State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce
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Franklin Pierce >> State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce
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Derived, as our public revenue is, in chief part from duties on imports,
its magnitude affords gratifying evidence of the prosperity, not only of
our commerce, but of the other great interests upon which that depends.
The principle that all moneys not required for the current expenses of the
Government should remain for active employment in the hands of the people
and the conspicuous fact that the annual revenue from all sources exceeds
by many millions of dollars the amount needed for a prudent and economical
administration of public affairs can not fail to suggest the propriety of
an early revision and reduction of the tariff of duties on imports. It is
now so generally conceded that the purpose of revenue alone can justify the
imposition of duties on imports that in readjusting the impost tables and
schedules, which unquestionably require essential modifications, a
departure from the principles of the present tariff is not anticipated.
The Army during the past year has been actively engaged in defending the
Indian frontier, the state of the service permitting but few and small
garrisons in our permanent fortifications. The additional regiments
authorized at the last session of Congress have been recruited and
organized, and a large portion of the troops have already been sent to the
field. All the duties which devolve on the military establishment have been
satisfactorily performed, and the dangers and privations incident to the
character of the service required of our troops have furnished additional
evidence of their courage, zeal, and capacity to meet any requisition which
their country may make upon them. For the details of the military
operations, the distribution of the troops, and additional provisions
required for the military service, I refer to the report of the Secretary
of War and the accompanying documents.
Experience gathered from events which have transpired since my last annual
message has but served to confirm the opinion then expressed of the
propriety of making provision by a retired list for disabled officers and
for increased compensation to the officers retained on the list for active
duty. All the reasons which existed when these measures were recommended on
former occasions continue without modification, except so far as
circumstances have given to some of them additional force.
The recommendations heretofore made for a partial reorganization of the
Army are also renewed. The thorough elementary education given to those
officers who commenced their service with the grade of cadet qualifies them
to a considerable extent to perform the duties of every arm of the service;
but to give the highest efficiency to artillery requires the practice and
special study of many years, and it is not, therefore, believed to be
advisable to maintain in time of peace a larger force of that arm than can
be usually employed in the duties appertaining to the service of field and
siege artillery. The duties of the staff in all its various branches belong
to the movements of troops, and the efficiency of an army in the field
would materially depend upon the ability with which those duties are
discharged. It is not, as in the case of the artillery, a specialty, but
requires also an intimate knowledge of the duties of an officer of the
line, and it is not doubted that to complete the education of an officer
for either the line or the general staff it is desirable that he shall have
served in both. With this view, it was recommended on a former occasion
that the duties of the staff should be mainly performed by details from the
line, and, with conviction of the advantages which would result from such a
change, it is again presented for the consideration of Congress.
The report of the Secretary of the Navy, herewith submitted, exhibits in
full the naval operations of the past year, together with the present
condition of the service, and it makes suggestions of further legislation,
to which your attention is invited.
The construction of the six steam frigates for which appropriations were
made by the last Congress has proceeded in the most satisfactory manner and
with such expedition as to warrant the belief that they will be ready for
service early in the coming spring. Important as this addition to our naval
force is, it still remains inadequate to the contingent exigencies of the
protection of the extensive seacoast and vast commercial interests of the
United States. In view of this fact and of the acknowledged wisdom of the
policy of a gradual and systematic increase of the Navy an appropriation is
recommended for the construction of six steam sloops of war.
In regard to the steps taken in execution of the act of Congress to promote
the efficiency of the Navy, it is unnecessary for me to say more than to
express entire concurrence in the observations on that subject presented by
the Secretary in his report.
It will be perceived by the report of the postmaster-General that the gross
expenditure of the Department for the last fiiscal year was $9,968,342 and
the gross receipts $7,342,136, making an excess of expenditure over
receipts of $2,626,206; and that the cost of mail transportation during
that year was $674,952 greater than the previous year. Much of the heavy
expenditures to which the Treasury is thus subjected is to be ascribed to
the large quantity of printed matter conveyed by the mails, either franked
or liable to no postage by law or to very low rates of postage compared
with that charged on letters, and to the great cost of mail service on
railroads and by ocean steamers. The suggestions of the Postmaster-General
on the subject deserve the consideration of Congress.
The report of the Secretary of the Interior will engage your attention as
well for useful suggestions it contains as for the interest and importance
of the subjects to which they refer.
The aggregate amount of public land sold during the last fiscal year,
located with military scrip or land warrants, taken up under grants for
roads, and selected as swamp lands by States is 24,557,409 acres, of which
the portion sold was 15,729,524 acres, yielding in receipts the sum of
$11,485,380. In the same period of time 8,723,854 acres have been surveyed,
but, in consideration of the quantity already subject to entry, no
additional tracts have been brought into market.
The peculiar relation of the General Government to the District of Columbia
renders it proper to commend to your care not only its material but also
its moral interests, including education, more especially in those parts of
the District outside of the cities of Washington and Georgetown.
The commissioners appointed to revise and codify the laws of the District
have made such progress in the performance of their task as to insure its
completion in the time prescribed by the act of Congress.
