The burthen of quarantines is felt at home as well as abroad; their efficacy merits examination.

I can not, then, but earnestly recommend to your early consideration the expediency of so modifying our militia system.

Providence in His goodness gave it an early termination on this occasion and lessened the number of victims which have usually fallen before it.

Other details necessary for your full information of the state of things between this country and that shall be the subject of another communication.

An immediate prohibition of the exportation of arms and ammunition is also submitted to your determination.

These payments, with those which had been made in 3 years and a half preceding, have extinguished of the funded debt nearly $18M of principal.

I congratulate you on the liberation of our fellow citizens who were stranded on the coast of Tripoli and made prisoners of war.

In taking a view of the state of our country we in the first place notice the late affliction of two of our cities under the fatal fever which in latter times has occasionally visited our shores.

On this first occasion of addressing Congress since, by the choice of my constituents, I have entered on a second term of administration, I embrace the opportunity to give this public assurance that I will exert my best endeavors to…

I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens have again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles which they have approved.

In all events, it will replace the advances we shall have made.

We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the church or state authorities acknowledged by the…

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government.

What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?

But who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively?

My conscience tells me I have on every occasion acted up to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the understanding of every candid mind.

War will then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state of peace, a return to the progress of improvement.