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.

By direction of the President, Brigadier and Brevet Major-General Irvin McDowell is assigned to the command of the Department of the East.

I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of State of the 2d instant, together with accompanying papers.

I transmit to Congress a copy of a dispatch from the United States consul at Elsinore, and of an instruction from the Secretary of State to the United States minister at Copenhagen, relative to an alleged practice of the Danish authorities to banish convicts to this country.

For these objections, and many others that might be presented, I cannot approve this bill, and therefore return it for the action of Congress required in such cases by the Federal Constitution.

I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, in answer to a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 15th instant, upon the subject of Messrs. Warren and Costello, who have been convicted and sentenced to penal imprisonment in Great Britain.

Would it not be the part of wisdom to take for our guide the Federal Constitution, rather than resort to measures which, looking only to the present, may in a few years renew, in an aggravated form, the strife and bitterness caused by legislation which has proved to be so ill timed and unfortunate?

The bill fails to provide in what manner the State of Arkansas is to signify its acceptance of the 'fundamental condition' which Congress endeavors to make unalterable and irrevocable.

I herewith transmit to the Senate, for its constitutional action thereon, a treaty concluded at Fort Sumner, N. Mex., on the 1st instant, between Lieutenant-General W. T. Sherman and Colonel Samuel F. Tappan, on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and headmen of the Navajo Indians, on the part of the latter.

I have been unable to find in the Constitution of the United States any warrant for the exercise of the authority thus claimed by Congress.

I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Interior, made in reply to the resolution adopted by the House of Representatives on the 13th instant.