In compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 25th instant, I transmit a copy of the report of the special agent of the United States recently sent to Vancouvers Island and British Columbia.
Special Message
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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.
This state of the facts raises the question whether Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to give away the public lands either to States or individuals.
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.
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…
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