Martin Van Buren 1824 reduction of existing burdens upon the people, leaving still a consider- able balance of available funds which will remain in the Treasury at the - end of the year. The small amount of Treasury notes, not exceeding $4,500,000, still outstanding, and less by twenty-three millions than the United States have in deposit with the States, is composed of such only as are not yet due or have not been presented for payment. They may be redeemed out of the accruing revenue if the expenditures do not exceed the amount within which they may, it is thought, be kept with- out prejudice to the public interest, and the revenue shall prove to be as large as may justly be anticipated. Among the reflections arising from the contemplation of these circum- stances, one, not the least gratifying, is the consciousness that the Gov- ernment had the resolution and the ability to adhere in every emergency to the sacred obligations of law, to execute all its contracts according to the requirements of the Constitution, and thus to present when most needed a rallying point by which the business of the whole country might be brought back to a safe and unvarying standard—a result vitally important as well to the interests as to the morals of the people. There can surely now be no difference of opinion in regard to the incalculable evils that would have arisen if the Government at that critical moment had suffered itself to be deterred from upholding the only true standard of value, either by the pressure of adverse circumstances or the violence of unmerited denunciation. The manner in which the people sustained the performance of this duty was highly honorable to their fortitude and patriotism. It can not fail to stimulate their agents to adhere under all circumgtances to the line of duty and to satisfy them of the safety with which a course really right and demanded by a financial crisis may in a community like ours be pursued, however apparently severe its imme- diate operation. The policy of the Federal Government in extinguishing as rapidly as possible the national debt, and subsequently in resisting every temp- tation to create a new one, deserves to be regarded in the same favor- able light. Among the many objections to a national debt, the certain tendency of public securities to concentrate ultimately in the coffers of foreign stockholders is one which is every day gathering strength. Already have the resources of many of the States and the future indus- try of their citizens been indefinitely mortgaged to the subjects of Euro- pean Governments to the amount of twelve millions annually to pay the constantly accruing interest on borrowed money—a sum exceeding half the ordinary revenues of the whole United States. The pretext which this relation affords to foreigners to scrutinize the management of our domestic affairs, if not actually to intermeddle with them, presents a sub- ject for earnest attention, not to say of serious alarm. Fortunately, the Federal Government, with the exception of an obligation entered into in behalf of the District of Columbia, which must soon be discharged,
1825 Messages and Papers of the Presidents is wholly exempt from any such embarrassment. It is also, as is believed, the only Government which, having fully and faithfully paid all its creditors, has: also relieved itself entirely from debt. “To main- tain a distinction so desirable and so honorable to our national character should be an object of earnest solicitude. Never should a free people, if it be possible to avoid it, expose themselves to the necessity of having to treat of the peace, the honor, or the safety of the Republic with the governments of foreign creditors, who, however well disposed they may be to cultivate with us in general friendly relations, are nevertheless by the law of their own condition made hostile to the success and per- manency of political institutions like ours. Most humiliating may be - the embarrassments consequent upon such a condition. “Another objec- tion, scarcely less formidable, to the commencement of a new debt is its inevitable tendency to increase in magnitude and to foster national extravagance. He has been an unprofitable observer of events who needs at this day to be admonished of the difficulties which a govern- ment habitually dependent on loans to sustain its ordinary expenditures has to encounter in resisting the influences constantly exerted in favor of additional loans; by capitalists, who enrich themselves by government securities for amounts much exceeding the money they actually advance— a prolific source of individual aggrandizement in all borrowing countries; - by stockholders, who seek their gains in the rise and fall of public stocks; and by the selfish importunities of applicants for appropriations for works avowedly for the accommodation of the public, but the real objects of which are too frequently the advancement of private interests. The known necessity which so many of the States will be under to jmpose taxes for the payment of the interest on their debts furnishes an addi- tional and very cogent reason why the Federal Government should ‘refrain from creating a national debt, by which the people would be exposed to double taxation for a similar object. We possess within our- selves ample resources for every emergency, and we may be quite sure that our citizens in no future exigency will be unwilling to supply the Government with all the means asked for the defense of the country. In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the crea- tion of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be per- formed without such a resort. It has, it is seen, been avoided during four years of greater fiscal difficulties than have existed in a similar period since the adoption of the Constitution, and one also remarkable for the occurrence of extraordinary causes of expenditures. But to accomplish so desirable an object two things are indispensable: First, that the action of the Federal Government be kept within the boundaries prescribed by its founders, and, secondly, that all appropria- tions for objects admitted to be constitutional, and the expenditure of them also, be subjected to a standard of rigid but well-considered and
Martin Van Buren ‘7826 practical economy. The first depends chiefly on the people themselves— the opinions they form of the true construction of the Constitution and the confidence they repose in the political sentiments of those they select as their representatives in the Federal Legislature; the second’ rests upon the fidelity with which their more immediate representatives and other public functionaries discharge the trusts committed tothem. The duty of economizing the expenses of the public service is admitted on all hands; * yet there are few subjects upon which there exists a wider difference of opinion than is constantly manifested in regard to the fidelity with which that duty is discharged. Neither diversity of sentiment nor even mutual recriminations upon a point in respect to which the public mind is so justly sensitive can well be entirely avoided, and least so at periods of great political excitement. An intelligent people, however, seldom fail to arrive in the end at correct conclusions in such a matter. Practical economy in the management of public affairs can have no adverse influ- ence to contend with more powerful than a large surplus revenue, and the unusually ‘large appropriations for 1837 may without doubt, independ- ently of the extraordinary requisitions for the public service growing out of the state of our Indian relations, be in no inconsiderable degree traced to this source. The sudden and rapid distribution of the large surplus then in the Treasury and the equally sudden and unprecedentedly severe revulsion in the commerce and business of the country, pointing with unerring certainty to a great and protracted reduction of the revenue, strengthened the propriety of the earliest practicable reduction of the public expenditures. But to change a system operating upon so large a surface and applicable to such numerous and diversified interests and objects was more than the work of aday. ‘The attention of every department of the Govern- ment was immediately and in good faith directed to that end, and has been so continued to the present moment. The estimates and appropria- tions for the year 1838 (the first.over which I had any control) were some- what diminished. The expenditures of 1839 were reduced $6,000,000. Those of 1840, exclusive of disbursements for public debt and trust claims, will probably’not exceed twenty-two and a half millions, being between two and three millions less than those of the preceding year and nine or ten millions less than those of 1837. Nor has it been found necessary in order to produce this result to resort to the power conferred by Congress of postponing certain classes of the public works, except by deferring expenditures for a short period upon a limited portion of them, and which postponement terminated some time since—at the moment the Treasury Department by further receipts from the indebted banks became fully assured of its ability to meet them without prejudice to the public service in other respects. Causes are in operation which will, it is believed, justify a still further reduction without injury to any important national interest. The expenses of sustaining the troops
1827 Messages and Papers of the Presidents employed in Florida have been gradually and greatly reduced through the persevering efforts of the War Department, and a reasonable hope may be entertained that the necessity for military operations in that quarter will soon cease. The removal of the Indians from within our settled borders is nearly completed. The pension list, one of the heav- iest charges upon the Treasury, is rapidly diminishing by death. The most costly of our public buildings are either finished or nearly so, and we may, I think, safely promise ourselves a continued exemption from border difficulties. The available balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January next is estimated at $1,500,000. ‘This sum, with the expected receipts from all sources during the next year, will, it is believed, be sufficient to enable the Government to meet every engagement and have a suitable balance in the Treasury at the end of the year, if the remedial measures con- nected with the customs and the public lands heretofore recommended are adopted and the new appropriations by Congress shall not carry the expenditures beyond the official estimates. The new system established by Congress for the safe-keeping of the public money, prescribing the kind of currency to be received for the pub- lic revenue and providing additional guards and securities against losses, has now been several months in operation. Although it might be pre- mature upon an experience of such limited duration to form a definite opinion in regard to the extent of its influences in correcting many evils under which the Federal Government and the country have hitherto suffered, especially those that have grown out of banking expansions, a depreciated currency, and official defalcations, yet it is but right to say that nothing has occurred in the practical operation of the system to weaken in the slightest degree, but much to strengthen, the confident anticipations of its friends. The grounds of these have been heretofore _ so fully explained as to require no recapitulation. In respect to the facility and convenience it affords in conducting the public service, and the ability of the Government to discharge through its agency every duty attendant on the collection, transfer, and disbursement of the pub- lic money with promptitude and success, I can say with confidence that the apprehensions of those who felt it to be their duty to oppose its adoption have proved to be unfounded. On the contrary, this branch of the fiscal affairs of the Government has been, and it is believed may always be, thus carried on with every desirable facility and security. A few changes and improvements in the details of the system, without affecting any principles involved in it, will be submitted to you by the Secretary of the Treasury, and will, I am sure, receive at your hands that attention to which they may on examination be found to be entitled. I have deemed this brief summary of our fiscal affairs necessary to the due performance of a duty specially enjoined upon me by the Constitu- tion. It will serve also to illustrate more fully the principles by which
U Martin Van Buren. 1828 I have been guided in reference to two contested points in our public policy which were earliest in their development and have been more important in their consequences than any that have arisen under our com- plicated and difficult, yet admirable, system of government. I allude to a national debt and a national bank. It was in these that the polit- ical contests by which the country has been agitated ever since the adop- tion of the Constitution in a great measure originated, and there is too much reason to apprehend that the conflicting interests and opposing principles thus marshaled will continue as heretofore to produce similar if not aggravated consequences. Coming into office the declared enemy of both, I have earnestly endeavored to prevent a resort to either.. The consideration that a large public debt affords an apology, and produces in some degree a necessity also, for resorting to a system and extent of taxation which is not only oppressive throughout, but is like- wise so apt to lead in the end to the commission of that most odious of all offenses against the principles of republican government, the prostitu- tion of political power, conferred for the general benefit, to the aggran- dizement of particular classes and the gratification of individual cupidity, is alone sufficient, independently of the weighty objections which have already been urged, to render its creation and existence the sources of bitter and unappeasable discord. If we add to this its inevitable ten- dency to produce and foster extravagant expenditures of the public moneys, by which a necessity is created for new loans and new burdens on the people, and, finally, refer to the examples of every government which has existed for proof, how seldom it is that the system, when once adopted and implanted in the policy of a country, has failed to expand itself until public credit was exhausted and the people were no longer able to endure its increasing weight, it seems impossible to resist the conclusion that no benefits resulting from its career, no extent of con- quest, no accession of wealth to particular classes, nor any nor all its com- bined advantages, can counterbalance its ultimate but certain results—a splendid government and an impoverished people. If a national bank was, as is undeniable, repudiated by the framers of the Constitution as incompatible with the rights of the States and the liberties of the people; if from the beginning it has been regarded by large portions of our citizens as coming in direct collision with that great and vital amendment of the Constitution which declares that all powers not conferred by that instrument on the General Government are reserved to the States and to the people; if it has been viewed by them as the first great step in the march of latitudinous construction, which unchecked would render that sacred instrument of as little value as an unwritten constitution, dependent, as it would alone be, for its meaning on the interested interpretation of a dominant party, and affording no security to the rights of the minority—if such is undeniably the case, what rational
1829 Messages and Papers of the Presidents grounds could have been conceived for anticipating aught but determined opposition to such an institution at the present day. Could a different result have been expected when the consequences which have flowed from its creation, and particularly from its struggles to perpetuate its existence, had confirmed in so striking a manner the apprehensions of its earliest opponents; when it had been so clearly dem- onstrated that a concentrated money power, wielding so vast a capital and combining such incalculable means of influence, may in those peculiar conjunctures to which this Government is unavoidably exposed prove an overmatch for the political power of the people themselves; when the true character of its capacity to regulate according to its will and its interests and the interests of its favorites the value and production of the labor and property of every man in this extended country had been so fully and fearfully developed; when it was notorious that all classes of this great community had, by means of the power and influence it thus possesses, been infected to madness with a spirit of heedless speculation; when it had been seen that, secure in the support of the combination of influences by which it was surrounded, it could violate its charter and set the laws at defiance with impunity; and when, too, it had become most apparent that to believe that such an accumulation of powers can ever be granted without the certainty of being abused was to indulge in a fatal delusion? To avoid the necessity of a permanent debt and its inevitable conse- quences I have advocated and endeavored to carry into effect the policy of confining the appropriations for the public service to such objects only as are clearly within the constitutional authority of the Federal Govern- ment; of excluding from its expenses those improvident and unauthorized grants of public money for works of internal improvement which were so wisely arrested by the constitutional interposition of my predecessor, and which, if they had not been so checked, would long before this time have involved the finances of the General Government in embarrassments far greater than those which are now experienced by any of the States; of limiting all our expenditures to that simple, unostentatious, and econom- ical administration of public affairs which is alone consistent with the character of our institutions; of collecting annually from the customs, and the sales of public lands a revenue fully adequate to defray all the expenses thus incurred; but under no pretense whatsoever to impose taxes upon the people to a greater amount than was actually necessary to the public service conducted upon the principles I have stated. In lieu of a national bank or a dependence upon banks of any descrip- tion for the management of our fiscal affairs, I recommended the adop- tion of the system which is now in successful operation. That system affords every requisite facility for the transaction of the pecuniary concerns of the Government; will, it is confidently anticipated, produce in other respects many of the benefits which have been from time to time expected from the creation of a national bank, but which have never been realized;
Martin Van Buren 1830 avoid the manifold evils inseparable from such an institution; diminish to a greater extent than could be accomplished by any other measure of reform the patronage of the Federal Government—a wise policy in all governments, but more especially so in one like ours, which works well only in proportion as it is made to rely for its support upon the unbi- ased and unadulterated opinions of its constituents; do away forever all dependence on corporate bodies either in the raising, collecting, safe- keeping, or disbursing the public revenues, and place the Government equally above the temptation of fostering a dangerous and unconstitu- tional institution at home or the necessity of adapting its policy to the views and interests of a still more formidable money power abroad. it is by adopting and carrying out these principles under circumstances the most arduous and discouraging that the attempt has been made, thus far successfully, to demonstrate to the people of the United States that a national bank at all times, and a national debt except it be incurred at a period when the honor and safety of the nation demand the temporary sacrifice of a policy which should only be abandoned in such exigencies, are not merely unnecessary, but in direct and deadly hostility to the principles of their Government and to their own permanent welfare. The progress made in the development of these positions appears ‘n the preceding sketch of the past history and present state of the fin .n- cial concerns of the Federal Government. ‘The facts there stated fully authorize the assertion that all the purposes for which this Government was instituted have been accomplished during four years of greater pecun- lary embarrassment than were ever before experienced in time of peace, and in the face of opposition as formidable as any that was ever, before arrayed against the policy of an Administration; that this has been done when the ordinary revenues of the Government were generally decreas- ing as well from the operation of the laws as the condition of the country, without, the creation of a permanent public debt or incurring any liability other than such as the ordinary resources of the Government will speedily discharge, and without the agency of a national bank. If this view of the proceedings of the Government for the period it embraces be warranted by the facts as they are known to exist; if the Army and Navy have been sustained to*the full extent authorized by law, and which Congress deemed sufficient for the defense of the country and the protection of its rights and its honor; if its civil and diplomatic service has been equally sustained; if ample provision has been made for the administration of justice and the execution of the laws; if the claims upon public gratitude in behalf of the soldiers of the Revolution have heen promptly met and faithfully discharged; if there have been no fail- ' ures in defraying the very large expenditures growing out of that long- continued and salutary policy of peacefully removing the Indians ta regions of comparative safety and prosperity; if the public faith has at ail times and everywhere been most scrupulously maintained by a prompt
1831 Messages and Papers of the Presidents discharge of the numerous, extended, and diversified claims on the Treas- ury—if all these great and permanent objects, with many others that might be stated, have for a series of years, marked by peculiar obstacles and difficulties, been successfully accomplished without a resort to a per- manent debt or the aid of a national bank, have we not a right to expect that a policy the object of which has been to sustain the public service independently of either of these fruitful sources of discord will receive the final sanction of a people whose unbiased and fairly elicited judgment upon public affairs is never ultimately wrong? That embarrassments in the pecuniary concerns of individuals of unex- ampled extent and duration have recently existed in this as in other commercial nations is undoubtedly true. To suppose it necessary now to trace these reverses to their sources would be a reflection on the intel- ligence of my fellow-citizens. Whatever may have been the obscurity in which the subject was involved during the earlier stages of the revul- sion, there can not now be many by whom the whole. question is not fully understood. Not deeming it within the constitutional powers of the General Govern- trent to repair private losses sustained by reverses in business having no connection with the public service, either by direct appropriations froi1 the Treasury or by special legislation designed to secure exclu- sive privileges and immunities to individuals or classes in preference to or at the expense of the great majority necessarily debarred from any participation in them, no attempt to do so has been either made, recom- mended, or encouraged by the present Executive. It is believed, however, that the great purposes for the attainment of which the Federal Government was instituted have not been lost sight of. Intrusted only with certain limited powers, cautiously enumerated, _ distinctly specified, and defined with a precision and clearness which would seem to defy misconstruction, it has been my constant aim to confine myself within the limits so clearly marked out and so carefully guarded. Having always been of opinion that the best preservative of the union of the States is to be found in a total abstinence from the exercise of all doubtful powers on the part of the Federal Government rather than in attempts to assume them by a loose construction of the Constitution or an ingenious perversion of its words, I have endeavored to avoid recommending any measure which I had reason to apprehend would, in the opinion even of a considerable minority of my fellow-citizens, be regarded as trenching on the rights of the States or the provisions of the hallowed instrument of our Union. Viewing the aggregate powers of the Federal Government as a voluntary concession of the States, it seemed to me that such only should be exercised as were at the time intended to be given. I bave been strengthened, too, in the propriety of this course by the conviction that all efforts to go beyond this tend only to produce dis-
