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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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 on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom.

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 President of the power to order him to any other army duty for the performance of which he might consider him better adapted.