It was wise to make a provision which would enable the President to avoid a total suspension of business in the interval, and equally wise so to limit the Executive discretion as to prevent any serious abuse of it.

The practice of making such appointments, whether in a vacation or during the session of Congress, has been constantly followed during every Administration from the earliest period of the Government, and its perfect lawfulness has never to my knowledge been questioned or denied.

It must be allowed that these precedents, so numerous and so long continued, are entitled to great respect, since we can scarcely suppose that the wise and eminent men by whom they were made could have been mistaken on a point which was brought to their attention so often.

I possess no dispensing power.

I therefore appeal through you to the people of the country to declare in their might that the Union must and shall be preserved by all constitutional means.

Under its shadow American citizens have found protection and respect in all lands beneath the sun.

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.

I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress.

Entertaining this conviction, I refrained even from sending reenforcements to Major Anderson, who commanded the forts in Charleston Harbor, until an absolute necessity for doing so should make itself apparent.

The national flag has floated in glory over every sea.

The Union is a sacred trust left by our Revolutionary fathers to their descendants, and never did any other people inherit so rich a legacy.

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.

It has rendered us prosperous in peace and triumphant in war.

My province is to execute and not to make the laws.

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 Senate.

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 of the contracting parties at San Jose on the 2d day of July last.

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.