Martin Van Buren ; 1832 satisfaction and distrust, to excite jealousies, and to provoke resistance. Instead of adding strength to the Federal Government, even when suc- cessful they must ever prove a source of incurable weakness by alien- ating a portion of those whose adhesion is indispensable to the great aggregate of united strength and whose voluntary attachment is in my estimation far more essential to the efficiency of a government strong in the best of all possible strength—the confidence and attachment of all those who make up its constituent elements. | Thus believing, it has been my purpose to secure to the whole people and to every member of the Confederacy, by general, salutary, and equal laws alone, the benefit of those republican institutions which it was the end and aim of the Constitution to establish, and the impartial influence of which is in my judgment indispensable to their preservation. I can not bring myself to believe that the lasting happiness of the people, the prosperity of the States, or the permanency of their Union can be main- tained by giving preference or priority to any class of citizens in the dis- tribution of benefits or privileges, or by the adoption of measures which enrich one portion of the Union at the expense of another; nor can I see in the interference of the Federal Government with the local legisla- tion and reserved rights of the States a remedy for present or a security against future dangers. , The first, and assuredly not the least, important step toward reliev- ing the country from the condition into which it had been plunged by excesses in trade, banking, and credits of all kinds was to place the busi- ness transactions of the Government itself on a solid basis, giving and receiving in all cases value for value, and neither countenancing nor encouraging in others that delusive system of credits from which it has been found so difficult to escape, and which has left nothing behind it but the wrecks that mark its fatal career. That the financial affairs of the Government are now and have been during the whole period of these wide-spreading difficulties conducted with a strict and invariable regard to this great fundamental principle, and that by the assumption and maintenance of the stand thus taken on the very threshold of the approaching crisis more than by any other cause or causes whatever the community at large has been shielded from the incalculable evils of a general and indefinite suspension of specie payments, and a consequent annihilation for the whole period it might have lasted of a just and invariable standard of value, will, it is believed, at this period scarcely be questioned. A steady adherence on the part of the Government to the policy which has produced such salutary results, aided by judicious State legislation and, what is not less important, by the industry, enterprise, persever- ance, and economy of the American people, can not fail to raise the whole couutry at an early period to a state of solid and enduring prosperity, not subject to be again overthrown by the suspension of banks or the
. 1833 Messages and Papers of the Presidents explosion of a bloated credit system. It is for the people and their rep- resentatives to decide whether or not the permanent welfare of the coun- try (which all good citizens equally desire, however widely they may differ as to the means of its accomplishment) shall be in this way secured, or whether the management of the pecuniary concerns of the Govern- ment, and by consequence to a great extent those of individuals also, shall be carried back to a condition of things which fostered those con- tractions and expansions of the currency and those reckless abuses of credit from the baleful effects of which the country has so deeply suf- fered—a return that can promise in the end no better results than to reproduce the embarrassments the Government has experienced, and to remove from the shoulders of the present to those of fresh victims the bitter fruits of that spirit of speculative enterprise to which our country- men are so liable and upon which the lessons of experience are so una- vailing. ‘The choice is an important one, and I sincerely hope that it may be wisely made. A report from the Secretary of War, presenting a detailed view of the affairs of that Department, accompanies this communication. The desultory duties connected with the removal of the Indians, in which the Army has been constantly engaged on the northern and west- ern frontiers and in Florida, have rendered it impracticable to carry into full effect the plan recommended by the Secretary for improving its dis- cipline. In every instance where the regiments have been concentrated they have made great progress, and the best results may be anticipated from a continuance of this system. During the last season a part of the troops have been employed in removing Indians from the interior to the territory assigned them in the West—a duty which they have performed efficiently and with praiseworthy humanity—and that portion of them which has been stationed in Florida continued active operations there throughout the heats of summer. The policy of the United States in regard to the Indians, of which a succinct account is given in my message of 1838, and'of the wisdom and expediency of which I am fully satisfied, has been continued in active operation throughout the whole period of my Administration. Since the spring of 1837 more than 40,000 Indians have been removed to their new homes west of the Mississippi, and I am happy to add that all accounts concur in representing the result of this measure as eminently beneficial to that people. The emigration of the Seminoles alone has been attended with serious difficulty and occasioned bloodshed, hostilities having been commenced by the Indians in Florida under the apprehension that they would be com- pelled by force to comply with their treaty stipulations. The execution of the treaty of Paynes Landing, signed in 1832, but not ratified until 1834, was postponed at the solicitation of the Indians until 1836, when they again renewed their agreement to remove peaceably to their new
Martin Van Buren 1834 homes in the West. In the face of this solemn and renewed compact they broke their faith and commenced hostilities by the massacre of Major Dade’s command, the murder of their agent, General Thompson, and other acts of cruel treachery. When this alarming and unexpected intelligence reached the seat of Government, every effort appears to have been made to reenforce General Clinch, who commanded the troops then in Florida. General Eustis was dispatched with reenforcements from Charleston, troops were called out from Alabama, Tennessee, and Geor- gia, and General Scott was sent to take the command, with ample powers and ample means. At the first alarm General Gaines organized a force at New Orleans, and without waiting for orders landed in Florida, where he delivered over the troops he had brought with him to General Scott. Governor Call was subsequently appointed to conduct a summer cam- paign, and at the close of it was replaced by General Jesup. These events and changes took place under the Administration of my predeces- sor. Notwithstanding the exertions of the experienced officers who had command there for eighteen months, on entering upon the administra- tion of the Government I found the Territory of Florida a prey to Indian atrocities. A strenuous effort was immediately made to bring those hos- tilities to a close, and the army under General Jesup was reenforced until it amounted to 10,000 men, and furnished with abundant supplies of every description. In this campaign a great number of the enemy were captured and destroyed, but the character of the contest only was changed. The Indians, having been defeated in every engagement, dispersed in small bands throughout the country and became an enterprising, for- midable, and ruthless banditti. General Taylor, who succeeded General Jesup, used his best exertions to subdue them, and was seconded in his efforts by the officers under his command; but he too failed to protect the Territory from their depredations. By an act of signal and cruel] treachery they broke the truce made with them by General Macomb, who was sent from Washington for the purpose of carrying into effect the expressed wishes of Congress, and have continued their devastations ever since. General Armistead, who was in Florida when General Taylor left the army by permission, assumed the command, and after active sum- mer operations was met by propositions for peace, and from the fortunate coincidence of the arrival in Florida at the same period of a delegation from the Seminoles who are happily settled west of the Mississippi and are now anxious to persuade their countrymen to join them there hopes were for some time entertained that the Indians might be induced tc leave the Territory without further difficulty. These hopes have proved fallacious and hostilities have been renewed throughout the whole of the Territory. That this contest has endured so long is to be attributed to causes beyond the control of the Government. Experienced generals have had the command of the troops, officers and soldiers have alike dis- tinguished themselves for their activity, patience, and enduring courage,
1835 Messages and Papers of the Presidents the army has been constantiy furnished with supplies of every descrip- tion, and we must look for the causes which have so long procrastinated the issue of the contest in the vast extent of the theater of hostilities, the almost insurmountable obstacles presented by the nature of the country, the climate, and the wily character of the savages. The sites for marine hospitals on the rivers and lakes which I was authorized to select and cause to be purchased have all been designated, but the appropriation not proving sufficient, conditional arrangements only have been made for their acquisition. It is for Congress to decide whether these conditional purchases shall be sanctioned and the humane intentions of the law carried into full effect. The Navy, as will appear from the accompanying report of the Secre- tary, has been usefully and honorably employed in the protection of our commerce and citizens in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, on the coast of Brazil, and in the Gulf of Mexico. A small squadron, consisting of the frigate Constellation and the sloop of war Boston, under Commodore Kearney, is now on its way to the China and Indian seas for the purpose of attending to our interests in that quarter, and Commander Aulick, in the sloop of war Yorktown, has been instructed to visit the Sandwich and Society islands, the coasts of New Zealand and Japan, together with other ports and islands frequented by our whale ships, for the purvose of giving them countenance and protection should they be required. Other smaller vessels have been and still are employed in prosecuting the surveys of the coast of the United States directed by various acts of Congress, and those which have been completed will shortly be laid before you.’ The exploring expedition at the latest date was preparing to leave the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, in further prosecution of objects which have thus far been successfully accomplished. The discovery of a new continent, which was first seen in latitude 66° 2’ south, longitude 154° 27’ east, and afterwards in latitude 66° 31’ south, longitude 152° 40’ east, by Lieutenants Wilkes and Hudson, for an extent of 1,800 miles, but on which they were prevented from landing by vast bodies of ice which encompassed it, is one of the honorable results of the enterprise. Lieu- tenant Wilkes bears testimony to the zeal and good conduct of his officers and men, and it is but justice to that officer to state that he appears to have performed the duties assigned him with an ardor, ability, and perseverance which give every assurance of an honorable issue to the undertaking. The report of the Postmaster-General herewith transmitted will exhibit the service of that Department the past year and its present condition. The transportation has been maintained during the year to the full extent authorized by the existing laws; some improvements have been effected which the public interest seemed urgently to demand, but not involv- ing any material additional expenditure; the contractors have generally performed their engagements with fidelity; the postmasters, with few
Martin Van Buren — 1836 exceptions, have rendered their accounts and paid their quarterly bal- ances with promptitude, and the whole service of the Department has maintained the efficiency for which it has for several years been distin- guished. The acts of Congress establishing new mail routes and requiring more expensive services on others and the increasing wants of the country have for three years past carried the expenditures something beyond the accruing revenues, the excess having been met until the past year by the surplus which had previously accumulated. That surplus having been exhausted and the anticipated increase in the revenue not hav- ing been realized owing to the depression in the commercial business of the country, the finances of the Department exhibit a small deficiency at the close of the last fiscal year. Its resources, however, are ample, and the reduced rates of compensation for the transportation service which may be expected on the future lettings from the general reduction of prices, with the increase of revenue that may reasonably be anticipated from the revival of commercial activity, must soon place the finances of the Department in a prosperous condition. Considering the unfavorable circumstances which have existed during the past year, it is a gratifying result that the revenue has not declined as compared with the preceding year, but, on the contrary, exhibits a small increase, the circumstances referred to having: had no other effect than to check the expected income. ' It will be seen that the Postmaster-General suggests certain improve- ments in the establishment designed to reduce the weight of the mails, cheapen the transportation, insure greater regularity in the service, and secure a considerable reduction in the rates of letter postage—an object highly desirable. The subject is one of general interest to the commt - nity, and is respectfully recommended to your consideration. The suppression of the African slave trade has received the continued attention of the Government. The brig Dolphin and schooner Grampus have been employed during the last season on the coast of Africa for the purpose of preventing such portions of that trade as were said to be prosecuted under the American flag. After cruising off those parts of the coast most usually resorted to by slavers until the commencement of the rainy season, these vessels returned to the United States for sup- plies, and have since been dispatched on a similar service. From the reports of the commanding officers it appears that the trade is now principally carried on under Portuguese colors, and they express the opinion that the apprehension of their presence on the slave coast has in a great degree arrested the prostitution of the American flag to this inhuman purpose. It is hoped that by continuing to maintain this force in that quarter and by the exertions of the officers in command much will be done to put a stop to whatever portion of this traffic may have been carried on under the American flag and to prevent its use
1837 Afessages and Papers of the Presidents in a trade which, while it violates the laws, is equally an outrage on the rights of others and the feelings of humanity. The efforts of the several Governments who are anxiously seeking to suppress this traffic must, however, be directed against the facilities afforded by what are now rec- ognized as legitimate commercial pursuits before that object can be fully accomplished. Supplies of provisions, water casks, merchandise, and articles con- nected with the prosecution of the slave trade are, it is understood, freely carried by vessels of different nations to the slave factories, and the effects of the factors are transported openly from one slave station to another without interruption or punishment by either of the nations to which they belong engaged in the commerce of that region. I sub- mit to your judgments whether this Government, having been the first to prohibit by adequate penalties the slave trade, the first to declare it piracy, should not be the first also to forbid to its citizens all trade with the slave factories on the coast of Africa, giving an example to all nations in this respect which if fairly followed can not fail to produce the most effective results in breaking up those dens of iniquity. M. VAN BUREN. SPECIAL MESSAGES. Wasuincron, December 7, 1840. Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Str: I herewith transmit a letter from the Secretary of the Navy, in relation to the navy pension fund, to which the attention of Congress is invited, and recommend an immediate appropriation of $151,352.39 to meet the payment of pensions becoming due on and after the ist of January, 1841. M. VAN BUREN. ° WasuincTon, December ro, r8go, Zo the Senate of the United States: I transmit, for the action of the Senate, a communication from the Secretary of War, on the subject of the transfer of Chickasaw stock to the Choctaw tribe, which the accompanying papers explain. M. VAN BUREN. War DEPARTMENT, December 10, 1890. The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Srr: I have the honor to lay before you a communication from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, relative to the transfer of $500,000 Chickasaw stock to the Choctaws _ in execution of the compact of 17th January, 1837, between those tribes, that if you
Martin Van Buren "1838 think it advisable you may assent to the proposed transfer and lay the matter before ihe Senate for the sanction of that body. Very respectfully, your most obedient servant, J. R. POINSETT. ‘War DEPARTMENT, OFFICE INDIAN AFFAIRS, Bon. J. R. Pornsert, December, 1840. Secretary of War. Str: A compact was made on the 17th January, 1837, ‘‘subject to the approval of the President and Senate of the United States, '’ which it received from the former on the 24th March, 1837, in conformity with the resolution of the Senate of 25th February, between the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes of Indians, of which I have the honor to inclose a copy. By this instrument the right to occupy a portion of the Choctaw country west of the Mississippi was, with certain privileges, secured to the Chickasaws, who agreed to pay therefor $530,000, of which $30,000 were paid in 1837, and the remaining £500,000 it was agreed should be invested under the direction of the Government of the United States and that the interest should be paid annually to the Choctaws. There being no money to place in the hands of the United States, but a very large amount of Chickasaw stock under the direction of the Treasury, the reasonable desire of the Choctaws that this large fund belonging to them should be put in their own names on the books of the Government can be gratified by a transfer of so much of the stock to the Secretary of War for their use, upon which the interest will be received and paid over to them, This will be an execution of the agreement of the parties. A sale of stocks to raise the money and then a reinvestment of it accord- ing to the letter of the compact ought not to be resorted to on account of their present low price in the market. In considering this subject in the course of the autumn the thirteenth article of the treaty of 24th May, 1834, with the Chickasaws was adverted to, by which it is provided: ‘‘If the Chickasaws shall be so fortunate as to procure a home within the limits of the United States, it is agreed that, with the consent of the President and Senate, so much of their invested stock as may be necessary to the purchase of a couniry for them to settle in shall be permitted to them to be sold, or the United States will advance the necessary amount upon a guaranty and pledge of an equal amount of their stocks.’’ The compact before referred to having been ratified by the President and Senate, it was doubted whether that was not a virtual consent to the application of so much of the stock as would be required to pay for the land and privileges contracted for by the said compact, and an authority for the transfer of it. ‘The question was referred to the Attorney-General, who was of opinion that the transfer could not be legally made without the assent of the President and Sen- ate fo the particular act. I have therefore respectfully to request that you will lay the matter before the President, that if he concurs in the propriety of so doing he may give his own and ask the consent of the Senate to the proposed proceeding. Very respectfully, your most obedient, T. HARTLEY CRAWFORD. To the Senate: Wasuincton, December ro, 1840. I communicate a report * of the Secretary of State, with the documents accompanying it, in compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 2oth of July last. M. VAN BUREN. * Relating to sales and donations of public lots in Washington, DC.
1839 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Wasuincton, December ar, 1840. To the Senate of the United States: I transmit herewith, for the consideration of the Senate with a view tc its ratification, a treaty of commerce and navigation between the United States of America and His Majesty the King of the Belgians, signed at Washington on the 29th day of March, 1840. ; M. VAN BUREN. WASHINGTON, December 23, 1840. To the House of Representatives of the United States: Herewith I transmit a communication* from the Secretary of the Treasury and also copies of certain papers accompanying it, which are believed to embrace the information contemplated by a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 17th instant. . M. VAN BUREN. WasHInGYon, December 28, 1840. To the House of Representatives of the United States: I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives a report ¢ from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, in answer to their res- olution of the 21st instant. M. VAN BUREN. Wasuincton, December 28, 1840. To the Senate of the United States: I transmit herewith, for the consideration of the Senete with a view to its ratification, a treaty of commerce and navigation between the United States and Portugal, signed at Lisbon on the 26th day of August, 1840, and certain letters relating thereto, of which a list is annexed. M. VAN BUREN. WasuIncton, December 29, 1840. To the House of Representatives of the United States: I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives a report { from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, in auswer to their resolu- _ tion of the 23d instant. M. VAN BUREN, * Relating to the suspension of appropriations made at the last sessloa of Con; +Transmitting correspondence with Great Britain relative to the burning of <he seambeat Caroline at Schloaser, N. Y., December 29, 1837. fy sansmitting correspondence with Great Britain relative to proceedings on the part of thar Government which may have a tendency tu interrupt our commerce with China.
