I shall, indeed, in the first instance, consider the assembly as merely consultative.

The faith of the United States to foreign powers can not otherwise be pledged.

I now transmit to the House a report from the Secretary of State, with the correspondence and information requested by the resolution.

I would have sent ministers to the meeting had it been merely to give them such advice as they might have desired, even with reference to their own interests, not involving ours.

But objects of the highest importance, not only to the future welfare of the whole human race, but bearing directly upon the special interests of this Union, will engage the deliberations of the congress of Panama whether we are…

It was not considered a conclusive reason for declining this invitation that the proposal for assembling such a Congress had not first been made by ourselves.

To meet the temper with which this proposal was made with a cold repulse was not thought congenial to that warm interest in their welfare with which the people and Government of the Union had hitherto gone hand in hand through the whole…

It may be that in the lapse of many centuries no other opportunity so favorable will be presented to the Government of the United States to subserve the benevolent purposes of Divine Providence; to dispense the promised blessings of the…

My first and greatest inducement was to meet in the spirit of kindness and friendship an overture made in that spirit by three sister Republics of this hemisphere.