US Presidency
1829

In discharging the responsible trust confided to the executive in this respect it is my settled purpose to ask nothing that is not clearly right and to submit to nothing that is wrong; and I flatter myself that, supported by the other branches of the government and by the intelligence and patriotism of the people, we shall be able, under the protection of providence, to cause all our just rights to be respected. Of the unsettled matters between the United States and other powers, the most prominent are those which have for years been the subject of negotiation with England, France, and Spain. The late periods at which our ministers to those governments left the United States render it impossible at this early day to inform you of what has been done on the subjects with which they have been respectively charged.