Martin Van Buren 1840 WASHINGTON, January 2, 1841. To the House of Representatives of the United States: I think proper to communicate to the House of Representatives, in further answer to their resolution of the 21st ultimo, the correspondence which has since occurred between the Secretary of State and the British minister on the same subject. M. VAN BUREN. Mr. Fox to Mr. Forsyth. Wasuincron, December 29, 1890. Hon. JoHN ForsyrtH, etc. Sm: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th instant, in which, in reply to a letter which I had addressed to you on the 13th, you acquaint me that the President is not prepared to comply with my demand for the liberation of Mr. Alexander McLeod, of Upper Canada, now imprisoned at Lockport, in the State of New York, on a pretended charge of murder and arson, as having been engaged in the destruction of the piratical steamboat Caroline on the 29th of December, 1837. I learn with deep regret that such is the decision of the President of the United States, for I can not but foresee the very grave and serious consequences that must ensue if, besides the injury already inflicted upon Mr. McLeod of a vexatious and unjust imprisonment, any further harm should be done to him in the progress of thir extraordinary proceeding. I have lost no time in forwarding to Her Majesty’s Government in England the correspondence that has taken place, and I shall await the further orders of Her Majesty’s Government with respect to the important question which that correspond- ence involves. . But I feel it my duty not to close this communication without likewise testifying my vast regret and surprise at the expressions which I find repeated in your letter with reference to the destruction of the steamboat Caroline. I had confidently hoped that the first erroneous impression of the character of that event, imposed upon the mind of the United States Government by partial and exaggerated representations, would long since have been effaced by a more strict and accurate examination of the facts. Such an investigation must even yet, I am willing to believe, lead the United States Government to the same conviction with which Her Majesty's authorities on the spot were impressed—that the act was one, in the strictest sense, of self-defense, rendered absolutely necessary by the circumstances of the occasion for the safety and protection of Her Majesty’s subjects, and justified by the same motives and princi- ples which upon similar and well-known occasions have governed the conduct of illustrious officers of the United States. The steamboat Caroline was a hostile vessel engaged in piratical war against Her Majesty’s people, hired from her owners for that express purpose, and known to be so beyond the possibility of doubt. The place where the vessel was destroyed was nominally, it is true, within the territory of a friendly power, but the friendly power had been deprived through overbearing pirat- ical violence of the use of its proper authority over that portion of territory. The authorities of New York had not even been able to prevent the artillery of the State from being carried off publicly at midday to be used as instruments of war against Her Majesty’s subjects. It was under such circumstances, which it is to be hoped will never recur, that the vessel was attacked by a party of Her Majesty’s people, captured, and destroyed. A remonstrance against the act in question has been addressed by the United States to Her Majesty’s Government in England. I am not authorized to pronounce the decision of Her Majesty’s Government upon that remon- strance, but I have felt myself bound to record in the meantime the above opinion,
t 1841 Messages and Papers of the Presidents in order to protest in the most solemn manner against the spirited and loyal conduct of a party of Her Majesty’s officers and people being qualified, through an unfortu- nate misapprehension, as I believe, of the facts, with the appellation of outrage or of murder. T avail myself of this occasion to renew to you the assurance of my distinguished consideration. H. S. FOX. Mr. Forsyth to Mr. Fox. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, December 31, 1890. Str: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your mote of the 29th instant, in reply to mine of the 26th, on the subject of the arrest and detention of Alexander McLeod as one of the perpetrators of the outrage committed in New York when the steamboat Caroline was seized and burnt. Full evidence of that outrage has been pre- sented to Her Britannic Majesty’s Government with a demand for redress, and of course no discussion of the circumstances here can be either useful or proper, nor can I suppose it to be your desire to invite it. I take leave of the subject with this single remark, that the opinion so strongly expressed by you on the facts and principles involved in the demand for reparation on Her Majesty’s Government by the United States would hardly have been hazarded had you been possessed of the carefully col- lected testimony which has been presented to your Government in support of that demand. I avail myself of the occasion to renew to you the assurance of my distinguished consideration. JOHN FORSYTH. WASHINGTON, January 4, 1841. To the Senate of the United States: I submit herewith a treaty concluded with the Miami Indians for the cession of their lands in the State of Indiana. The circumstances attend- ing this negotiation are fully set forth in the accompanying communi- cation from the Secretary of War. Although the treaty was concluded without positive instructions and the usual official preliminaries, its terms appear to be so advantageous and the acquisition of these lands are deemed so desirable by reason of their importance to the State of Indiana and the Government, as well as on account of the Indians themselves, who will be greatly benefited by their removal west, that I have thought it advis- able to submit it to the action of the Senate. M. VAN BUREN. War DEPARTMENT, January 4, 1847. The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a treaty concluded with the Miami Indians of the State of Indiana, to be laid before the Senate for their ratification if upon due consideration of the circumstances under which this treaty was negotiated you should think proper to do so. These circumstances are fully and correctly set forth in the accompanying communication from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to which I beg leave respectfully to refer you. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your most obedient servant,
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE SELLING The cartoon reproduced in the upper panel aptly caricatures the indi- viduals associated in the abolition movement; women, aflame with Christian indignation and pity for their black sisters in degradation; ex-slaves, eager to procure the boon of freedom for their less fortunate fellows; and philan- thropists who were willing to give their fortunes if the blot on the American escutcheon might be removed. Enduring the jibes of the frivolous, the violence of the mob and the opposition of those whose incomes were affected by agitation, these people persisted until slavery was dead. The Encyclopedic Index articles, entitled “African Slave Trade,” “ Abolitionists” and “Slavery,” summarize those subjects and then direct the reader to places where the Presidents have discussed the question which dominated all others-from 1789 to 1861.
Martin Van Buren 1842 Wark DEPARTMENT, OFFICE INDIAN AFFAIRS, Hon. J. R. Pornsert, December 29, 1840. Secretary of War. Sm: A treaty made with the Miami tribe of Indians in the State of Indiana on the 28th day of November last for the residue of their lands in that State has been unexpectedly received. Great anxiety has been manifested by the citizens of Indiana and made known by their representatives in both Houses of Congress that a cession of the Miami land should be procured, and it seems to have been met by a correspondent disposition on the part of the leading men among the Indians. On the 25th May last a com- munication was received from General Samuel Milroy, subagent, etc., expressing the belief that the Miamies would treat and that their principal chief was desirous before the close of his life, now drawing near, to effect a negotiation, as in his opin- ion the emigration or extinction of the tribe were the alternatives before them, and suggesting that the most judicious course would be to conduct the business inform- ally at the annuity payment. In reply he was informed on the 2d July that the Department did not open negotiations for the purchase of Indian lands unless thereto previously authorized by Congress, and that at the request of a portion of the representation of Indiana an estimate had been furnished of the sum that would be required to hold a treaty, and that if the presumed intention of obtaining the estimate should be realized an effort would be made to execute the purpose for which the appropriation would be obtained. (Extracts from these letters, so far as they relate to the subject, are herewith sent, marked A.*) On the 31st July he renewed the subject, accompanied by an extract of a letter of 22d July to himself from Allen Hamilton, esq., the confidential friend of Chief Richardville, urging the propriety of a negotiation. (B.*) On the 12th August, no appropriation having been made by Congress, a letter was addressed to you by the Hon. O. H. Smith, of the Senate of the United States from Indiana, inclosing a letter from Mr. Hamilton, dated on the 11th, urging the vast importance of treating with the Miamies, as well to them as to the State, and giving the reasons which in the judgment of both led to the conclusion that their par- ticular case should form an exception to the general rule that obtains in regard of Indian treaties, and recommending strongly the appointment of General Milroy as a suitable person to conduct the negotiation. A communication of similar character (except the last feature), dated 20th August, was received from Mr. Milroy. The letter of the Hon. Mr. Smith was referred by you to this office, and on the 27th August, after a conference with you on the subject, I replied that exceptions to the rule stated might under very peculiar circumstances exist, but that as the Senate certainly, and it was believed the House too, had rejected an application for an appropriation, the opening of a negotiation might be considered to be opposed to an expression of legislative opinion. In answer to the suggestion that little or per- haps no expense need be incurred, as the treaty could be made at the payment of the annuities, it was remarked that the consideration money must necessarily be large, as the Miami lands were very valuable, and an appropriation of it required, which Congress might be disinclined to grant after what"had happened; that it was therefore deemed advisable to decline treating, and that perhaps a future applica- tion for legislative sanction might be more successful. Of this letter a copy was sent to General Milroy as a reply on the subject in hand to his communication of 3ist July, and his letter of 20th August was further answered on 2d September. (C.*) In consequence of the representations referred to, and probably others which did not reach me, you addressed me an unofficial note on 14th September, suggesting that Allen Hamilton, esq., might at the payment of the annuities make an arrangement with the Miamies that would be ‘‘ gratifying to the people as well as beneficial to 61 * Omitted.
1843 Messages and Papers of the Presidents the service.” ‘With this expressed wish of the head of the Department, and after consultation with you, I wrote unofficial letters to General Samuel Milroy and to Allen Hamilton, esq., on the 18th September, setting forth the views of the Depart- ment as hereinbefore expressed in regard of precedent legislative sanction and the importance to Indiana of treating with the Miamies, whose disposition to cede their remaining lands on just and equitable terms might not continue. It was thought, however, to be in keeping with the rule adopted to ascertain informally from the Miamies what they would be willing to take for their lands when it was their pleas- -ure to emigrate, etc. ‘It was doubted whether it would be judicious to reduce the terms to writing, however informally, on account of the difficulty there might be in convincing the Indians that it was not a treaty, although it was desirable, if it could be safely done, that it should be so; and they were informed that a report from them would answer ‘‘all my purposes, as my object is to be able to say to each branch of Congress upon what terms the Miami lands can be had by the United States, so that if the terms are approved the necessary law may be passed.” It was suggested that the annuity payment would afford a good opportunity for procuring the information desired, which it was expected could be had without any expense, for which there were no funds, and that if there were it would not be proper to expend them in the way proposed. (D.*) I desire to state the facts as they exist so fully as to exhibit precisely what: has been the action of the Department, without going into more detail than may be necessary, and therefore annex extracts and copies of the papers referred to instead of embodying them in this communication. On the 28th day of November last a treaty was concluded by Messrs. Samuel Milroy and Allen Hamilton with ‘‘the chiefs, warriors, and headmen of the Miami tribe of Indians,’’ which was received here on the 19th instant, accompanied by a letter explanatory of the treaty and stating it to have been made by ‘‘the undersigned, acting under instructious contained in your unofficial letter dated September 18, 1840;’’ that it was made at the annuity payment, when ‘‘the views and instructions of the Department”’ were ‘‘communicated to the Miami-Indians in full council,’’ and that ‘‘after full consideration of the subject they decided to reduce to treaty form a proposition or the terms upon which they would consent to cede their remain- ing lands in Indiana to the United States, subject, as they understand it, to the approval of the Department and the approval and ratification of the President and Senate of the United States before being of any binding force or efficiency as a treaty.”” With the original treaty I send a copy of the explanatory letter and of a communication from General Milroy giving the reasons for the money provisions made for the chief Richardville and the family of Chief Godfroy. (E.*) It will be thus seen that the negotiation of a treaty was not authorized; but if in the opinion of the President and Senate it shall be advisable to adopt and confirm it, I do not see any legal objection to such a course. The quantity of land ceded is estimated at about 500,000 acres, for which the consideration is fixed at $550,000, or $1.10 per acre, of which $250,000 are payable presently and the balance in annual payments of $15,000, which will be discharged in twenty years. In addition, we will be bound to remove them west of the Mississippi within five years, the period stipulated for their emigration, and to subsist them for one year after their arrival. These are the chief provisions in which the United States are interested. By the second (it is called in the treaty now submitted the ‘‘22,’’ which, if the President should decide to lay it before the Senate, can be corrected by that body) article of the treaty of 6th November, 1838, there is reserved from the cession contained in that instrument 10 miles square for the band of Ma-to-sin-ia, in regard sf which the seventh article says: “It is further stipulated that the United States convey by patent to Me-shing-go- * Omitted.
Martin Van Buren 1844 me-zia, son of Ma-to-sin-ia, the tract of land reserved by the twenty-second article of the treaty of 6th of November, 1838, to the band of Ma-to-sin-ia.”” This is a change as to the title of a reservation heretofore sanctioned and not now ceded, and so far as the United States are concerned does not vary the aspect of the present compact. There are reserved to the chief Richardville seven sections of land, and to him and the family of the deceased chief Godfroy are to be paid, respectively, considerable sums of money, which it seems from the statement of General Milroy were debts due to them and acknowledged by the tribe. The treaty of November, 1838, which was ratified on the 8th February, 1839, extinguished the Indian title to about 177,000 acres of land and cost the United States $335,680, or nearly $2 per acre. Measured by this price the present arrange- ment would seem to be very advantageous. It is stated by Messrs. Milroy and Hamilton that more favorable terms will not be assented to by the Miamies under any circumstances, and considering the great importance of the adoption of this compact, however irregularly made, to the State of Indiana, as well as the belief that any postponement will probably swallow up what remains to these Indians in debts which they most improvidently contract and the conviction that nothing’can save them from moral ruin but their removal west, I think it would be judicious in all views of the matter to adopt and ratify this treaty, and respectfully recommend that it, with the accompanying papers, be laid before the President, and, if he and you concur in my views, that the sanction of it by the Senate be asked. Respectfully submitted. y T. HARTLEY CRAWFORD. Wasnincton, January 5, 1841. To the Senate of the United States: _ I communicate to the Senate sundry papers,* in further answer to its resolution of the 30th of December, 1839, which have been received from the governor of Florida since the adjournment of the last session of Congress. M. VAN BUREN. WASHINGTON, January 6, 1841. Hon. R. M. JoHNSON, President of the Senate. Str: The report of the Secretary of War herewith and the accompa- nying documents are respectfully submitted in reply to the resolution of the Senate of June 30, 1840, calling for information in relation to the num- ber of soldiers enlisted in the late war and entitled to bounty land, etc. M. VAN BUREN. WASHINGTON, January 7, 1841. Hon. R. M. JoHNson, President of the Senate. Sir: The communication of the Secretary of War and the accompany- ing report of the colonel of Topographical Engineers are respectfully sub- mitted in reply to the resolution of the 15th of June last, calling for a * Relating to bonds of the Territory of Florida.
‘ \ 1845 Messages and Papers of the Presidents aA plan and estimate for the improvement of Pennsylvania avenue west of the President's square and for the construction of a stone bridge across Rock Creek, etc. \ M. VAN BUREN. WASHINGTON, january 18, Y84¢r. Zo the Senate of the United States: I herewith transmit to the Senate, in reply to their resolution of the 2oth of July last, a report from the Secretary of State, with accompany- ing papers.* M. VAN BUREN. WASHINGTON, January 19, 1841. To the House of Representatives of the United States: I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives a report, with accompanying papers,t from the Secretary'of State, in answer to the resolution of the House of the 16th of December last. ‘  M. VAN BUREN. Wasuincton, January 22, 1841. To the House of Representatives of the United States: I transmit herewith to the House of Representatives of the Unite States a report from the Director of the Mint, exhibiting the operations of that institution during the year 1840, and I have to invite the special attention of Congress to that part of the Director’s report in relation to the overvaluation given to the gold in foreign coins by the act of Con- gress of June 28, 1834, ‘‘regulating the value of certain foreign gold coin within the United States.’’ Applications have been frequently made at the Mint for copies of med- als voted at different times by Congress to the officers who distinguished themselves in the War of the Revolution and in the last war (the dies for which are deposited in the Mint), and it is submitted to Congress whether authority shall be given to the Mint to strike off copies of those medals, in bronze or other metal, to supply those persons making appli- cation for them, at a cost not to exceed the actual expense of striking them off. M. VAN BUREN. WASHINGTON, January 29, r84I. To the Senate and House of Representatives: By the report of the Secretary of State herewith communicated and the accompanying papers it appears that an additional appropriation is * Correspondence imputing malpractices to N. P. Trist, American consul at Havana, in regard to granting papers to vessels engaged in the slave trade, etc. tf Relating to the origin of any political relations between the United States and the Empire of China, etc.
