Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1856-12-03
Presidents Message.


in the actual condition of the country, do
nestle or foreign, which essentially concern
the general welfare. While performing his
constitutional duty in this respect, the Pres
ident does not speak merely to express per-
sonal convictions, but as the executive minis
ter of the government, enabled by his posi-
ton, and called upon by his official obliga-
tons, to scan with an impartial eve the inter-
ests Of the whole, and of every part of the
United States.
Of the condition of the domestic interests of
the Union, its agriculture, mines, manufac-
lures, navigation, aud commerce, it is ne
cessary only to say that the internal prosperi-
ty of the country, its continuous and steady
advancement in wealth and population, and
IN private as we'll as public well-being, attest
the wisdom Of our institutions, and the pre-.
dominant spirit of intelligence and patriotism,
which, Notwithstanding occasional irregulari-
ties of opinion or action resulting from popu-
lar freedom, has distinguished and character.
lied the people of America.
In the brief interval between the termina
ton of the last and the commencement of the
present session of Congress, the public mind
has been occupied with the care of selecting,
for another constitutional term, the President
and Vice President of the United States.
The determination Of the persons, who are
OF right, or contingently, to preside over the
administration of the government, is, under
our system, committed to the States and the
people. We appeal to them, by their voice
pronounced in the forms of law, to call whom
soever they will to the high post of Chief
Magistrate.
And thus it is that as the senators represent
the respective States of the Union, and the
members of the House OF Representatives the
e
President represents the aggregate population
of the United States. Their election of him is
the explicit and solemn act of the sole SOW
eign authority of the Union.
1t is impossible to misapprehend the great
principles, which, by their recent political ac-
ton, the people OF the United States have
sanctioned and announced
They have asserted the constitutional equal
ity of each and all of the States of the Union
as States; they have affirmed the consttu-
tional equality of each and all of the citizens
of the United States as citizens, whatever
their religion, wherever their BIRTH or their
residence they have maintained the inyiola-
billty of the constitutional rights of the diff
ferent sections of the Union and they have
proclaimed their devoted and unaterable at.
tachment to the Union and TO the constitu-
ton, as objects of interest superior to all sub
jects of local or sectional controversy, as the
safeguard Of the rights of all, as the spirit and
the essence of the liberty, peace, and great
ness of the Republic
In doing this, they have, at the same time,
emphatically condemned tire idea of organic
ing in these United States mere geographical
parties; of marshalling in hostile array towards
each other the different parts of the country,
North or South, East or West.
SpbeneS Of This uafura frau0bf with iDna1-
culable mischief, and which the considerate
sense of the people has rejected, could have
had countenance in no part of the country,
had they not been disguised by suggestions
plausible IN appearance, acting upon an ex-
cited state of the public mind, induced by
causes temporary III their character, and it is
to be hoped transient in their influence.
Perfect liberty of association for political OBJ
jects, and the widest scope of discussion, are
the received and ordinary conditions of gov
eminent in our country. Our institutions,
framed in the spirit of confidence in the intel
lige-ce and integrity of the people, do not for
bid citizens, either individually CT associated
together, TO attack by writing, speech. or any
other methods short of physical force, the
Constitution and the very existence of the
Union. Under the shelter of this great liber-
ty, and protected by tile laws and usages of
been formed in some of theStates, ofindividuals
who, pretending to seek only to prevent the
spread of the institution of slavery into the
present or future inchoate States of the Union,
are really inhamed with desire to change
the domestic institutions of existing States
To accomplish their objects, they dedicate
themselves to the odious task of depreciating
the government organization which stands in
their way, and of eliminating, with indiS-
crlminate inveetive, not only the citizens of
particular States, with whose laws they find
fault but all others of their fellow citizens
throughout the country, who do not partici-
pate with them in their assaults upon the
Constitution, framed and adopted by our faith
ers, and claiming for the privileges it has Sc.
cured, and the blessings it has conferred, the
steady support and grateful reverence of their
children. They seek an object which they
well know to be a revolutionary one. They
are prrfecty aware that the change in the rel
alive condition of the white and black races
in the slaveholding States, which they would
promote, is beyond their lawful authority;
that to them it is a foreign object that it
cannot be effected by any peaceful instru-
mentality of theirs that for them, and the
States of which they are citizens, the only
path to its accomplishment is through burn
ing cities, and rayaged fields, and slaughter
ed populations, and all there is most terrible
In foreign complicated with civil and servile
war; and that the first step in the attempt is
the torcible disruption of country embracing
in its broad bosom degree Of liberty, and an
amount of individual and public prosperityto
which there is no parallel in history, and sub
shutting in its place hostile governments,
driven at once and inevitably into mutual de-
vastation and fratricidaI carnage, transform
ing the now peaceful and felicitous brother
hood into vast permanent camp of armed
men like the rival monarchies OF Europe and
Asia. Well knowing that such, and such on
ly, are the means and the conseq of
their plans and purposes, they endeavor to
prepare the people Of the United States for
civil war by doing every thing in their power
to deprive the Constitution and the laws Of
moral authority, and to undermine the fabric
of the Union by appeals to passion and Sec
tional pref JUDGE, by indoctrinating its people
with reciprocal hatred, and by educating them
to stand face to face as enemies, rather than
shoulder TO shoulder as friends.
1t is by the agency of such unwarrantable
interference, foreign and domestic, that the
minds Of many, otherwise good citizens, have
been so inflamed into the passionate condem-
nation of the domestic institutions Of the
southern States, as at length to pass Insensi-
bly, to almost equally passionate hostility to-
wards their iellow-citZens Of those States,
and thus finally TO fall into temporary fellow
ship with the avowed and active enemies Of
the Constitution. Ardently attached to lib
erty IN the abstract, they do not stop TO consid-
or practically how the objects they would at
tam can De accomplished, nor to reflect that,