To the House of Representatives: I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives a communication from the Secretary of the Navy, with accompanying reports, of the persons who were sent to the Isthmus of Chiriqui to make the examinations required by the fifth section of the act making appropriations for the naval service, approved June 22, 1860.
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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.
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 lawfulness of the practice rests upon the exigencies of the public service; which require that the movements of the Government shall not be arrested by an accidental vacancy in one of the Departments; upon an act of Congress expressly and plainly giving and regulating the power, and upon long and uninterrupted usage of the Executive, which has never been challenged as illegal by Congress.
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.
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