Martin Van Buren 1846 necessary if it should be the pleasure of Congress that the preparatory exploration and survey of the northeastern boundary of the United States should be completed. M. VAN BUREN. . WASHINGTON, February 1, 1841. Zo the Senate of the United States: I respectfully transmit herewith a report and accompanying documents from the Secretary of War, in answer to a resolution of the 22d of Decem- ber, 1840, requesting the President to transmit to the Senate any infor- mation in his possession relative to the survey directed by the act of the 12th of June, 1838, entitled ‘‘An act to ascertain and designate the bound- ary line between the State of Michigan and Territory of Wiskonsin.”’ M. VAN BUREN. Wasuneton, February 8, 1842. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith the copy of a report from the commissioners for the exploration and survey of the northeastern boundary, in addition to the documents sent to Congress, with reference to a further appropria. tion for the completion of the duty intrusted to the commission. M. VAN BUREN. Report of the commissioners appointed by the President of the United States under the act of Congress of 20th July, 1840, for the purpose of exploring and survey- ing the boundary line between the States of Maine and New Hampshire and the British Provinces. . . NEw York, January 6, 1842. Hon, JoHN ForRSYTH, Secretary of State. Sm: The commissioners, having assembled in this city in conformity with your orders under date of 29th of July, beg leave respectfully to report— That the extent of country and the great length of the boundary line included in the objects of their commission would have rendered it impossible to have com- pleted the task assigned them within the limits of a single season. In addition to this physical impossibility, the work of the present year was entered upon under cir- cumstances very unfavorable for making any great progress. The law under which they have acted was passed at the last period of a protracted session, when nearly half of the season during which working parties can be kept in the field had elapsed; and although no delay took place in the appointment of commissioners to carry it intc effect, the organization of the board was not effected, in consequence of the refusal of one of the commissioners and the agent to accept of their nomination. The com- missioners, acting under these disadvantages, have done all that lay in their power to accomplish the greatest practicable extent of work, and have obtained many results which can not but be important in the examination of the vexed and important question which has been commitfed to them; but after having fully and maturely considered the subject and interchanged the results of their respective operations
1847 Messages and Papers of the Presidents they have come to the conclusion that it would be premature to embody the partial results which they have attained in a general report for the purpose of being laid before the political and scientific world. The meridian line of the St. Croix has not been carried to a distance of more than 50 miles from the monument at the source of that river, and the operations of the other commissioners, although they have cov- ered a wide extent of country, have fulfilled but one part of the duty assigned them. namely, that of exploration; while even in the parts explored actual surveys will be necessary for the purpose of. presenting the question in such form as can admit of no vil. In particular, the results of the examination of the most northern part of the line appear to differ in some poirts from the conclusions of the late British commis- sion. Satisfied that the latter have been reached in too hasty a manner and without a sufficient time having been expended upon comparative observations, they are cautioned by this example against committing a like error. In respect to the argu- mentative part of the report of the British commissioners, the duty of furnishing a prompt and immediate reply to such parts of it as rest upon the construction of trea- ties and the acts of diplomacy has been rendered far less important than it might at one time have appeared by the publication of the more important parts of the argu- ment laid before the King of the Netherlands as umpire. This argument, the delib. erate and studied work of men who well understood the subject, is a full exposition of the grounds on which the claim of the United States to the whole of the disputed territory rests. It has received the sanction of successive Administrations of opposite politics, and may therefore be considered, in addition to its original official character, as approved by the whole nation. To this publication your commission beg leave to refer as embodying an argument which may be styled unanswerable. The operations of the parties under the command of the several commissioners were as follows: The party under the direction of Professor Renwick left Portland in detachments on the 26th and 27th of August. The place of general rendezvous was fixed at Woodstock, or, failing that, at the Grand Falls of the St. John. The commissary of the party proceeded as speedily as possible to Oldtown, in order to procure boats and engage men. Professor Renwick passed by land through Brunswick, Gardi- ner, and Augusta. At the former place barometer No. 1 was compared with that of Professor Cleaveland, at Gardiner with that of Hallowel Gardiner, esq.; and arrangements were made with them to keep registers, to be used as corresponding observations with those of the expedition. At Augusta some additional articles of equipment were obtained from the authorities of the State, but the barometer which it had been hoped might have been procured was found to be unfit for service. At Houlton two tents and a number of knapsacks, with some gunpowder, were furnished by the politeness of General Eustis from the Government stores. The boats and all the stores reached Woodstock on the 3d September, and all the party were collected except one engineer, who had been left behind at Bangor in the hopes of obtaining another barometer. A bateau was therefore left to bring him on, The remainder of the boats were loaded, and the party embarked on the St. John on the morning of the 4th of September. This, the main body, reached the Grand Falls at noon on the 8th of September. The remaining bateau, with the engi- neer, arrived the next evening, having ascended the rapids of the St. John in atime short beyond precedent. On its arrival it was found that the barometer, on whose receipt reliance had been placed, had not been completed in time, and although, as was learnt afterwards, it had been committed as soon as finished by the maker to the care of Major Graham, the other commissioners felt compelled to set out before he had joined them. The want of this barometer, in which defects observed in the others had been remedied, was of no little detriment. A delay of eighteen days had occurred in Portland in consequence of the refusal of Messrs, Cleaveland and Jarvis to accept their appointments, and it was known from
Martin Van Buren 1848 the experience of the commissioners sent out in 1838 by the State of Maine that it would require at least three weeks to reach the line claimed by the United States from Bangor. It was therefore imperative to push forward, unless the risk of hav- ing the whole of the operations of this party paralyzed by the setting in of winter was to be encountered. It was also ascertained at the Grand Falls that the streams which were to be ascended were always shallow and rapid, and that at the moment they were extremely low, so that the boats would not carry more stores than would be consumed within the time required to reach the region assigned to Professor Ren- wick as his share of the duty and return. It became, therefore, necessary, as it had been before feared it must, to be content with an exploration instead of a close and accurate survey. Several of the men employed had been at the northern extremity of the meridian line, but their knowledge was limited to that single object. Inquiry was carefully made for guides through the country between the sources of the Grande Fourche of Restigouche and of Tuladi, but none were to be found. One Indian only had passed from the head of Green River to the Grande Fourche, but his knowledge was limited to a single path, in a direction not likely to shed any light on the object of the commission. He was, however, engaged. The French hunters of Madawaska had never penetrated beyond the sources of Green River, and the Indians who for- merly resided on the upper waters of the St. John were said to have abandoned the country for more than twelve years. The party was now divided into four detachments, the first to proceed down the Restigouche to the tide of the Bay of Chaleurs, the second to ascend the Grande Fourche of Restigouche to its source, the third to be stationed on Green River Mountain, the fourth to convey the surplus stores and heavy baggage to Lake Temis- couata and thence to ascend the Tuladi and Abagusquash to the highest accessible point of the latter. It was resolved that the second and fourth detachments should endeavor to cross the country and meet each other, following as far as possible the height of land. A general rendezvous was again fixed at Lake Temiscouata. In compliance with this plan, the first and second detachments ascended the Grande River together, crossed the Wagansis portage, and reached the confluence ef the Grande Fourche and southwest branch of Restigouche. The first detachment then descended the united stream, returned by the same course to the St. John, and reached the portage at Temiscouata on the 7th October. All the intended objects of the detachment were happily accomplished. The second detachment, under the personal direction of the commissioner, reached the junction of the north and south branches of the Grande Fourche on the 22d Sep- tember. Two engineers, with two men to carry provisions, were then dispatched to cross the country to the meridian line, and thence to proceed westward to join the detachment at Kedgwick Lake. This duty was performed and many valuable obser- vations obtained, but an accident, by which the barometer was broken, prevented all the anticipated objects of the mission from being accomplished. All the stores which could possibly be spared were now placed in a depot at the junction of the south branch, and the commissioner proceeded with the boats thus ligb+ened toward Kedgwick Lake. The lightening of the boats was rendered neces- sary in consequence of the diminution of the volume of the river and the occurrence of falls, over which it would have been impossible to convey them when fully loaded. For want of a guide, a branch more western than that which issues from the lake was entered. One of the boats was therefore sent round into the lake to await the return of the engineers dispatched to the meridian line. The stores, which were all that could be brought up in the state of the waters, were now found to be wholly insufficient to allow of committing the party to the unexplored country between this stream and Tuladi. Even the four days which must intervene before the return of the engineers could be expected would do much to exhaust them. The commis- sioner therefore resolved to proceed across the country, with no other companion
1849 Messages and Papers of the Presidents than two men, carrying ten days’ provisions. It was hoped that four or five days might suffice for the purpose, but ten of great toil and difficulty were spent before Lake Tuladi was reached. ‘The remainder of the detachment, united by the return of the engineers, descended the north branch of the Grande Fourche to the junc- tion of the south branch, ascended the latter, and made the portage to Green River. In this the boats were completely worn out, and the last of their food exhausted just at the moment that supplies sent up the Green River to meet them arrived at their camp. No arrangement which could have been made would have sufficed to prevent the risk of famine which was thus encountered by the second detachment. A greater number of boats would have required more men, and these would have eaten all they could have carried. No other actual suffering but great fatigue and anxiety were encountered; and it is now obvious that had the rains which were so abundant during the first week of October been snow (as they sometimes are in that climate) there would have been a risk of the detachment perishing. The third detachment reached their station on Green River Mountain on the 13th September and continued there until the 12th October. A full set of barometric observations was made, the latitude well determined by numerous altitudes, and the longitude approximately by some lunar observations. The fourth detachment, after depositing the stores intended for the return of the party in charge of the British commissary at Fort Ingall, who politely undertook the care of them, ascended the Tuladi, and taking its northern branch reached Lake Abagusquash. Here one of the engineers wounded himself severely and was ren- dered unfit for duty. The commissary then proceeded a journey of five days toward the east, blazing a path and making signals to guide the second detachment. The difference between the country as it actually exists and as represented on any maps prevented the commissioner from meeting this party. It found the source of the central or main branch of Tuladi to the north of that of the Abagusquash, and following the height of land reached the deep and narrow valley of the Rimouski at the point where, on the British maps, that stream is represented as issuing from a riage of mountains far north of the line offered to the King of the Netherlands as the bounds of the American claim. The commissary therefore found it impossible to ascend Rimouski to its source, and crossing its valley found himself again on a dividing ridge, where he soon struck a stream running to the southeast. This, from a comparison of courses and distances, is believed to be the source of the main branch of the Grande Fourche of Ristaymoh; and thus the second and fourth detachments had reached points within a very short distance of each other. The greater breadth of the dividing ridge has thus been explored, but it will remain to trace the limits of the valley of the Rimouski, which will form a deep indenture in the boundary line. This line having been explored, a party was formed, after the assemblage of the sev- eral divisions at Temiscouata, for the purpose of leveling it with the barometer; but the expedition was frustrated by a heavy snowstorm, which set in on the 12th October. This, the most important part of the whole northern line, therefore remains for future investigation. It can only be stated that strong grounds exist for the belief that its summits are not only higher than any point which has been measured, but that, although cut by the Rimouski, it exceeds in average elevation any part of the disputed territory. The leveling of the Temiscouata portage appeared to be an object of great impor- tance, not only on its own account, but as furnishing a base for future operations, As soon as a sufficient force had been assembled at Lake Temiscouata a party was there- fore formed to survey the portage with a theodolite. Orders were also given by the commissioner that the first barometer which should be returned should be carried over the portage. It was believed that this double provision would have secured the examination of this point beyond the chance of failure. A snowstorm, however
Martin Van Buren 1850 (the same which interrupted the last operation referred to), set in after the level had been run to the mountain of Biort, and one of the laboring men, worn out by his preceding fatigues, fell sick. The party being thus rendered insufficient, the engineer in command found himself compelled to return. The contemplated operation with the barometer was also frustrated, for on examination at Temiscouata it was found that all were unfit for further service. In order that the desired object might be accomplished, a new expedition was dispatched from New York on the 12th of Novem: ber, furnished with four barometers. This party, by great exertions, reached St. André, on the St. Lawrence, on the eighth day and accomplished the object of its mission. The operation was rendered possible at this inclement season by its being confined to a beaten road and in the vicinity of human habitations, The country which has been the object of this reconnoissance is, as may already be understood, of very difficult access from the settled parts of the State of Maine. It is also, at best, almost impenetrable except by the water courses, It furnishes no supplies except fish and small game, nor can these be obtained by a surveying party which can not be strong enough to allow for hunters and fishermen as a constituent part. The third detachment alone derived any important benefit from these sources. The best mode of supplying a party moving on the eastern section would be to draw provisions and stores from the St. Lawrence. It is, indeed, now obvious, although it is contrary to the belief of any of the persons professing to be acquainted with the subject, that had the commissioner proceeded from New York by the way of Mon- treal and Quebec he must have reached the district assigned to him a fortnight earlier and have accomplished twice as mach work as his party was able to perform. Although much remains to be done in this region, an extensive knowledge of a country hitherto unknown and unexplored has been obtained; and this not only sheds much light upon the boundary question in its present state, but will be of per- manent service in case of a further ¢z parte examination, or of a joint commission being agreed upon by the Governments of Great Britain and the United States. The season was.too late for any efficient work, as the line to be explored was not reached before the 22d September. Not only were the rivers at their lowest ebb, but ice was met in the progress of the parties as early as the 12th September, and snow fell on the 21st and 22d September. The actual setting in of winter, which sometimes occurs in the first week of October, was therefore to be dreaded. From this time the country becomes unfit for traveling of any description until the streams are bound with solid ice and a crust formed on the snow of sufficient firmness to make it passable on snowshoes. The only road is that along the St. John River, and it would be almost impossible for a party distant more than Io or 12 miles from that stream to extricate itself after the winter begins. No duty could be well imagined more likely to be disagreeable than that assigned to Professor Renwick. The only feasible modes of approach lay for hundreds of miles through the acknowledged limits of the British territory, and the line he was directed to explore was included within the military post of that nation. It may be likened to the entry upon the land of a neighbor for the purpose of inquiring into his title. Under these circumstances of anticipated difficulty it becomes his duty, as well as his pleasure, to acknowledge the uniform attention and civilities he has experi- enced from all parties, whether in official or in private stations. All possibility of interruption by the local authorities was prevented by a proclamation of His Excel- lency Sir John Harvey, K. C. B., lieutenant-governor of the Province of New Bruns- wick, and the British warden, Colonel Maclauchlan, was personally instrumental in promoting the comforts of the commissioner and his assistants. Similar attentions were received from the officers of the garrison at Fort Ingall, and the commandant of the citadel of Quebec, and from His Excellency the Governor-General, Even the private persons whose property might be affected by the acknowledgment of the American claim exhibited a generous hospitality.
