Our prayers should evermore be offered up to the Father of the Universe for His wisdom to direct us in the path of our duty so as to enable us to consummate these high purposes.

peace is the true policy of nations

I shall carry with me into retirement the gratifying reflection that as my sole object throughout has been to advance the public good.

The great question is—not as to the manner in which it shall be done, but whether it shall be accomplished or not.

I feel it to be my duty to communicate, for your consideration, the rejected treaty.

I regard the question involved in these proceedings as one of vast magnitude.

It is only after acquiring Texas, that the question of boundary can arise between the United States and Mexico.

The responsibility of deciding this question is now devolved upon you.

With equal, if not greater, propriety might the United States demand of other governments to surrender their numerous and valuable acquisitions.

Texas herself wills it; and the Executive of the United States, concurring with her, has seen no sufficient reason to avoid the consummation of an act esteemed to be so desirable by both.

I have been influenced by what appeared to me to be the most controlling considerations of public policy and the general good.

Under every view which I have been able to take of the subject, I think that the interests of our common constituents the people of all the States, and a love of the Union, left the Executive no other alternative than to negotiate the…

The country itself, thus obtained, is of incalculable value in an agricultural and commercial point of view.

I congratulate the country upon so happy a termination of a condition of things which seemed at one time seriously to threaten the public peace.

My fervent prayer is that it may never come.

I utterly repudiate the idea, in terms as emphatic as I can employ, that those laws are not to be enforced or those guaranties complied with because the President may believe that the right of suffrage or any other great popular right is…

I must be permitted to disclaim entirely and unqualifiedly the right on the part of the Executive to make any real or supposed defects existing in any State constitution or form of government the pretext for a failure to enforce the laws…

I also with equal strength resist the idea that it falls within the Executive competency to decide in controversies of the nature of that which existed in Rhode Island on which side is the majority of the people or as to the extent of the…