code of international law.
My views on the subject are more fully set forth in the reply of the
Secretary of State, a copy of which is herewith transmitted, to the
communications on the subject made to this Government, especially to the
communication of France.
The Government of the United States has at all times regarded with friendly
interest the other States of America, formerly, like this country, European
colonies, and now independent members of the great family of nations. But
the unsettled condition of some of them, distracted by frequent
revolutions, and thus incapable of regular and firm internal
administration, has tended to embarrass occasionally our public intercourse
by reason of wrongs which our citizens suffer at their hands, and which
they are slow to redress.
Unfortunately, it is against the Republic of Mexico, with which it is our
special desire to maintain a good understanding, that such complaints are
most numerous; and although earnestly urged upon its attention, they have
not as yet received the consideration which this Government had a right to
expect. While reparation for past injuries has been withheld, others have
been added. The political condition of that country, however, has been such
as to demand forbearance on the part of the United States. I shall continue
my efforts to procure for the wrongs of our citizens that redress which is
indispensable to the continued friendly association of the two Republics.
The peculiar condition of affairs in Nicaragua in the early part of the
present year rendered it important that this Government should have
diplomatic relations with that State. Through its territory had been opened
one of the principal thoroughfares across the isthmus connecting North and
South America, on which a vast amount of property was transported and to
which our citizens resorted in great numbers in passing between the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. The protection of both
required that the existing power in that State should be regarded as a
responsible Government, and its minister was accordingly received. But he
remained here only a short time. Soon thereafter the political affairs of
Nicaragua underwent unfavorable change and became involved in much
uncertainty and confusion. Diplomatic representatives from two contending
parties have been recently sent to this Government, but with the imperfect
information possessed it was not possible to decide which was the
Government de facto, and, awaiting further developments, I have refused to
receive either.
Questions of the most serious nature are pending between the United States
and the Republic of New Granada. The Government of that Republic undertook
a year since to impose tonnage duties on foreign vessels in her ports, but
the purpose was resisted by this Government as being contrary to existing
treaty stipulations with the United States and to rights conferred by
charter upon the Panama Railroad Company, and was accordingly refurbished
at that time, it being admitted that our vessels were entitled to be exempt
from tonnage duty in the free ports of Panama and Aspinwall. But the
purpose has been recently revived on the part of New Granada by the
enactment of a law to subject vessels visiting her ports to the tonnage
duty of 40 cents per ton, and although the law has not been put in force,
yet the right to enforce it is still asserted and may at any time be acted
on by the Government of that Republic.
The Congress of New Granada has also enacted a law during the last year
which levies a tax of more than $3 on every pound of mail matter
transported across the Isthmus. The sum thus required to be paid on the
mails of the United States would be nearly $2,000,000 annually in addition
to the large sum payable by contract to the Panama Railroad Company. If the
only objection to this exaction were the exorbitancy of its amount, it
could not be submitted to by the United States.
The imposition of it, however, would obviously contravene our treaty with
New Granada and infringe the contract of that Republic with the Panama
Railroad Company. The law providing for this tax was by its terms to take
effect on the 1st of September last, but the local authorities on the
Isthmus have been induced to suspend its execution and to await further
instructions on the subject from the Government of the Republic. I am not
yet advised of the determination of that Government. If a measure so
extraordinary in its character and so clearly contrary to treaty
stipulations and the contract rights of the Panama Railroad Company,
composed mostly of American citizens, should be persisted in, it will be
the duty of the United States to resist its execution.
I regret exceedingly that occasion exists to invite your attention to a
subject of still graver import in our relations with the Republic of New
Granada. On the 15th day of April last a riotous assemblage of the
inhabitants of Panama committed a violent and outrageous attack on the
premises of the railroad company and the passengers and other persons in or
near the same, involving the death of several citizens of the United
States, the pillage of many others, and the destruction of a large amount
of property belonging to the railroad company. I caused full investigation
of that event to be made, and the result shows satisfactorily that complete
responsibility for what occurred attaches to the Government of New Granada.