1851 Messages and Papers of the Presidents The party under the direction of Captain Talcott left the settlements on Halls Stream on the 6th of September. The main branch of this was followed to its source in a swamp, in which a branch of the St. Francis also had its origin. From this point the party followed the ridge dividing the Atlantic from the St. Lawrence waters until it was supposed that all the branches of Indian Stream had been headed. In this work the party was employed until the 14th September. It had now arrived at a point where the Magalloway River should be found to the left, according to the most authentic map of the country, especially that prepared by the New Hampshire commissioner appointed in 1836 to explore the boundary of that State, and accom- panying that report.* The party accordingly bore well north to avoid being led from the true ‘‘height of land” by the dividing ridge between the Connecticut and Androscoggin rivers. After crossing several small streams, it came on the afternoon of the r5th toa rivulet about 12 feet wide running to the east, which was supposed to be the main Magalloway. The 16th was spent in exploring it to its source. The next day it was discovered that what had been taken for the Magalloway was a tribu- tary of Salmon River, a large branch of the St. Francis, and consequently the party was considerably to the north of the boundary. The supply of provisions did not allow the party to retrace its steps to the point where it had diverged from the true dividing ridge. The course was therefore changed until it bore a little south; but it was not until the 22d that the party found itself again on the dividing ridge, and then upon the waters of the Magalloway. The party reached Arnold River, or Chaudiere, above Lake Megantic, on the 24th September. After having recruited and taken a fresh supply of provisions from the depot established there, the party was divided into two detachments. One returned westward to find the corner of the State of New Hampshire as marked by the com- mission in 1789 appointed to trace the boundary line. It was there ascertained that the corner was on the true dividing ridge, and not from 8 to 10 miles south, as has been erroneously reported by the surveyor employed by the New Hampshire commissioners in 1836 and reiterated in several official papers. From the State corner the dividing ridge was followed to where it had been previously explored by the party. Thence a course was taken to the northeast so as to reach the head of Lake Megantic, and thence to Lake Magaumac, where on the 8th October the two detachments were again united. The detachment led by the assist- ant, Mr. Cutts, had successfully followed the dividing ridge from the camp of the 24th on Arnxid River to this place. It was now ascertained that the provisions remaining were not sufficient to subsist all of the company until the Kennebec road could be reached by following the heigh# of land. It was thought advisable again to separate into two detachmenta—one to follow the ridge, supplied with provisions for twenty days, and the other to strike for the nearest settlement, which it was supposed could be reached in four or five days. This movement commenced on the roth October, and the detachment, follow- ing the high land, reached the Kennebec road on the 23d, and on the following day provisions for the party for fifteen days were placed there and a like quantity at the mouth of the Metjarmette. It was intended that the two detachments should move simultaneously from these two points on the 26th to explore the boundary line as far as Lake Etchemin. A deep snow, which commenced falling on the night of the 25th, compelled the commissioner to abandon further explorations at that time; and there was not the slightest probability that they could be resumed before another year. The result of these explorations may be stated as follows: About 160 miles of country along or near the ‘‘ height of land’ have been traversed, the traveled distances carefully estimated, and the courses measured with a compass. Barometrical observations were made as often as necessary for giving a profile of the * Also see report No. 176, House of Representatives, Twenty-fifth Congress, third session. ’
Martin Van Buren 1852 toute from the head of Halls Stream to Arnold or the Chaudiere River, and thence to Lake Magaumac via the corner of the State of New Hampshire. Some further barometrical observations were made between the lake and the Kennebec road, but for a portion of that distance the barometer was unserviceable in consequence of air having entered the tube. Astronomical observations were made as often as there was an opportunity, but, owing to the prevalence of clouds, not as often as was desir- able. They will serve for correcting the courses and estimated distances traveled. Barometrical observations for comparison were made at the intersection of the Ken- nebec road and height of land hourly from 7 a. m. to 5 p.m. while the parties were on the dividing ridge. The only discovery of interest made by this party is that the Magalloway River does not head any of the branches of the Connecticut, as it was generally believed it did, and consequently our claim to Halls Stream is deprived of the support it would have had from the fact that a// the other branches were headed by an Atlantic river, and consequently could not be reached by the line along the height of land from the northwest angle of Nova Scotia. The other commissioner (Major Graham) did not receive his appointment until 16th August to fill the place left vacant by the nonacceptance of Professor Cleave- land, and to him was assigned the survey and examination of the due north line, commencing at the source of the river St. Croix and extending to the highlands which divide the waters that flow into the river St. Lawrence from those which flow into the Atlantic Ocean. Immediately after receiving his appointment he took the necessary steps for organizing his party, and in addition to two officers of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, assigned to him by the commandant of the Corps for this service, he called to his aid two civil engineers possessing the requisite qualifications for the duties to be performed. So soon as the requisite instruments could be procured and put in proper arder he left New York for Portland, Me., where he arrived on the 5th of September, expecting there to join his colleagues of the commission. They had, however, proceeded to the points designated for the commencement of their respective duties, the season being too far advanced to justify their incurring any further delay. At Portland a short conference was had with Mr. Stubbs, the agent of the State Department, who furnished the necessary means for procuring an outfit for the party in provisions, camp equipage, etc. The party then proceeded to Bangor, where it was occupied until the 12th in pro- curing the necessary supplies of provisions, camp equipage, transportation, etc., to enable it to take the field; and a few astronomical observations were made here for the purpose of testing the rates of the chronometers which were to be used upon this service, as well as of obtaining additional data for computing the longitude of this place, which, together with the latitude, had been determined by the commissioner by a very near approximation in the summer of 1838, while occupied upon the mili- tary reconnoissances of the northeastern frontier. On the 12th the party left Bangor for Houlton, where it arrived on the evening of the 13th. A depot of provisions was established here for supplying the line of their future operations, and the services of the requisite number of men as axmen, chain bearers, instrument carriers, etc., were engaged. Pending these preparations and the time necessarily occupied in cutting a road- way through the forest from a convenient point on the Calais road to the monument at the source of the river St. Croix, a series of astronomical observations was made, doth by day and by night, by which the latitude and longitude of Houlton were satisfactorily determined and the rates of the chronometers further tested. By the 24th of September the roadway was sufficiently opened to permit a camp to be established upon the experimental line traced by the United States and British. ry
1853 Messages and Papers of the Presidents surveyors in the year 1817, when an attempt was made to mark this portion of the boundary between the two countries agreeably to the provisions of the treaty of Ghent of 1815. The provisions and camp equipage were transported upon a strong but roughly constructed sled, drawn by horses, whilst the instruments were carried by hand, the surface of the country over which this roadway was opened being too rough for any wheeled vehicle to pass. The point decided upon as the true source of the river St. Croix by the United States and British commissioners appointed for that purpose under the fifth article of the treaty of 1794 was found and identified, both by the inscriptions upon the monument erected there to mark the spot and also by the testimony of a living witness of high respectability, who has known the locality since it was first designated by the com- missioners under the treaty of 1794. The avenue which had been cleared through a dense forest from the monument to a distance of 12 miles north of it by the surveyors in 1817 was easily recognized by the new and thick growth of young timber, which, having a width of from 4o to 50 feet, now occupied it. Axmen were at once set at work to reopen this avenue, under the supposition that the due north line would at least fall within ite borders for a distance of 12 miles. In the meantime the first astronomical station and camp were established, and the transit instrument set up at a distance of 4,578 feet north of the monument, upon an eminence 4534 feet above the level of its base. This position commanded a distinct view of the monument to the south, and of the whole line to the north for a distance of 11 miles, reaching to Parks Hill. Whilst the work of clearing the line of its young growth of timber was progressing a series of astro- nomical observations was commenced at this first camp, and continued both day and night without intermission (except when interrupted by unfavorable weather), with the sextant, the repeating circle of reflection, and the transit instrument, until the latitude and longitude of the monument and of this first camp were satisfactorily ascertained, and also the direction of the true meridian from the said monument established. For this latter purpose several observations were in the first place made upon the polar star (a Ursee Minoris) when at its greatest eastern diurnal ‘elongation, and the direction thus obtained was afterwards verified and corrected by numerous transit observations upon stars passing the meridian at various altitudes both north and south of the zenith. These were multiplied with every degree of care, and with the aid of four excellent chronometers, whose rates were constantly tested, not only by the transit observations, but also by equal altitudes of the sun in the day, to correct the time at noon and midnight, and by observed altitudes of east and west stars for correcting the same at various hours of the night. The direction of this meridian, as thus established by the commissioner, was found to vary from the experimental line traced by the surveyors of 1817 by running in the first place to the west of their line, then crossing it, and afterwards deviating con- siderably to the east of it. At the second principal station erected by the party, distant 6 miles and 3,952 feet north of the first camp, or 7 miles and 3,240 feet north of the monument, it found __ itself 60 feet to the west of the line of 1817. - This appeared to be the maximum devia- tion to the west of that line as near as its trace could be identified, which was only marked by permanent objects recognized by the party at the termination of each mile from the monument. Soon after passing this station the line of 1817 was crossed, and the party did not afterwards touch it, but deviated more and more to the east of it as it progressed north by an irregular proportion to the distance advanced. In order to obtain a correct profile or vertical section along the whole extent of this meridian line, in the hopes of furnishing data for accurate comparisons of elevations so far as they might be considered relevant to the subject in dispute between the two Governments, and also to afford an accurate base of comparison for the barometers
Martin Van Buren , 1854 slong an extended line which must traverse many ridges that will be objects of minute exploration for many miles of lateral extent, an officer was detailed to trace a line of levels from the base of the monument marking the source of the river St. Croix to tide water at Calais, in Maine, by which means the elevation of the base of the monu- ment above the planes of mean low and mean high water, and also the elevations of several intermediate points of the river St. Croix on its expanded lake surface, have been accurately ascertained. Another officer was at the same time charged with tracing a line of levels from the base of the same monument along the due north line as marked by the commissioner, by which it is intended that every undulation with the absolute heights above the plane of mean low water at Calais shall be shown along the whole extent of that line. At Parks Hill, distant only 12 miles from the monument, a second station for astronomical observations was established, and a camp suitable for that purpose was formed. On the 26th day of October, whilst occupied in completing the prolonga- tion of the meridian line to that point and in establishing a camp there, the party was visited by a snowstorm, which covered the ground to a depth of 4 inches in the course of six hours. This was succeeded by six days of dark, stormy weather, which entirely interrupted all progress, and terminated by a rain, with a change to a milder temperature, which cleared away the snow. During this untoward,event the parties made themselves as comfortable as practicable in their tents, and were occupied in computing many of the astronomical and other observations previously made. On the 2d of November the weather became clear, and the necessary astronomical observations were immediately commenced at Parks Hill, From this elevated point the first station could be distinctly seen by means of small heliotropes during the day and bright lights erected upon it at night. Its direction, with that of several intermediate stations due south of Parks Hill, was verified by a new series of transit observations upon high and low stars, both north and south of the zenith. By the same means the line was prolonged to the north. In one week after commencing the observations at Parks Hill the weather became again unfavorable. The sky was so constantly overcast as to preclude all astro- nomical observations, and the atmosphere so thick as to prevent a view to the north which «vould permit new stations to be established with sufficient accuracy in that direction. Unwilling to quit the field while there was a prospect of the weather becoming sufficiently favorable to enable the party to reach the latitude of Mars Hill, or even proceed beyond it, it was determined that some of the party should continue in the tents, and there occupy themselves with such calculations as ought to be made before quitting the field. The officers charged with the line of levels and with the reconnoissances in advance for the selection of new positions for stations continued their labors in the field, notwithstanding they were frequently exposed to . slight rain and snow storms, as these portions of the work could go on without a clear sky. On the 13th of November a severe snowstorm occurred, which in a single night and a portion of the following morning covered the surface of the whole country and the roofs of the tents to a depth of 16 inches. The northern extremity of the avenue which had been cleared by the surveyors of 1817 was now reached, and, in addition to the young growth which had sprung up since that period upon the previous part of the line, several miles had been cleared through the dense forest of heavy timber in order to proceed with the line of levels, which had reached nearly to the Meduxna- keag. The depth of snow now upon the ground rendered it impracticable to continue the leveling with the requisite accuracy any further, and that part of the work was accordingly suspended for the season, The thermometer had long since assumed a range extending during the night and frequently during a great portion of the day to many degrees below ‘the freezing point. The highlands bordering on the Aroostook, distant 40 miles to the north of the
1855 Messages and Papers of the Presidents party, were distinctly seen from an elevated position whenever the atmosphere was clear, and a long extent of intermediate country of inferior elevation to the posi- tion then occupied presented itself to the view, with the two peaks of Mars Hill rising abruptly above the general surface which surrounded their base. The eastern extremity of the base of the easternmost peak was nearly 2 degrees of arc, or nine- tenths of a mile in space, to the west of the line as it passed the same latitude. To erect stations opposite to the base of Mars Hill and upon the heights of the Aroostook, in order to obtain exact comparisons with the old line at these points, were considered objects of so much importance as to determine the commissioner to continue the operations in the field to the latest practicable period in hopes of accomplishing these ends. On the 18th day of November the party succeeded in erecting a station opposite Mars Hill and very near the meridian line. It was thus proved that the line would pass from nine-tenths of a mile to 1 mile east of the eastern extremity of the base of the northeast peak of Mars Hill. On the 30th of November a series of signals.was commenced to be interchanged at night between the position of the transit instrument on Parks Hill and the high- lands of the Aroostook. These were continued at intervals whenever the weather was.sufficiently clear until by successive approximations a station was on the 9th of December established on the heights 1 mile south of that river and on the meridian line. The point thus reached is more than 50 miles from the monument at the source of the St. Croix, as ascertained from the land surveys made under the authority of the States of Maine and Massachusetts. The measurements of the party could not be extended to this last point, owing to the depth of the snow which lay upon the ground since the middle of November, but the distance derived from the land sur- veys must be a very near approximation to the truth. A permanent station was erected at the position established on the Aroostook heights and a measurement made from it due west to the experimental or exploring line of 1817, by which the party found itself 2,400 feet to the east of that line. Between the rst and 15th of December the observations were carried on almost exclusively during the night, and frequently with the thermometer ranging from oto io and 12 degrees below that point by Fahrenheit’s scale. Although frequently exposed to this temperature in the performance of their duties in the open air at night, and to within a few degrees of that temperature during the hours of sleep, with no other protection than the tents and camp beds commonly used in the Army, the whole party, both officers and men, enjoyed excellent health. During the day the tents in which the astronomical computations were carried on were rendered quite comfortable by means of small stoves, but at night the fire would become extinguished and the temperature reduced to within a few degrees of that of the outward air. Within the observatory tent the comfort of a fire could not be indulged in, in consequence of the too great liability to produce serious errors of observation by the smoke passing the field of the telescope. The astronomical obser- vations were therefore always made in the open air or in a tent open to the heavens at top during the hours of observation, and without a fire. On the 16th of December the tents were struck and this party retired from the field for the season, there being then more than 2 feet of snow on the ground. To the unremitting zeal amidst severe expoeures, and to the scientific and practical attain- ments of the officers, both civil and military, who served under the orders of the commissioner on this duty, he acknowledges himself in a great measure indebted for the progress that he was enabled to make, notwithstanding the many difficulties encountered. —_ Observations were made during portions of three lunations of the transit of the moon’s bright limb and of such tabulated stars as differed but little in right ascen- sion and declination from the moon, in order to obtain additional data to those
Martin Van Buren 1856 furnished by chronometrical comparisons with the meridian of Boston for computing the longitude of this meridian line. At the first station, 4,578 feet north of the monument, and also at the Parks Hill station, the dip of the magnetic needle was ascertained by a series of observations—in the one case upon two and in the other upon three separate needles. The horizontal declination was also ascertained at both these stations by a full set of observations upon six different needles. The details of these and of all the astronomical observations alluded to will be prepared as soon as practicable for the use of the commission, should they be required. To His Excellency Major-General Sir John Harvey, K. C. B., lieutenant-governor of the Province of New Brunswick, Major Graham acknowledges himself greatly indebted for havimg in the most obliging manner extended to him every facility within his power for prosecuting the examinations. From Mr. Connell, of Wood- . stock, a member of the colonial parliament, and from Lieutenant-Colonel Maclauch- lan, the British land agent, very kind attentions were received. Major Graham has also great pleasure in acknowledging his obligations to Gen- eral Eustis, commandant of the Eastern Department; to Colonel Pierce, commanding the garrison at Houlton, and to his officers; and also to Major Ripley, of the .Ord- nance Department, commanding the arsenal at Augusta, for the prompt and obliging manner in which they supplied many articles useful to the prosecution of the labors of his party. The transit instrument with which the meridian line was traced had been loaned to the commission by the Hon. William A. Duer, president of Columbia College, New York, and the commissioners feel bound to return their acknowledgments for the liberality with which the use of this astronomical instrument was gratited at a time when it would have been difficult, and perhaps impossible, to have procured one as well suited to the object. All which is respectfully submitted. oy JAS. RENWICK, JAMES D. GRAHAM, A. TALCOTT, Commissioners. Wasuincton, February 12, 1841. Zo the Senate of the Untted States: I transmit a report of the Secretary of State, containing the informa- tion asked for by the resolution of the Senate of the 5th instant, relative to the negroes taken on board the schooner Amistad. M. VAN BUREN. Wasuincton, March 2, 18417. To the House of Representatives: I transmit to the House of Representatives a report from the Attorney- General, with accompanying documents,* in compliance with the request contained in their resolution of the 23d of March last. M. VAN BUREN. * Opinions of the Attorneys-General of the United States from the commencement of the Govern- ment to March 1, 1841,
1857 Messages and Papers of the Presidents . Wassincton, March 2, 18gr. To the House of Representatives: I transmit the accompanying report from the Secretary of State, in relation to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 12th ultimo, on the subject of claims of citizens of the United States on the Government of Hayti. The information called for thereby is in the course of preparation and will be without doubt communicated at the commence- ment of the next session of Congress. M. VAN BUREN. Wasuincton, March 3, 1842. Zo the House of Representatives: I transmit to the House of Representatives, in compliance with their resolution of the 30th January last, a report* from the Secretary of State, with accompanying documents, M. VAN BUREN. PROCLAMATION. (From Senate Journal, Twenty-sixth Congress, second session, p. 247.] WASHINGTON, January 6, 1842. The President of the United States to ——, Senator for the State of ——: Certain matters touching the public good requiring that the Senate of the United States should be convened on Thursday, the 4th day of March next, you are desired to attend at the Senate Chamber, in the city of Washington, on that day, then and there to receive and deliberate on such communications as shall be made to you. M. VAN BUREN. * Relating to the search or seizure of United States vessels on the coast of Africa or elsewhere by British cruisers or authorities, and to the African slave trade, etc. co)
18657-A QUESTIONS. How is the District of Columbia governed? Page 1611. Under what circumstances and by what authority has the President called the State militia into service? Page 1618. Can the United States Supreme or Circuit Courts compel the Government to, perform specific acts? Page 1720. How was the title to Indian lands in general acquired by the Government, and were the bargains considered fair? Pages 1716, 1718. How can business depression be relieved by the action of the Government? Page 1708. What did Van Buren recommend as to ordnance and ammuni- tion factories? Page 1607. What was Van Buren’s idea as to the necessity of a standing army? Page 1607. What presents were declined by Van Buren? Page 1809. What were Van Buren’s views of the tariff? Page 1752.
SUGGESTIONS. The revulsion on account of the forms of banking during Jack- son’s administration culminated in panicky conditions in Van Buren’s administration, and called forth considerable criticism of the previous “Wild-Cat” methods. For Van Buren’s discussion of finances, see pages 1541, 1596, 1686, 1706, 1751, 1757, 1789, 1822. Van Buren’s decisive views in favor of slavery are set forth. Pages 1530 to 1537. _Read Van Buren’s Foreign Policy. Pages 1590, 1702, 1747, 1820. NOTE. For further suggestions on Van Buren’s administration, see Van Buren, Martin, Encyclopedic Index. By reading the Foreign Policy of each President, and by scan- ning the messages as to the state of the nation, a thorough knowl- edge of the history of the United States will be acquired from the | most authentic sources; because, as has been said, “Each Presi- dent reviews the past, depicts the present and forecasts the future of the nation.” 1857-B
William Henry Harrison March 4 to April 4, 1841 SEE ENCYCLOPEDIC INDEX. The Encyclopedic Index is not only an index to the other volumes, not only a key that unlocks the treasures of the entire publication, but it is in itself an alphabetically arranged brief history or story of the great controlling events constituting the History of the United tates. Under its proper alphabetical classification the story is told of every t subject referred to by any of the Presidents in their official Messages, and at the end of each article the official utterances of the Presidents themselves are cited upon the subject, so that you may readily turn to the page in the body of the work itself for this original information. , Next to the possession of knowledge is the ability to turn at will to where knowledge is to be found.
HOME AT NORTH BEND, OHIO, OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON With reproduction of official portrait, by Andrews, from the White House Collection
ANNA SyYMMEs was born near Morristown, N. J., and early in life was left motherless. Her father, disguised as a British officer, successfully carried her to her grandparents on Long Island, where she remained until the evacuation of New York. Trained in godliness, her whole life echoed her early teachings. When nearly twenty she married Captain, later General, and afterwards President Harrison. While he was Governor of the Indiana Territory she dispensed liberal hospi- tality, being greatly loved and admired, and here in her home in the old French Town of Vin- cennes many happy years were spent. Her hus- band being much away, she reared almost alone her ten children, afterwards seeing one infant, three grown daughters, four sons and ten grand- children die during thirty years at North Bend. The thought of removing to Washington was dis- tasteful to her, but as the President died one month after his inauguration, the removal be- came unnecessary.
