Weekly Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1853-1861, 1856-12-11
President,s Message
!. IN, Two H0usesof Congress, at the
OF the Third Session
Of fhe Thfrfy-F0Urth Congress.

OF the lMANty - - Oca 6Ncooe
Fs7zoss- Citizens Of the Senate and
House Of Representatives
The Constitution requires that the Presi
dent shall, from time to time, not only re
commend to the consideration of Congress
such measures as he may judge neeessarl
and sxpedient, but also that he shall give in
formation to them of the state of the Union
To do this fully, inv Ives an exposition of al
matters in the actual condition of the coun
try, domestic or foreign, which essentially
concern the general welfare. While per
forming his constitutional duty in this re
spect, the President does not speak merely
to express personal convictions, but as thI
executive minister of the government, en-
abled by his position, and called upon by hi
official obligations, to scan with an impartia
eye the interests of the whole, and Of every
part of the United States.
Of the condition of the domestic Interests
Of the Union, its agriculture, mines, manu-
factures, navigation and commerce, it is ne
cessary only to say that the internal pros
perity of the country, its continuous ane
steady advancement in wealth and popula
ton, and in private as well as public wei
being attest the wisdom of our institutions
and the predominant spirit of intelligence
and patriotism, which, notwithstanding oeca
sional Irregularities Of opinion or action re
sulting from popular freedom, has distin
guished and characterized the people O
America.
In the brief interval between the term-n
tion of the last and the commencement o
the present session of Congress, the public
mind has been occupied with the care of Sc
lecting, for another constitutional term, the
President and Vice President of the United
States.
The determination Of the persons, who
ere of right, or contingently, to preside oveI
the administration of the government is un-
der our system committed to the States and
the people. We appeal to them, by theil
voice pronounced in the forms of law, to call
whomsosver they will to the high post OF
Chief Magistrate.
And thus it is that as the Senators repre-
ssnt the respective States of the Union, and
the members of the House of Representa-
tives the several constituencies of each State,
% the President represents the aggregate
population Of the United States. Their
election OF him is the explicit and solemn
act Of ths sole sovereign authority of the
Up:0n
1t il irnross;ble to misapprehend the great
principles, which, by their recent political
&C ion, the people Of the United States have
sanctioned aud announced.
They have asserted the constitutional
equality of each and all of the States of the
Union as States; they have affirmed the con-
stitutional equality Of each and all of the
citisens of the United States as citizens,
whatever their religion, wherever their birth,
or their residence they have maintained the
inviolability of the constitutional rights of
the different sections of the Union; and
they have proclaimed their devoted and un-
alterable attachment to the Union and to the
Constitution as objects of interest superior to
all subjects of local or sectional controversy,
a. the safeguard of the rights of all, as
the spirit and the essence Of the liberty,
peace, and greatness of the Republic.
In doing this, they have, at the same time,
emphatically condemned the idea of organ
iEing in these United States meregeograph-
ieal parties of marshalling in hostile array
towards each other the different parts of the
country, North or South, East or West
Schemes of this nature, fraught with in
calculable mischief, and which the consider
ate sense of the people has rejected, could
have had countenance in no part of the coun-
try, had they not been disguised by sugges-
tions plausible in appearance, acting upon an
excited state of the public mind, induced by
causes temporary in their character and it is
to be hoped transient in their influence.
Perfect liberty of association for political
objects, and the widest scope of discussion
are the received and ordinary conditions of
government in our country. Our institutions,
framed in the spirit of confidence in the in
telligence and integrity of the people, do not
forbid citizens either individually or associa-
ted 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
liberty, and protected by the laws and usages
of the government they assail, associations
have been formed, in some of the States, of
individuals, 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 infamed with a
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 calumnia-
ting, with indiscriminate invective, not only
citizens of particular States, with whose
laws they find fault, but all Others of their
fellow citizens throughout the country, who
do not participate with them in their assaults
upon the Constitution, framed and adopted
by our fathers, and claiming for the privi-
leges it has secured, 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 revolu-
tionary one. They are perfectly aware that
the change in the relative condition of the
white and black races in the slaveholdiOg
States, which they woald promote, is beyond
their lawful authority; that to them it is a
foreign object; that it cannot be effected by
sny peaceful instrumentality of theirs that
to them and the States of which they are
citizens, the only path to its accomplishment
is through burning cities, and ravaged fields
and slaughtered populations, and all there Il
most terrible in foreign, complicated with
civil and servile war; and that the first steI
in the attempt is the forcible disruption of I
country embracing in its bosom degree o.
liberty, and an amount of individual ano
public prosperity, to which there is no par
allel in history, and substituting in its place
hostile governments, driven at once and in
evitably into mutual devastation and fratrici
dal carnage, transforming the now peaceful
and felicitous brotherhood into vast per
manent camp of armed men like the riva
monarchies of Europe and Asia. Wei
knowing that such, and such only, are tn
means and the consequences of their plan
and purposes, they endeavor to prepare tn
people of the United States for civil war b.
doing everything in their power to depriv
the Constitution and laws of moral authority
and to undermine the fabric of the Union b
appeals to passion and sectional prejudice. b
matchmaking its people with reciprocal ha
tired, and by educating them to stand face :
face as enemies, rather than shoulder t
shoulder as friends.
It is by the agency of such unwanantabl
interference, foreign and domestic, that th
minds of many, otherwise good citizen.