My opinion remains unchanged that justice as well as sound policy requires us still to seek a peaceful solution of the questions at issue between the North and the South.

The national flag has floated in glory over every sea.

In all its various bearings, therefore, I commend the question to Congress as the only human tribunal under Providence possessing the power to meet the existing emergency.

In view of this fact it was deemed preferable to instruct our new minister to negotiate a new treaty which should omit the objectionable second article and also the few words of the twenty-eighth article which had been stricken out by the…

I transmit, for the consideration of the Senate with a view to ratification, a convention for the adjustment of claims of citizens of the United States against the Government of the Republic of Costa Rica, signed by the plenipotentiaries…

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 9th of April last, requesting information concerning the African slave trade, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State and the documents by which it was accompanied.

The day of evil may never come unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves.

no nation in the tide of time has ever presented a spectacle of greater material prosperity than we have done until within a very recent period.

My prayer to God is that He would preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations.

In the meantime, who can foretell what would be the sufferings and privations of the people during its existence?

I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger.

The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence…

the country has been eminently prosperous in all its material interests.

It is now discovered, however, that it will require half a million more for the completion of the Washington Aqueduct.

It was impossible that Congress could have had such an intention, and therefore, according to my construction of the clause in question, it merely designated Captain Meigs as its preference for the work, without intending to deprive the…

It is evident that Congress intended nothing more by this clause than to express a decided opinion that Captain Meigs should be continued in the employment to which he had been previously assigned by competent authority.

Officers might then be found, instead of performing their appropriate duties, besieging the halls of Congress for the purpose of obtaining special favors and choice places by legislative enactment.

If they could withdraw an officer from the command of the President and select him for the performance of an executive duty, they might upon the same principle annex to an appropriation to carry on a war a condition requiring it not to be…