The responsibility of deciding this question is now devolved upon you.

The great question is—not as to the manner in which it shall be done, but whether it shall be accomplished or not.

I regard the question involved in these proceedings as one of vast magnitude.

I have been influenced by what appeared to me to be the most controlling considerations of public policy and the general good.

With equal, if not greater, propriety might the United States demand of other governments to surrender their numerous and valuable acquisitions.

The country itself, thus obtained, is of incalculable value in an agricultural and commercial point of view.

Texas herself wills it; and the Executive of the United States, concurring with her, has seen no sufficient reason to avoid the consummation of an act esteemed to be so desirable by both.

Under every view which I have been able to take of the subject, I think that the interests of our common constituents the people of all the States, and a love of the Union, left the Executive no other alternative than to negotiate the…

I utterly repudiate the idea, in terms as emphatic as I can employ, that those laws are not to be enforced or those guaranties complied with because the President may believe that the right of suffrage or any other great popular right is…

I must be permitted to disclaim entirely and unqualifiedly the right on the part of the Executive to make any real or supposed defects existing in any State constitution or form of government the pretext for a failure to enforce the laws…

My fervent prayer is that it may never come.

For the Executive to assume such a power would be to assume a power of the most dangerous character.

I congratulate the country upon so happy a termination of a condition of things which seemed at one time seriously to threaten the public peace.

I also with equal strength resist the idea that it falls within the Executive competency to decide in controversies of the nature of that which existed in Rhode Island on which side is the majority of the people or as to the extent of the…

I have to inform the House that the Executive did not deem it his duty to interfere with the naval and military forces of the United States

To the Senate: I transmit herewith a communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, to whom I had referred the resolution of the Senate of the 27th December last, showing that the information called for by that resolution can not be…

I transmit herewith copies of the report and papers* referred to in a resolution of the Senate of the 20th of February last.

No reason is perceived for the discrimination recognized by the existing Law, and none why the provisions of the acts of Congress referred to should not be extended to the commerce of the islands in question.