HARRISON William Henry Harrison as President was a distinctive character. In personality he probably never had, and it is doubtful if he ever will © have, an imitator or an equal. The country looked upon him at the time not alone as a great pioneer and warrior, but as a great and good man, who came very close to the people. The people selected him for the highest office within their gift, not only on account of that which he had accomplished in blazing the way to civilization and taming the savages in the Central West, or because he had assisted in repelling British intrusion, but because they regarded him as the personification of honor and as possessing the material for a great statesman. It has often been recorded in history and it is a common expression today that “William Henry Harrison was killed by office-seekers.” A man who would place himself so near the people as to permit office-seekers to send him to an untimely grave must have had in a very marked degree the milk of human kindness, ané a fountain of gratitude and personal affection, which should win admiration. It was the elevation of such a man to the Presidential chair, after a campaign so characteristic as to leave its imprint upon time, that made the administration of William Henry Harrison notable. Probably no man has ever occupied the Executive Mansion whose name was so universally perpetuated by namesakes, with the possible exception of George Washington. The children who were named after William Henry Harrison, if they could be lined up today, would make an army almost sufficient to have conducted successfully the war against Spain, or to fill all of the Federal offices of the country today. I find that the state papers of President William Henry Harrison are confined to his inaugural address and a proclamation convening Con- gress to meet in extraordinary session on May 31, 1841. On the fourth of the following April he. died. In his inaugural address he manifests an intense desire to conscientiously fulfill the duties of his high office. He proceeds to declare his intention of fulfilling all the pledges he had made and concludes his address with this somewhat pathetic sentence: “Fellow citizens, being fully vested with that high office to which the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an affectionate leave of you.” The above utterance seemed to be prophetic, in that it was his leave- taking, for he never again appeared in public. As a warrior among Indians, William Henry Harrison has been placed upon the scroll of fame with Daniel Boone and Kenton. As an army officer, a trained soldier and tactician upon the field, history places him with Washington, whose unlimited confidence he possessed. 1857-C
As a patriot, William Henry Harrison will always be remembered. No one who has achieved the high office he held will probably ever have a greater degree of confidence or affection of the people. It is lamentable that the expectations of the country were so rudely dashed by his un- timely death, as much was expected of, and no doubt much would have been realized by his administration. At the time of the Harrison-Van Buren campaign political cartoons were just coming into general use in this country. Gen. William Henry Harrison, who had some time before retired to private life, was then living upon his farm at North Bend, Ohio, between Cincinnati and the Indiana line. In one of these campaign hand bills are pictures of various scenes upon the farm including the Log Cabin and the famous Cider ‘Press, while the General himself is represented in his shirt sleeves, ploughing. He was called “The Cincinnatus of the West,” and this epithet proved of advantage in the campaign. He was living in the famous cabin at North Bend, and devoting him- self to agriculture with the same energy and enthusiasm which’ he had displayed in the affairs of War and of State. Here he remained until called upon by his friends to become @ candidate for the Presidency of the United States. He had married a daughter of John Cleves Symmes, the founder of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was in sympathy wholly with the Western pioneers, among whom he had lived so long. His term as President lasted but thirty days, and his death was felt as a severe blow by his party, which had formed high expectations of his capacity in executive matters. Notwithstanding his notable career as a General and statesman, William Henry Harrison is likely to be remembered as the highest type of the pioneers, who succeeded the frontiersmen Kenton and Boone. His service to the great empire, which has since been divided into the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, will cause him to be affectionately remembered by thousands who barely know the names of other Presidents. 1857-D
~ William Henry Harrison Wri11am Henry Harrison, third and youngest son of Benjamin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was born at Berkeley, Charles City County, Va., February 9, 1773. Was educated at Hampden Sidney College, Virginia, and began the study of medicine, but before he had finished it accounts of Indian outrages on the western frontier led him to enter the Army, and he was commis- sioned an ensign in the First Infantry on August 16, 1791; joined his regiment at Fort Washington, Ohio. Was appointed lieutenant June 2, 1792, and afterwards joined the Army under General Anthony Wayne, and was made aid-de-camp to the commanding officer. For his services in the expedition, in December, 1793, that erected Fort Recovery he was thanked by name in general orders, Participated in the engagements with the Indians that began on June 30, 1794, and was complimented by General Wayne for gallantry in the victory on the Miami on August 20. On May 15, 1797, was made captain and given the command of Fort Washington. While there he married Anna, daughter of John Cleves Symmes. Resigned his commission on June 1, 1798, peace having been made with the Indians, and was immediately appointed by President John Adams secretary of the Northwest Territory, but in October, 1799, resigned to take his seat as Territorial Delegate in Congress. During. his term part of the Northwest Territory was formed into the Territory of Indiana, including the present States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and he was appointed its governor and superintendent of Indian affairs, which he accepted, and resigned his seat in Congress. Was reappointed successively by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. He organized the legislature at Vincennes in 1805. Held frequent coun- cils with the Indians, and succeeded in averting many outbreaks. On September 30, 1809, concluded a treaty with several tribes by which they sold to the United States about 3,000,000 acres of land on the Wabash and White rivers. This and former treaties were condemned by Tecumseh and other chiefs, and an outbreak became imminent, which was averted by the conciliatory course of the governor. In the spring of 181; Indian depredations became frequent, and Governor Harrison 1858
1859 Messages and Papers of the Presidents recommended the establishment of a military post at Tippecanoe, and the Government consented. On September 26 Harrison marched from’ Vincennes with about g00 men, including 350 regular infantry, completed Fort Harrison, near the site of Terre Haute, Ind., on October 28, and leaving a garrison there pressed on toward Tippecanoe. On November 6, when near that town, was met by messengers demanding a parley, and a council was proposed for the next day. At 4 0’clock the follow- ing morning a fierce attack was made by the savages; at daybreak the Indians were driven from the field. For this victory he was highly complimented by President Madison in his message of December 18, 1811, and was also thanked by the legislatures of Kentucky and Indiana. On August 25, 1812, soon after war was declared against Great Britain, was commissioned major-general of the militia of Kentucky, though not a citizen of that State. On August 22, 1812, was commissioned a brigadier-general in the Regular Army, and later was appointed to the chief command of the Northwestern army, with instructions to act in all cases according to his own discretion and judgment. No latitude as great as this had been given to any commander since Washington. On March 2, 1813, was commissioned a major-general. Was in command of Fort Meigs when General Proctor, with a force of British troops and Indians, laid unsuccessful siege to it from April 28 to May 9, 1813. Transporting his army to Canada, he fought the battle of the Thames on October 5, defeating General Proctor’s army of 800 regulars and 1,200 Indians, the latter led by the celebrated Tecumseh, who was killed. This battle, together with Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, gave the United States possession of the chain of lakes above Erie and put an end to the war in uppermost Canada. For this victory he was praised by President Madison in his annual message to Congress and by the leg- islatures of the different States. Through a misunderstanding with General John Armstrong, Secretary of War, he resigned his commis- sion in the Army May 31,1814. In 1814, and again in 1815, he was appointed on commissions that concluded Indian treaties, and.in 1816 was chosen to Congress to fill a vacancy, serving till1819. On March 30, 1818, Congress unanimously voted him a gold medal for his victory of the Thames. In 1819 he was chosen to the senate of Ohio, and in 1822 was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. In 1824 was a Presiden- tial elector, voting for Henry Clay, and in the same year was sent to the United States Senate, and succeeded Andrew Jackson as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. He resigned in 1828, having been appointed by President John Quiacy Adams minister to the United States of Colombia. He was recalled at the outset of Jackson’s Admin- istration, and retired to his farm at North Bend, near Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1835 was nominated for the Presidency by Whig State conventions in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and other States, but at the election on November 8, 1836, was defeated by Martin Van Buren, receiving
William Henry Harrison 1860 only 73 electoral votes to the latter’s 170. December 4, 1839,. he was nominated for the Presidency by the national Whig convention at Har- risburg, Pa., and was elected on November 10, 1840, receiving 234 electoral votes to Van Buren’s 60. Was inaugurated March 4, 1841. Called Congress to meet in extra session on May 31. He died on Sun- day morning, April 4, 1841. His body was interred in the Congressional Cemetery at Washington, but in June, 1841, it was removed to North Bend and placed in a tomb overlooking the Ohio River. INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the residue of my life to fill the chief executive office of this great and free nation, I appear before ycu, fellow-citizens, to take the oaths which the Constitution prescribes as a necessary qualification for the performance of its duties; and in obedience to a custom coeval with our Government and what I believe to be your expectations I proceed to present to you a summary of the principles which will govern me in the discharge of the duties which I shall be called upon to perform. It was the remark of a Roman consul in an early period of that cele- brated Republic that a most striking contrast was observable in the conduct of candidates for offices of power and trust before and after obtaining them, they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges and promises made in the former. However much the world may have improved in many respects in the lapse of upward of two thousand years since the remark was made by the virtuous and indignant Roman, I fear that a strict examination of the annals of some of the modern elective governments would develop similar instances of violated confidence. Although the fiat of the people has gone forth proclaiming me the Chief Magistrate of this glorious Union, nothing upon their part remain- ing to be done, it may be thought that a motive may exist to keep up the delusion under which they may be supposed to have acted in relation to my principles and opinions; and perhaps there may be some in this assembly who have come here either prepared to condemn those I shall now deliver, or, approving them, to doubt the sincerity with which they are now uttered. But the lapse of a few months will confirm or dispel their fears. The outline of principles to govern and measures to be adopted by an Administration not yet begun will soon be exchanged for immutable history, and I shall stand either exonerated by my country- mien or classed with the mass of those who promised that they might deceive and flattered with the intention to betray. However strong may be my present purpose to realize the expectations of a magnanimous and
1861 Messages and Papers of the Presidents confiding people, I too well understand the dangerous temptations to which I shall be exposed from the magnitude of the power which it has been the pleasure of the people to commit to my hands not to place my chief confidence upon the aid of that Almighty Power which has hitherto protected me and enabled me to bring to favorable issues other important but still greatly inferior trusts heretofore confided to me by my country. The broad foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the people—a breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change, or modify it—it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of gov- ernment but to that of democracy. If such is its theory, those who are called upon to administer it must recognize as its leading principle the duty of shaping their measures so as to produce the greatest good to the greatest number. But with these broad admissions, if we would compare the sovereignty acknowledged to exist in the mass of our people with the power claimed by other sovereignties, even by those which have been considered most purely democratic, we shall find a most essential difference. All others lay claim to power limited only by their own will. The mafority of our citizens, on the contrary, possess a sovereignty with an amount of power precisely equal to that which has been granted to them by the parties to the national compact, and nothing beyond. We admit of no government by divine right, believing that so far as power is concerned the Beneficent Creator has made no distinction amongst men; that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express graut of power from the,governed. The Con- stitution of the United States is the instrument containing this grant of power to the several departments composing the Government. On an examination of that instrument it will be found to contain declarations of power granted and of power withheld. ‘The latter is also susceptible of division into power which the majority had the right to grant, but which they did not think proper to intrust to their agents, and that which they could not have granted, not being possessed by themselves. In other words, there are certain rights possessed by each individual American citizen which in his compact with the others he has never surrendered. Some of them, indeed, he is unable to surrender, being, in the language of our system, unalienable. The boasted privilege of a Roman citizen was to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith—which no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all—or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Fear different is the power of our sover- eignty. It can interfere with no one’s faith, prescribe forms of worship for no one’s observance, inflict no punishment but after well-ascertained
. William Henry Harrison 1862 guilt, the result of investigation under rules prescribed by the Constitu- tion itself. These precious privileges, and those scarcely less important of giving expression to his thoughts and opinions, either by writing or speaking, unrestrained but by the liability for injury to others, and that of a full participation in all the advantages which flow from the Gov- ernment, the acknowledged property of all,'the American citizen derives from no charter granted by his fellow-man. He claims them because he is himself a man, fashioned by the same Almighty hand as the rest of his species and entitled to a full share of the blessings with which He has endowed them. Notwithstanding the limited sovereignty possessed by the people of the United States and the restricted grant of power to the Government which they have adopted, enough has been given to accomplish all the objects for which it was created. It has been found powerful in war, and hitherto justice has been administered, an inti- mate union effected, domestic tranquillity preserved, and personal liberty secured to the citizen. As was to be expected, however, from the defect of language and the necessarily sententious manner in which the Consti- tution is written, disputes have arisen as to the amount of power which it has actually granted or was intended to grant. This is more particularly the case in relation to that part of the instrument which treats of the legislative branch, and not only as regards the exercisc of powers claimed under a general clause giving that body the authority to pass all laws necessary to carry into effect the specified powers, but in relation to the latter also. It is, howéver, consolatory to reflect that most of the instances of alleged departure from the letter or spirit of the Constitution have ultimately received the sanction of a majority of the people. And the fact that many of our statesmen most distinguished for talent and patriotism have been at one time or other of their political career on both sides of each of the most warmly disputed questions forces upon us the inference that the errors, if errors there were, are attributable to the intrinsic difficulty in many instances of ascertaining the intentions of the framers of the Constitu- tion rather than .the influence of any sinister or unpatriotic motive. But the great danger to our institutions does not appear to me to be in a usur- pation by the Government of power not.granted by the people, but by the accumulation in one of the departments of that which was assigned to others. Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments. This danger is greatly heightened, as it has been always observable that men are less jealous of encroachments of one department upon another than upon their own reserved rights. When the Constitution of the United States first came from the hands of the Convention which formed it, many of the sternest republicans of the day were alarmed at the extent of the power which had been granted to the Federal Government, and more particularly of that portion which
“oy 1863 Messages and Papers of the Presidents had been assigned to the executive branch. There were in it features which appeared not to be in harmony with their ideas of a simple rep- resentative democracy or republic, and knowing the tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual, predictions were made that at‘no very remote period the Government would terminate in virtual monarchy. It would not become me to say that the fears of these patriots have been already realized; but as I sincerely believe that the tendency of measures and of men’s opinions for some years past has been in that direction, it is, I conceive, strictly proper that I should take this occasion to repeat the assurances I have heretofore given of my determination to arrest the progress of that tendency if it really exists and restore the Government to its pristine health and vigor, as far as this can be effected by any legitimate exercise of the power placed in my hands. I proceed to state in as summary a manner as I can my opinion of the sources of the evils which have been so extensively complained of and the correctives which may be applied. Some of the former are unques- tionably to be found in the defects of the Constitution; others, in my judgment, are attributable to a misconstruction of some of its provi- sions. Of the former is the eligibility of the same individual to a second term of the Presidency. The sagacious mind of Mr. Jefferson early saw and lamented this error, and attempts have been made, hitherto without success, to apply the amendatory power of the States to its correction. As, however, one mode of correction is in the power of every President, and consequently in mine, it would be useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow- citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be cal- culated to create or increase the love of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust. Nothing can be more corrupting, nothing more destructive of all those noble feelings which belong to the character of a devoted republican patriot. When this cor- rupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable. It is the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its victim. If this is true, it is the part of wisdom for a republic to limit the service of that officer at least to whom she has intrusted the management of her foreign relations, the execution of her laws, and the command of her armies and navies to a period so short as to prevent his forgetting that he is the accountable agent, not the principal; the servant, not the
William Henry Harrison 1864 master. Until an amendment of the Constitution can be effected public opinion may secure the desired object. I give my aid to it by renewing the pledge heretofore given that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second term. "But if there is danger to public liberty from the acknowledged defects of the Constitution in the want of limit to the continuance of the Execu- tive power in the same hands, there is, I apprehend, not much less from a misconstruction of that instrument as it regards the powers actually given. I can not conceive that by a fair construction any or either of its provisions would be found to constitute the President a part of the legislative power. It can not*be claimed from the’ power to recommend, since, although enjoined as a duty upon him, it is a privilege which he holds in common with every ‘other citizen; and although there may be something more of confidence in the propriety of the measures recom- mended in the one case than in the other, in the obligations of ultimate decision there can be no difference. In the language of the Constitu- tion, ‘‘all the legislative powers’’ which it grants ‘‘are vested in the Congress of the United States.’’ It would be a solecism in language to say that any portion of these is not included in the whole. It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Execu- tive the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them his assent. So a similar power has necessarily resulted from that instrument to the judiciary, and yet the judiciary forms no part of the Legislature. There is, it is true, this difference between these grants of power: The Executive can put his negative upon the acts of the Legislature for other cause than that of want of conformity to the Con- stitution, whilst the judiciary can only declare void those which violate that instrument. But the decision of the judiciary is final in such a case, whereas in every instance where the veto of the Executive is applied it may be overcome by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress. The negative upon the acts of the legislative by the executive authority, and that in the hands of one individual, would seem to be an incongruity in our system. Like some others of a similar character, however, it appears to be highly expedient, and if used only with the forbearance and in the spirit which was intended by its authors it may be productive of great good and be found one of the best safeguards to the Union. At the period of the formation of the Constitution the principle does not " appear to have enjoyed much favor in the State governments. It existed but in two, and in one of these there was a plural executive. If we would search for the motives which operated upon the purely patriotic and enlightened assembly which framed the Constitution for the adop- tion of a provision so apparently repugnant to the leading democratic principle that the majority should govern, we must reject the idea that they anticipated from it any benefit to the ordinary course of legislation. They knew too well the high degree of intelligence which existed among bo
