I transmit herewith to Congress copies of letters received at the Department of State from the minister of Great Britain on the subject of the duties discriminating between imported rolled and hammered iron.

I recommend them particularly to the consideration of Congress, believing that although there may be ground for controversy with regard to the application of the engagements of the treaty to the case, yet a liberal construction of those…

I communicate to them herewith copies of the communications received from the Norwegian Government in relation to the subject, and recommend the same to their consideration.

requesting to be furnished with a copy of the judicial proceedings in the United States court for the district of Louisiana in the case of the French slave ship La Pensee.

To the House of Representatives: I communicate to the House of Representatives copies of sundry papers having relation to the transactions in East and West Florida, which have been received at the Department of State since my message to…

I now transmit a report from the Secretary or State, containing the information embraced by that resolution.

Sensible of what I owed to my country, I felt strongly the obligation of observing the utmost impartiality in selecting those officers who were to be retained.

Having cause to infer that the reasons which led to the construction which I gave to the act of the last session entitled 'An act to reduce and fix the peace establishment of the United States' have not been well understood, I consider it…

In transferring the officers from the old to the new corps the utmost care was taken to place them in the latter in the grades and corps to which they had respectively belonged in the former, so far as it might be practicable.

In executing this law I had no personal object to accomplish or feeling to gratify--no one to retain, no one to remove.

In executing this very delicate and important trust I acted with the utmost precaution.

If the law imposed such restraint, it would in that case be void.

It is on the authority of these examples, supported by the construction which I gave to the law, that I have acted in the discharge of this high trust.

I am aware that many officers of great merit, having the strongest claims on their country, have been reduced and others dismissed, but under the law that result was inevitable.

To do justice to the subject it is thought proper to show the actual state of the Army before the passage of the late act, the force in service, the several corps of which it was composed, and the grades and number of officers commanding…

We see, on the contrary, that every corps of the Army and staff was to be reorganized, and most of them reduced in officers and men, and that in arranging the officers from the old to the new corps full power was granted to the President…

Having already suggested my impression that in filling offices newly created, to which on no principle whatever anyone could have a claim of right, Congress could not under the Constitution restrain the free selection of the President from…

To discriminate between men of acknowledged merit, especially in a way to affect so sensibly and materially their feelings and interests, for many of whom I have personal consideration and regard, has been a most painful duty; yet I am…