Andrew Johnson: “Our relations during the past year with Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile have become especially friendly and cordial.”

The foregoing views have long been entertained by me.

I transmit the accompanying communications from the Secretary of the Interior, together with the papers to which they have reference.

Strongly impressed with the truth of these views, I feel called upon by an imperative sense of duty to revive substantially the recommendation so often and so earnestly made by President Jackson.

I would therefore recommend such an amendment of the Constitution as may remove all intermediate agency in the election of the President and Vice-President.