1865 Messages and Papers of the Presidents the people and the enlightened character of the State legislatures net to" have the fullest confidence that the two bodies elected by them would be worthy representatives of such constituents, and, of course, that they would require no aid in conceiving and maturing the measures which the circumstances of the country might require. And it is preposterous to suppose that a thought could for a moment have been entertained that the President, placed at the capital, in the center of the country, could better understand the wants and wishes of the people than their own immediate representatives, who spend a part of every year among them, living with them, often laboring with them, and bound to them by the triple tie of interest, duty, and affection. To assist or control Congress, then, in its ordinary legislation could not, I conceive, have been the motive for conferring the veto power on the President. This argument acquires additional force from the fact of its never having been thus used by the first six Presidents—and two of them were members of the Convention, one presiding over its deliberations and the other bearing a larger share in consummating the labors of that august body than any other person. But if bills were never returned to Congress by either of the Presidents above referred to upon the ground of their being inexpe- dient or not as well adapted as they might be to the wants of the people, the veto was applied upon that of want of conformity to the Constitu- tion or because errors had been committed from a too hasty enactment. There is another ground for the adoption of the veto principle, which had probably more influence in recommending it to the Convention than any other. I refer to the security which it gives to the just and equitable action of the Legislature upon all parts of the Union. It could not but have occurred to the Convention that in a country so extensive, embra- cing so great a variety of soil and climate, and consequently of products, and which from the same causes must ever exhibit a great difference in the amount of the population of its various sections, calling for a great diversity in the employments of the people, that the legislation of the majority might not always justly regard the rights and interests of the minority, and that acts of this character might be passed under an express grant by the words of the Constitution, and therefore not within the competency of the judiciary to declare void; that however enlight- ened and patriotic they might suppose from past experience the members of Congress might be, and however largely partaking, in the general, of the liberal feelings of the people, it was impossible to expect that bodies so constituted should not sometimes be controlled by local interests and sectional feelings. It was proper, therefore, to provide some um- pire from whose situation and mode of appointment more independence and freedom from such influences might be expected. Such a one was afforded by the executive department constituted by the Constitution. A person elected to that high office, having his constituents in every sec- tion, State, and subdivision of the Union, must consider himself bound by
Wilham Henry Harrison 1866 the most solemn sanctions to guard, protect, and defend the rights of all and of every portion. great or small, from the injustice and oppression of the rest. I consider the veto power, therefore, given by the Constitution to the Executive of the United States solely as a conservative power, to be used only xrst, to protect the Constitution from violation; secondly, the people from \he effects of hasty legislation where their will has been probably disregarded or not well understood, and, thirdly, to prevent the effects of combinatio.s violative of the rights of minorities. In refer- ence to the second or these objects I may observe that I consider it the right and privilege of the people to decide disputed points of the Consti- tution arising from the general grant of power to Congress to carry into effect the powers expressly given; and I believe with Mr. Madison that ‘‘repeated recognitions under varied circumstances in acts of the legisla- tive, executive, and judicial branches of the Government, accompanied by indications in different modes of the concurrence of the general will of the nation,’’ as affording to the President sufficient authority for his considering such disputed points as settled. Upward of half a century has elapsed since the adoption of the present form of government. It would be an object more highly desirable than the gratification of the curiosity of speculative statesmen if its precise situation could be ascertained, a fair exhibit made of the operations of each of its departments, of the powers which they respectively claim and exercise, of the collisions which have occurred between them or between the whole Government and those of the States or either of them. We could then compare our actual condition after fifty years’ trial of our system with what it was in the commencement of its operations and ascertain whether the predictions of the patriots who opposed its adop- tion or the confident hopes of its advocates have been best realized. ‘The great dread of the former seems to have been that the reserved powers of the States would be absorbed by those of the Federal Government and a consolidated power established, leaving to the States the shadow only of that independent action for which they had so zealously contended and on the preservation of which they relied as the last hope of liberty. Without denying that-the result to which they looked with so much apprehension is in the way of being realized, it is obvious that they did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General Govern- ment has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States. As far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. ‘To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring. They move in their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central head and with each other. But there is still an undercurrent at work by which, if not seasonably checked, the worst apprehensions of our anti- federal patriots will be realized, and not only will the State authorities
1867 Messages and Papers of the Presidents be overshadowed by the great increase of power in the executive depart- ment of the General Government, but the character of that Government, if not its designation, be essentially and radically changed. ‘This state of things has been in part effected by causes inherent in the Constitution and in part by the never-failing tendency of political power to increase itself. By making the President the sole distributer of all the patronage of the Government the framers of the Constitution do not appear to have anticipated at how short a period it would become a formidable instru- ment to control the free operations of the State governments. Of trifling _ importance at first, it had early in Mr. Jefferson’s Administration become so powerful as to create great alarm in the mind of that patriot from the potent influence it might exert in controlling the freedom of the elective franchise. If such could have then been the effects of its influence, how much greater must be the danger at this time, quadrupled in amount as it certainly is and more completely under the control of the Executive will than their construction of their powers allowed or the forbearing characters of all the early Presidents permitted them to make. But it is not by the extent of its patronage alone that the executive department has become dangerous, but by the use which it appears may be made of the appointing power to bring under its control the whole revenues of the country. The Constitution has declared it to be the duty of the Presi- dent to see that the laws are executed, and it makes him the Commander in Chief of the Armies and Navy of the United States. If the opinion of the most approved writers upon that species of mixed government which in modern Europe is termed monarchy in contradistinction to despotism is correct, there was wanting no other addition to the powers of our Chief Magistrate to stamp a monarchical character on our Government but the control of the public finances; and to me it appears strange indeed that anyone should doubt that the entire control which the President pos- sesses over the officers who have the custody of the public money, by the power of removal with or without cause, does, for all mischievous purposes at least, virtually subject the treasure also to his disposal. The first Roman Emperor, in his attempt to seize the sacred treasure, silenced the opposition of the officer to whose charge it had been committed by a significant allusion to his sword. By a selection of political instru- ments for the care of the public money a reference to their commissions by a President would be quite as effectual an argument as that of Ceesar to the Roman knight. I am not insensible of the great difficulty that exists in drawing a proper plan for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public revenues, and I know the importance which has been attached by men of great abilities and patriotism to the divorce, as it is called, of the Treasury from the banking institutions. It is not the divorce which is complained of, but the unhallowed union of the Treasury with the executive department, which has created such extensive alarm. ‘To this danger to our republican institutions and that created by the influence
PIONEERING AND INVENTION. As in the beginning of the settlement of any new country, the early days of life in the far West were the acme of all that is picturesque. Not with- out reason was the new country termed the “Wild and Woolly West.” There. were no formal laws, and whatever existed of unwritten laws necessary for human preservation had to be enforced at the end of firearms. Bands of desperadoes, unwilling to live by their own efforts in the new rich and fertile country, attempted to prey upon those who were laying the founda- tion for the future greatness of the West; and such bands could only be literally shot out of existence. The early crude towns, which were the embryos of the later thriving metropoles of the West, in those days were little more than trading points and carousing centres; and the evolution of these centres of lawlessness into progressive and cultivated communities is one of the stirring stories of American development. Along with pioneering developments went new scientific discoveries and inventions. Professor Samuel Morse (1791-1872) began experiments with a telegraph in the thirties, and in 1835 had a mile of wire producing defi- nite telegraphic results. His discoveries, however, had to wait upon slow and grudging help from Congress, which was not forthcoming until 1843. The first lengthy telegraphic message was sent on May 1, 1844, from Annapolis to Washington, and announced the nomination of Clay by the Whig convention meeting in Baltimore. From this humble beginning has sprung our extensive system of telegraph communication, in which were operated in a recent year more than 275,000 miles of poles and cables, and more than 1,800,000 miles of wires, carrying more than 125,000,000 mes- sages yearly.
William Henry Harrison 1868 given to the Executive through the instrumentality of the Federal offi- cers I propose to apply all the remedies which may be at my command. It was certainly a great error in the framers of the Constitution not to have made the officer at the head of the Treasury Department entirely independent of the Executive. He should at least have been removable only upon the demand of the popular branch of the Legislature. I have determined never to remove a Secretary of the Treasury without commu- nicating all the circumstances attending such removal to both Houses of Congress. The influence of the Executive in controlling the freedom of the elective franchise through the medium of the public officers can be effectually checked by renewing the prohibition published by Mr. Jeffer- son forbidding their interference in elections further than giving their own votes, and their own independence secured by an assurance of per- fect immunity in exercising this sacred privilege of freemen under the dictates of their own unbiased judgments. Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will. There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from the mother country that ‘‘the freedom f the press is the great bul- wark of civil and religious liberty’’ is one of the most precious legacies which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Govern- ment should never be used ‘‘to clear the guilty or to varnish crime.’’ A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged. Upon another occasion I have given my opinion at some length upon the impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of Congress— that the article in the Constitution making it the duty of the President to communicate information and authorizing him to recommend meas- ures was not intended to make him the source in legislation, and, in particular, that he should never be looked to for schemes of finance. It would be very strange, indeed, that the Constitution should have strictly forbidden one branch of the Legislature from interfering in the © origination of such bills and that it should be considered proper that an altogether different department of the Government should be permitted to do so. Some of our best political maxims and opinions have been drawn from our parent isle. There are others, however, which can not be introduced in our system without singular incongruity and the pro- duction of much mischief, and this I conceive to be one. No matter in which of the houses of Parliament a bill may originate nor by whom
1869 Messages and Papers of the Presidents introduced—a minister or a member of the opposition—by the fiction of law, or rather of constitutional principle, the sovereign is supposed to have prepared it agreeably to his will and then submitted it to Parlia- ment for their advice and consent. Now the very reverse is the case here, not only with regard to the principle, but the forms prescribed by ‘ the Constitution. The principle certainly assigns to the only body con- stituted by the Constitution (the legislative body) the power to make laws, and the forms even direct that the enactment should be ascribed to them. ‘The Senate, in relation to revenue bills, have the right to pro- pose amendments, and so has the Executive by the power given him to return them to the House of Representatives with his objections. It is in his power also to propose amendments in the existing revenue laws, suggested by his observations upon their defective or injurious opera- tion. But the delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representa- tives of the people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure should be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the control of the Executive the more wholesome the arrange- ment and the more in accordance with repyblican principle. Connected with this subject is the character of the currency. The idea of making it exclusively metallic, however well intended, appears to me to be fraught with more fatal consequences than any other scheme hav- ing no relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been devised. If any single scheme could produce the effect of arresting at once that mutation of condition by which thousands of our most indigent fellow-citizens by their industry and enterprise are raised to the posses- sion of wealth, that is the one. If there is one measure better calculated than another to produce that state of things so much deprecated by all true republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their hoards and the poor sinking deeper into penury, it is an exclusive metallic currency. Or if there is a process by which the character of the country for gener- osity and nobleness of feeling may be destroyed by the great increase and necessary toleration of usury, it is an exclusive metallic currency. Amongst the other duties of a delicate character which the President is called upon to perform is the supervision of the government of the Territories of the United States. Those of them which are destined to become members of our great political family are compensated by their rapid progress from infancy to manhood for the partial and temporary deprivation of their political rights. It is in this District only where <inerican citizens are to be found who under a settled policy are deprived of many important political privileges without any inspiring hope as to the future. Their only consolation under circumstances of such depri- vation is that of the devoted exterior guards of a camp—that their sufferings secure tranquillity and safety within. Are there any of their countrymen, who would subject them to greater sacrifices, to any
William Henry Harrison 1870 other humiliations than those essentially necessary to the security of the object for which they were thus separated from their fellow-citizens? Are their rights alone not to be guaranteed by the application of those great principles upon which all our constitutions are founded? We are told by the greatest of British orators and statesmen that at the com- mencement of the War of the Revolution the most stupid men in Eng- land spoke of ‘‘their American subjects.’’ Are there, indeed, citizens of any of our States who have dreamed of their subjects in the District of Columbia? Such dreams can never be realized by any agency of mine. The people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens. Being in the latter condition when the Constitution was formed, no words used in that instrument could have been intended to deprive them of that character. If there is anything in the great principle of unalienable rights so emphatically insisted upon in our Declaration of Independence, they could neither make nor the United States accept a surrender of their liberties and become the sudyects—in other words, the slaves—of their former fellow- citizens. If this be true—and it will scarcely be denied by anyone who has a correct idea of his own rights as an American citizen—the grant to Congress of exclusive jurisdiction in the District of Columbia can be interpreted, so far as respects the aggregate people of the United States, as meaning nothing more than to cllow to Congress the controlling power ° necessary to afford a free and safe exercise of the functions assigned to the General Government by the Constitution. In all other respects the legislation of Congress should be adapted to their peculiar position and wants and be conformable with their deliberate opinions of their own interests. . I have spoken of the necessity of keeping the respective departments of the Government, as well as all the other authorities of our country, within their appropriate orbits. This is a matter of difficulty in some cases, as the powers which they respectively claim are often not defined by any distinct lines. Mischievous, however, in their tendencies as col- lisions of this kind may be, those which arise between the respective communities which for certain purposes compose one nation are much more so, for no such nation can long exist without the careful culture of those feelings of confidence and affection which are the effective bonds to union between free and confederated states. Strong as is the tie of interest, it has been often found ineffectual. Men blinded by their passions have been known to adopt measures for their country in ‘lirect opposition to all the suggestions of policy. The alternative, then, is to destroy or keep down a bad passion by creating and fostering a good one, and this seems to be the corner stone upon which our American political architects have reared the fabric of our Government. The cement which was to bind it and perpetuate its existence was the ‘affec- tionate attachment between all itsmembers. To insure the continuance
1871 Messages and Papers of the Presidenis of this feeling, produced at first by a community of dangers, of suffer- ings, and of interests, the advantages of each were made accessible to all. No participation in any good possessed by any member of our extensive Confederacy, except in domestic government, was withheld from the citi- zen of any other member. By a process attended with no difficulty, no delay, no expense but that of removal, the citizen of one might become the citizen of any other, and successively of the whole. The lines, too, separating powers to be exercised by the citizens of one State from those of another seem to be so distinctly drawn as to leave no room for misunderstanding. ‘The citizens of each State unite in their persons all the privileges which that character confers and all that they may claim as citizens of the United States, but in no case can the same per- sons at the same time act as the citizen of two separate States, and he ts therefore positively precluded from any interference with the reserved powers of any State but that of which he is for the time being a citizen. He may, indeed, offer to the citizens of other States his advice as to their manage- ment, and the form in which it is tendered is left to his own discretion and sense of propriety. It may be observed, however, that organized associations of citizens requiring compliance with their wishes too much resemble the recommendations of Athens to her allies, supported by an armed and powerful fleet. It was, indeed, to the ambition of the lead- ing States of Greece to contro] the domestic concerns of the others that the destruction of that celebrated Confederacy, and subsequently of all its members, is mainly to be attributed, and it is owing to the absence of that spirit that the Helvetic Confederacy has for so many years been preserved. Never has there been seen in the institutions of the separate members of any confederacy more elements of discord. In the principles and forms of government and religion, as well as in the circumstances of the several Cantons, so marked a discrepancy was observable as to prom- ise anything but harmony in their intercourse or permanency in their alliance, and yet for ages neither has been interrupted. Content with the positive benefits which their union produced, with the independence and safety from foreign aggression which it secured, these sagacious people respected the institutions of each other, however repugnant to their own principles and prejudices. Our Confederacy, fellow-citizens, can only be preserved by the same forbearance. Our citizens must be content with the exercise of the powers with which the Constitution clothes them. The attempt of those of one State to control the domestic institutions of another can only result in feelings of distrust and jealousy, the certain harbingers of dis- union, violence, and civil war, and the ultimate destruction of our free institutions. Our Confederacy is perfectly illustrated by the terms and principles governing a common copartnership. There is a fimd of power to be exercised under the direction of the joint councils of the allied members, but that which has been reserved by the individual members
William Henry Harrison 1872 is intangible by the common Government or the individual members composing it. ‘To attempt it finds no support in the principles of our Constitution. It should be our constant and earnest endeavor mutually to cultivate a spirit of concord and harmony among the various parts of our Con- federacy. Experience has abundantly taught us that the agitation by citizens of one part of the Union of a subject not confided to the General Government, but exclusively under the guardianship of the local authori- ties, is productive of no other consequences than bitterness, alienation, discord, and injury to the very cause which is intended to be advanced. Of all the great interests which appertain to our country, that of union— cordial, confiding, fraternal union—is by far the most important, since it is the only true and sure guaranty of al] others. In consequence of the embarrassed state of business and the currency, some of the States may meet with difficulty in their financial concerns. However deeply we may regret anything imprudent or excessive in the engagements into which States have entered for purposes of their own, it does not become us to disparage the State governments, nor to dis- courage them from making proper efforts for their own relief. On the contrary, it is our duty to encourage them to the extent of our con- stitutional authority to apply their best means and cheerfully to make all necessary sacrifices and submit to all necessary burdens to fulfill their engagements and maintain their credit, for the character and credit of the several States form a part of the character and credit of the whole country. The resources of the country are abundant, the enterprise and activity of our people proverbial, and we may well hope that wise legis- lation and prudent administration by the respective governments, each acting within its own sphere, will restore former prosperity. Unpleasant and even dangerous as collisions may sometimes be between the constituted authorities of the citizens of our country in relation to the lines which separate their respective jurisdictions, the results can be of no vital injury to our institutions if that ardent patriotism, that devoted attachment to liberty, that spirit of moderation and forbearance for which our countrymen were once distinguished, continue to be cherished. If this continues to be the ruling passion of our souls, the weaker feel- ing of the mistaken enthusiast will be corrected, the Utopian dreams of the scheming politician dissipated, and the complicated intrigues of the demagogue rendered harmless. The spirit of liberty is the sovereigr balm for every injury which our institutions may receive. On the con- trary, no care that can be used in the construction of our Government, no division of powers, no distribution of checks in its several departments, will prove effectual to keep us a free people if this spirit is suffered to decay; and decay it will without constant nurture. To the neglect of this duty the best historians agree in attributing the ruin of all the republics with whose existence and fall their writings have made us acquainted.
