I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force in any degree which could be avoided.

These made it a duty to require from that Government indemnifications for our injured citizens.

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…

Reason revolts at such inconsistency, and the neutral having equal right with the belligerent to decide the question.

Although the health laws of the States should be found to need no present revisal by Congress, yet commerce claims that their attention be ever awake to them.

A state of our progress in exploring the principal rivers of that country, and of the information respecting them hitherto obtained, will be communicated as soon as we shall receive some further relations which we have reason shortly to…

We must join in the unprofitable contest of trying which party can do the other the most harm.

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.

In the course of your session you shall receive all the aid which I can give for the dispatch of public business, and all the information necessary for your deliberations, of which the interests of our own country and the confidence…

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

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.