I have therefore demanded of that Government that the perpetrators of the
wrongs in question should be punished; that provision should be made for
the families of citizens of the United States who were killed, with full
indemnity for the property pillaged or destroyed.
The present condition of the Isthmus of Panama, in so far as regards the
security of persons and property passing over it, requires serious
consideration. Recent incidents tend to show that the local authorities can
not be relied on to maintain the public peace of Panama, and there is just
ground for apprehension that a portion of the inhabitants are meditating
further outrages, without adequate measures for the security and protection
of persons or property having been taken, either by the State of Panama or
by the General Government of New Granada. Under the guaranties of treaty,
citizens of the United States have, by the outlay of several million
dollars, constructed a railroad across the Isthmus, and it has become the
main route between our Atlantic and Pacific possessions, over which
multitudes of our citizens and a vast amount of property are constantly
passing; to the security and protection of all which and the continuance of
the public advantages involved it is impossible for the Government of the
United States to be indifferent.
I have deemed the danger of the recurrence of scenes of lawless violence in
this quarter so imminent as to make it my duty to station a part of our
naval force in the harbors of Panama and Aspinwall, in order to protect the
persons and property of the citizens of the United States in those ports
and to insure to them safe passage across the Isthmus. And it would, in my
judgment, be unwise to withdraw the naval force now in those ports until,
by the spontaneous action of the Republic of New Granada or otherwise, some
adequate arrangement shall have been made for the protection and security
of a line of interoceanic communication, so important at this time not to
the United States only, but to all other maritime states, both of Europe
and America.
Meanwhile negotiations have been instituted, by means of a special
commission, to obtain from New Granada full indemnity for injuries
sustained by our citizens on the Isthmus and satisfactory security for the
general interests of the United States.
In addressing to you my last annual message the occasion seems to me an
appropriate one to express my congratulations, in view of the peace,
greatness, and felicity which the United States now possess and enjoy. To
point you to the state of the various Departments of the Government and of
all the great branches of the public service, civil and military, in order
to speak of the intelligence and the integrity which pervades the whole,
would be to indicate but imperfectly the administrative condition of the
country and the beneficial effects of that on the general welfare. Nor
would it suffice to say that the nation is actually at peace at home and
abroad; that its industrial interests are prosperous; that the canvas of
its mariners whitens every sea, and the plow of its husbandmen is marching
steadily onward to the bloodless conquest of the continent; that cities and
populous States are springing up, as if by enchantment, from the bosom of
oar Western wilds, and that the courageous energy of our people is making
of these United States the great Republic of the world. These results have
not been attained without passing through trials and perils, by experience
of which, and thus only, nations can harden into manhood. Our forefathers
were trained to the wisdom which conceived and the courage which achieved
independence by the circumstances which surrounded them, and they were thus
made capable of the creation of the Republic. It devolved on the next
generation to consolidate the work of the Revolution, to deliver the
country entirely from the influences of conflicting transatlantic
partialities or antipathies which attached to our colonial and
Revolutionary history, and to organize the practical operation of the
constitutional and legal institutions of the Union. To us of this
generation remains the not less noble task of maintaining and extending the
national power. We have at length reached that stage of our country's
career in which the dangers to be encountered and the exertions to be made
are the incidents, not of weakness, but of strength. In foreign relations
we have to attemper our power to the less happy condition of other
Republics in America and to place ourselves in the calmness and conscious
dignity of right by the side of the greatest and wealthiest of the Empires
of Europe. In domestic relations we have to guard against the shock of the
discontents, the ambitions, the interests, and the exuberant, and therefore
sometimes irregular, impulses of opinion or of action which are the natural
product of the present political elevation, the self-reliance, and the
restless spirit of enterprise of the people of the United States.
I shall prepare to surrender the Executive trust to my successor and retire
to private life with sentiments of profound gratitude to the good
Providence which during the period of my Administration has vouchsafed to
carry the country through many difficulties, domestic and foreign, and
which enables me to contemplate the spectacle of amicable and respectful
relations between ours and all other governments and the establishment of
constitutional order and tranquillity throughout the Union.
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