1873 Messages and Papers of the Presidents ' The same causes will ever produce the same effects, and as long as the love of power is a dominant passion of the human bosom, and as long as the understandings of men can be warped and their affections changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices, so long will the liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its preservation. The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from the influ- ence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy. History, ancient and modern, is full of such examples. Czesar became the master of the Roman - people and the senate under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims of the former against the aristocracy of the latter; Cromwell, in the character of protector of the liberties of the people, became the dictator of England, and Bolivar possessed himself of unlimited power with the title of his country’s liberator. There is, on the contrary, no instance on record of an extensive and well-established republic being changed into an aristocracy. The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy, and the antagonist principle to liberty . there is the spirit of faction—a spirit which assumes the character and in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power. And although there is at times much difficulty in distinguishing the false from the true spirit, a calm and dispassionate investigation will detect the counterfeit, as well by the character of its operations as the results that are produced. The true spirit of liberty, although devoted, persevering, bold, and uncompromising in principle, that secured is mild and tolerant and scrupulous as to the means it employs, whilst the spirit of party, assuming to be that of liberty, is harsh, vindictive, and intolerant, and totally reckless as to the character of the allies which it brings to the aid of its cause. When the genuine spirit of liberty animates the body of a people to a thorough examination of their affairs, it leads to the excision of every excrescence which may have fastened itself upon any of the departments of the government, and restores the system to its pristine health and beauty. But the reign of an intolerant spirit of party amongst a free people seldom fails to result in a dangerous accession to the executive power introduced and established amidst unusual professions of devotion to democracy. The foregoing remarks relate almost exclusively to matters connected with our domestic concerns. It may be proper, however, that I should
William Henry Harrison 1874 give some indications to my fellow-citizens of my proposed course of con- duct in the management of our foreign relations. I assure them, there- fore, that it is my intention to use every means in my power to preserve the friendly intercourse which now so happily subsists with every foreign nation, and that although, of course, not well informed as to the state of pending negotiations with any of them, I see in the personal characters of the sovereigns, as well as in the mutual interests of our own and of the governments with which our relations are most intimate, a pleasing guaranty that the harmony so important to the interests of their subjects as well as of our citizens will not be interrupted by the aflvancement of any claim or pretension upon their part to which our honor would not per- mit us to yield. Long the defender of my country’s rights in the field, I trust that my fellow-citizens will not see in my earnest desire to preserve peace with foreign powers any indication that their rights will ever be sacrificed or the honor of the nation tarnished by any admission on the part of their Chief Magistrate unworthy of their former glory. In our intercourse with our aboriginal neighbors the same liberality and justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to pro- pitiate‘an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with a weaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances have placed at its disposal. Before concluding, fellow-citizens, I must say something to you on the subject of the parties at this time existing in our country. To me it appears perfectly clear that the interest of that country requires that the violence of the spirit by which those parties are at this time governed must be greatly mitigated, if not entirely extinguished, or consequences will ensue which are appalling to be thought of. If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and duty, at that point their usefulness ends. Beyond that they become destructive of public virtue, the parent of a spirit antagonist to that of liberty, and eventually its inevitable conqueror. We have examples of, republics where the love of country and of liberty at one time were the dominant passions of the whole mass of citizens, and yet, with the . continuance of the name and forms of free government, not a vestige of these qualities remaining in the bosoms of any one of its citizens. It was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that ‘‘in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Antony a party, but the Commonwealth had none.’’ Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Common- wealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and
1875 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils and to shout for one or the other, as those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the lesser Asia would furnish the larger dividend. The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the operation of the same causes and influences it will fly from our Capitol and our forums. A calamity so atvful, not only to our country, but to the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and every tendency toa state of things likely to produce it immediately checked. Such a tendency has existed—does exist. Always the friend of my countrymen, never their flatterer, it becomes my duty to say to them from this high place to which their partiality has.exalted me that there exists in the land a spirit hostile to their best interests—hostile to liberty itself. It is a spirit contracted in its views, selfish in its objects. It looks to the aggrandizement of a few even to the destruction of the interests of the whole. The entire remedy is with the people. Something, however, may be effected hy the means which they have placed in my hands. It is union that we want, not of a party for the sake of that party, but a union of the whole country for the sake of the whole country, for the defense of its interests and its honor against foreign aggression, for the defense of those principles for which our ancestors so gloriously contended. As far as it depends upon me it shall be accomplished. All the influence that I possess shall be exerted to prevent the formation at least of an Executive party in the halls of the legislative body. I wish for the support of no member of that body to any measure of mine that does not satisfy his judgment and his sense of duty to those from whom he holds his appointment, nor any confidence in advance from the people but that asked for by Mr. Jef- ferson, ‘‘to give firmness and effect to the legal administration of their affairs.’’ I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a profound reverence for the Chris- tian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious lib- erty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness; and to that good Being who has blessed us by the gifts of civil and religious freedom, who watched over and prospered the labors of our fathers and has hitherto preserved to us institutions far exceeding in excellence those of any other people, let us unite in fervently commending every interest of our beloved country in all future time. Fellow-citizens, being fully invested with that high office to which the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an affectionate leave of you. You will bear with you to your homes the remembrance of
‘ Wiliam Henry Harrison 1876 the pledge I have this day given to discharge all the high duties of my exalted station according to the best of my ability, and I shall enter upon their performance with entire confidence in the support of a just and generous people. MARCH 4, 1841. SPECIAL MESSAGE. To the Senate of the United States: MARCH 5, 1841. I hereby withdraw all nominations made to the Senate on or before the 3d instant and which were not definitely acted on at the close of its session on that day. W. H. HARRISON PROCLAMATION. [From Statutes at Large (Little, Brown & Co.), Vol. XI, p. 786.) By THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A PROCLAMATION. Whereas sundry important and weighty matters, principally growing out of the condition of the revenue and finances of the country, appear to me to call for the consideration of Congress at an earlier day than its next annual session, and thus form an extraordinary occasion, such as renders necessary, in my judgment, the convention of the two Houses as soon as may be practicable: I do therefore by this my proclamation convene the two Houses of Congress to meet in the Capitol, at the city of Washington, on the last Monday, being the 31st day, of May next; and I require the respective Senators and Representatives then and there to assemble, in order te receive such information respecting the state of the Union as may be given to them and to devise and adopt such measures as the good of the country may seem to them, in the exercise of their wisdom and dis-, cretion, to require. In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Washington, the 17th day of March, A. D. 1841, and of the Independence of the United States the sixty-fifth, W. H. HARRISON. By the President: DANIEL WEBSTER, Secretary of State. {[SHAL.]
1877 Messages and Papers of the Presidents DEATH OF PRESIDENT HARRISON. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT. [From the Daily National Intelligencer, April 5, 1841.] WASHINGTON, April ¢, 184r. An all-wise Providence having suddenly removed from this life William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, we have thought it our duty, in the recess of Congress and in the absence of the Vice- President from the seat of Government, to make this afflicting bereave- ment known to the country by this declaration under our hands. He died at the President’s house, in this city, this qth day of April, A. D. 1841, at thirty minutes before 1 o’clock in the morning. The people of the United States, overwhelmed, like ourselves, by an event so unexpected and so melancholy, will derive consolation from knowing that his death was calm and resigned, as his life has been patriotic, useful, and distinguished, and that the last utterance of his lips expressed a fervent desire for the perpetuity of the Constitution and the preservation of its true principles. In death, as in life, the happiness of his country was uppermost in his thoughts. DANIEL WEBSTER, Secretary of State. THOMAS EWING, Secretary of the Treasury. JOHN BELL, Secretary of War. J. J. CRITTENDEN, Attorney-General. FRANCIS GRANGER, Postmaster-Generat. [The Secretary of the Navy was absent from the city.] ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE VICE-PRESIDENT. [From the Daily National Intelligencer, April 5, 1841.) JouN TYLER WASHINGTON, April 4, 1842. Vice-President of the Untted States. Srr: It has become our most painful duty to inform you that William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, has departed this life. . This distressing event took place this day at the President’s mansion, in this city, at thirty minutes before 1 in the morning.
William Henry Harrison 1878 We lose no time in dispatching the chief clerk in the State Department as a special messenger to bear you these melancholy tidings. . We have the honor to be, with the highest regard, your obedient servants, DANIEL WEBSTER, Secretary of State. THOMAS EWING, Secretary of the Treasury, JOHN BELL, Secretary of War. JOHN J. CRITTENDEN, Attorney-General. FRANCIS GRANGER, Postmaster-General, ANNOUNCEMENT TO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES ABROAD. [From official records in the State Department.) DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, April 4, r8gr. Str: It has become my most painful duty to announce to you the decease of William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States. This afflicting event took place this day at the Executive Mansion, in this city, at thirty minutes before 1 o’clock in the morning. I am, sir, your obedient servant, , DANL. WEBSTER. ANNOUNCEMENT TO REPRESENTATIVES OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES. {From official records in the State Department.) DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, April 5, 1841. Srr: It is my great misfortune to be obliged to inform you of an event not less afflicting to the people of the United States than distressing to my own feelings and the feelings of all those connected with the Gov- ernment. The President departed this life yesterday at thirty minutes before r o’clock in the morning. You are respectfully invited to attend the funeral ceremonies, which will take place on Wednesday next, and with the particular arrange- ' ments for which you will be made acquainted in due time.
1879 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Not doubting your sympathy and condolence with the Government ‘ and people of the country on this bereavement, I have the honor to be, six, with high consideration, your obedient servant, ‘ DANL. WEBSTER. ANNOUNCEMENT ¥O THE ARMY. [From official recordd in the War Department.] DEPARTMENT OF WAR, Washington, April 5, 1842. It is with feelings of the deepest sorrow that the Secretary of War announces to the Army the death of the President of the United States. William Henry Harrison is no more, His long and faithful services in many subordinate but important stations, his recent elevation: to the highest in honor and power, and the brief term allotted to him in the enjoyment of it are circumstances of themselves which must awaken the liveliest sympathy in every bosom. But these are personal con- siderations; the dispensation is heaviest and most afflicting on public grounds. This great calamity has befallen the country at a period of ‘general anxiety for its present, and some apprehension for its future, con- dition—at a time when it is most desirable that all its, high offices should be filled and all its high trusts administered in harmony, wisdom, and vigor. The generosity of character of the deceased, the conspicuous honesty of his principles and purposes, together with the skill and firm- ness with which he maintained them in all situations, had won for him the affection and confidence of his countrymen; but at the moment when by their voice he was raised to a station in the discharge of the powers and duties of which the most beneficent results might justly have been anticipated from his great experience, his sound judgment, the high estimation in which he was held by the people, and his unquestioned devotion to the Constitution and to the Union, it has pleased an all-wise but mysterious Providence to remove him suddenly from that and every other earthly employment. While the officers and soldiers of the Army share in the general grief which these considerations so naturally and irresistibly inspire, they will doubtless be penetrated with increased sensibility and feel a deeper con- cern in testifying in the manner appropriate to them the full measure of a nation’s gratitude for the eminent services of the departed patriot and in rendering just and adequate honors to his memory because he was himself a soldier, and an approved one, receiving his earliest lessons in a camp, and, when in riper years called to the command of armies, illus- trating the profession of arms by his personal qualities and contributing largely by his successes to the stock of his country’s glory. It is to be regretted that the suddenness of the emergency has made it necessary to announce this sad event in the absence of the Vice-President
x William Henry Harrison 1880 from the seat of Government; but the greatest confidence is felt that he will cordially approve the sentiments expressed, and that he will in due time give directions for such further marks of respect not prescribed by the existing regulations of the Army as may be demanded by the occasion. JOHN BELL, Secretary of War. GENERAL ORDERS, No. 20. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, . ADJUTANT-GENERAL’S OFFICE, Washington, April 7, 1841. The death of the President of the United States having been officially announced from the War Department, the Major-General Commanding in Chief communicates to the Army the melancholy intelligence with feelings of the most profound sorrow. ‘The long, arduous, and faithful military services in which President Harrison has been engaged since the first settlement of the Western country, from the rank of a subal- tern to that of a commander in chief, are too well known to require a recital of them here. It is sufficient to point to the fields of Tippecanoe, the banks of the Miami, and the Thames, in Upper Canada, to recall to many of the soldiers of the present Army the glorious results of some of his achievements against the foes of his country, both savage and civilized. ‘The Anny has on former occasions been called upon to mourn the loss of distinguished patriots who have occupied the Presidential chair, but this is the first time since the adoption of the Constitution it has to lament the demise of a President while in the actual exercise of the high functions of the Chief Magistracy of the Union. The members of the Army, in common with their fellow-citizens of all classes, deeply deplore this national bereavement; but although they have lost a friend ever ready to protect their interests, his bright exam- ple in the paths of honor and glory still remains for their emulation. The funeral honors directed to be paid by the troops in paragraph 523 of the General Regulations will be duly observed, and the troops at the several stations will be paraded at 10 o’clock a. m., when this order will be read, after which all labors for the day will cease; the national flag will be displayed at half-staff; at dawn of day thirteen guns will be fired, besides the half-hour guns as directed by the Regulations, and at the close of the day a national salute. The standards, guidons, and colors of the several regiments will be put in mourning for the period of six months, and the officers will wear the usual badge of mourning on the left arm above the elbow and on the hilt of the sword for the same period. Byorder of Alexander Macomb, Major-General Commanding in Chief : R. JONES, Adjutant General.
1881 Messages and Papers of the Presidents ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE NAVY. [From official records in the Navy Department,] GENERAL ORDER. Navy DEPARTMENT, April 5, 1847. The Department announces to the officers of the Navy and Marine Corps the death of William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, which occurred at the Executive Mansion, in the city of Wash- jagton, on the morning of the 4th instant, and directs that, uniting with their fellow-citizens in the manifestations of their respect for the exalted character and eminent public services of the illustrious deceased, and of their sense of the bereavement the country has sustained by this afflict- ing dispensation of Providence, they wear the usual badge of mourning for six months. The Department further directs that funeral honors be paid him at each of the navy-yards and on board each of the public vessels in com- mission by firing twenty-six minute guns, commencing at 12 o'clock m., on the day after the receipt of this order, and by wearing their flags at half-mast for one week. , J. D. SIMMS, Acting Secretary of the Navy. OFFICIAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE FUNERAL. {From official records in the State Department.] WASHINGTON, April 4, 1841. The circumstances in which we are placed by the death of the Presi- dent render it indispensable for us, in the recess of Congress and in the absence of the Vice-President, to make arrangements for the funeral solemnities. Having consulted with the family and personal friends of the deceased, we have concluded that the funeral be solemnized on Wednesday, the 7th instant, at 12 o'clock. The religious services to be performed according to the usage of the Episcopal Church, in which church the deceased most usually worshiped. The body to be taken from the President’s house to the Congress Burying Ground, accompanied by a military and a civic procession, and deposited in the receiving tomb. The military arrangements to be under the direction of Major-General Macomb, the General Commanding in Chief the Army of the United States, and Major-General Walter Jones, of the militia of the District of Columbia. Commodore Morris, the senior captain in the Navy now in the city, to have the direction of the naval arrangements. The marshal of the District to have the direction of the civic proces- sion, assisted bythe mayors of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria,
Wiliam Henry Harrison 1882 the clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States, and such other citizens as they may see fit to call to their aid. ; John Quincy Adams, ex-President of the United States, members of Congress now in the city or its neighborhood, all the members of the diplomatic body resident in Washington, and all officers of Government and citizens generally are invited to attend. And it is respectfully recommended to the officers of Government that they wear the usual badge of mourning. DANL. WEBSTER, Secretary of State. _ T. EWING, Secretary of the Treasury. JNO. BELL, Secretary of War. J. J. CRITTENDEN, Attorney-General, FR. GRANGER, Postmaster-General, [The Secretary of the Navy was absent from the city. ] (From official records in the War Department.] District ORDERS. Wasuincton, April 5, r8gr. The foregoing notice from the heads of the Executive Departments of the Government informs you what a signal calamity has befallen us in the death of the President of the United States, and the prominent part assigned you in those funeral honors which may bespeak a nation’s respect to the memory of a departed patriot and statesman, whose vir- tue and talents as a citizen and soldier had achieved illustrious services, and whose sudden death has disappointed the expectation of still more important benefits to his country. With a view to carry into effect the views of these high officers of Gov- ernment in a manner befitting the occasion and honorable to the militia corps of this District, I request the general and field officers, the general staff, and the commandants of companies to assemble at my house to-morrow, Tuesday, April 6, precisely at 10 o’clock, to report the strength and equipment of the several corps of the militia and to receive final instructions for parade and arrangement in the military part of the funeral procession. . The commandants of such militia corps from the neighboring States as desire to unite in the procession are respectfully invited to report to me as soon as practicable their intention, with a view to arrange them in due and uniform order as a part of the general military escort.
1883 ' Messages and Papers of the Presidents The detail of these arrangements, to which all the military accessories, both of the regulars and militia, are expected to conform, will be published in due time for the information of all. . For the present it is deemed sufficient to say that the whole military part of the procession, including the regular troops of every arm and denomination and all the militia corps, whether of this District or of the States, will be consolidated in one column of escort, whereof Major- General Macomb, Commander of the Army of the United States, will take the general command, and Brigadier-General Roger Jones, Adjutant- General of the Army of the United States, will act as adjutant-general Maj. Gen., Comdg. the Militia of the District of Columbia. ADJUTANT-GENERAL’S OFFICE, Washington, April 6, 1841. The Major-General Commanding the Army of the United States and the major-general commanding the militia of the District of Columbia, having been charged by the executive officers of the Government with the military arrangements for the funeral honors to be paid to the patriot and illustrious citizen, William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, direct the following order of arrangement: ORDER OF THE PROCESSION. FUNERAL ESCORT. (In column of march.) Infantry. Battalion of Baltimore volunteers." ‘Compaty of Annapolis volunteers. Battalion of Washington volunteers. Marines. United States Marine Corps. Corps of commissioned officers of the Baltimore volunteers, headed by a major-general, Cavalry, Squadron of Georgetown Light Dragoons. Artillery. Troop of United States light artiltery. Dismounted officers of volunteers, Marine Corps, Navy, and Army in the order named. Mounted offtcers of volunteers, Marine Corps, Navy, and Army in the ordér named. Major-General Walter Jone, commanding the militia. Major-General Matomb, Commanding the Army. Aids-dé-Camp.