Information has recently been received that the peace of the settlements in
the Territories of Oregon and Washington is disturbed by hostilities on the
part of the Indians, with indications of extensive combinations of a
hostile character among the tribes in that quarter, the more serious in
their possible effect by reason of the undetermined foreign interests
existing in those Territories, to which your attention has already been
especially invited. Efficient measures have been taken, which, it is
believed, will restore quiet and afford protection to our citizens.
In the Territory of Kansas there have been acts prejudicial to good order,
but as yet none have occurred under circumstances to justify the
interposition of the Federal Executive. That could only be in case of
obstruction to Federal law or of organized resistance to Territorial law,
assuming the character of insurrection, which, if it should occur, it would
be my duty promptly to overcome and suppress. I cherish the hope, however,
that the occurrence of any such untoward event will be prevented by the
sound sense of the people of the Territory, who by its organic law,
possessing the right to determine their own domestic institutions, are
entitled while deporting themselves peacefully to the free exercise of that
right, and must be protected in the enjoyment of it without interference on
the part of the citizens of any of the States. The southern boundary line
of this Territory has never been surveyed and established. The rapidly
extending settlements in that region and the fact that the main route
between Independence, in the State of Missouri, and New Mexico is
contiguous in this line suggest the probability that embarrassing questions
of jurisdiction may consequently arise. For these and other considerations
I commend the subject to your early attention.
I have thus passed in review the general state of the Union, including such
particular concerns of the Federal Government, whether of domestic or
foreign relation, as it appeared to me desirable and useful to bring to the
special notice of Congress. Unlike the great States of Europe and Asia and
many of those of America, these United States are wasting their strength
neither in foreign war nor domestic strife. Whatever of discontent or
public dissatisfaction exists is attributable to the imperfections of human
nature or is incident to all governments, however perfect, which human
wisdom can devise. Such subjects of political agitation as occupy the
public mind consist to a great extent of exaggeration of inevitable evils,
or over zeal in social improvement, or mere imagination of grievance,
having but remote connection with any of the constitutional functions or
duties of the Federal Government. To whatever extent these questions
exhibit a tendency menacing to the stability of the Constitution or the
integrity of the Union, and no further, they demand the consideration of
the Executive and require to be presented by him to Congress.
Before the thirteen colonies became a confederation of independent States
they were associated only by community of transatlantic origin, by
geographical position, and by the mutual tie of common dependence on Great
Britain. When that tie was sundered they severally assumed the powers and
rights of absolute self-government. The municipal and social institutions
of each, its laws of property and of personal relation, even its political
organization, were such only as each one chose to establish, wholly without
interference from any other. In the language of the Declaration of
Independence, each State had "full power to levy war, conclude peace,
contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things
which independent states may of right do." The several colonies differed in
climate, in soil, in natural productions, in religion, in systems of
education, in legislation, and in the forms of political administration,
and they continued to differ in these respects when they voluntarily allied
themselves as States to carry on the War of the Revolution. The object of
that war was to disenthrall the united colonies from foreign rule, which
had proved to be oppressive, and to separate them permanently from the
mother country. The political result was the foundation of a Federal
Republic of the free white men of the colonies, constituted, as they were,
in distinct and reciprocally independent State governments. As for the
subject races, whether Indian or African, the wise and brave statesmen of
that day, being engaged in no extravagant scheme of social change, left
them as they were, and thus preserved themselves and their posterity from
the anarchy and the ever-recurring civil wars which have prevailed in other
revolutionized European colonies of America.
When the confederated States found it convenient to modify the conditions
of their association by giving to the General Government direct access in
some respects to the people of the States, instead of confining it to
action on the States as such, they proceeded to frame the existing
Constitution, adhering steadily to one guiding thought, which was to
delegate only such power as was necessary and proper to the execution of
specific purposes, or, in other words, to retain as much as possible
consistently with those purposes of the independent powers of the
individual States. For objects of common defense and security, they
intrusted to the General Government certain carefully defined functions,
leaving all others as the undelegated rights of the separate independent
sovereignties.
Such is the constitutional theory of our Government, the practical
observance of which has carried us, and us alone among modern republics,
through nearly three generations of time without the cost of one drop of
blood shed in civil war. With freedom and concert of action, it has enabled
us to contend successfully on the battlefield against foreign foes, has
elevated the feeble colonies into powerful States, and has raised our
industrial productions and our commerce which transports them to the level
of the richest and the greatest nations of Europe. And the admirable
adaptation of our political institutions to their objects, combining local
self-government with aggregate strength, has established the practicability
of a government like ours to cover a continent with confederate states.
The Congress of the United States is in effect that congress of
sovereignties which good men in the Old World have sought for, but could
never attain, and which imparts to America an exemption from the mutable
leagues for common action, from the wars, the mutual invasions, and vague
aspirations after the balance of power which convulse from time to time the
Governments of Europe. Our cooperative action rests in the conditions of
permanent confederation prescribed by the Constitution. Our balance of
power is in the separate reserved rights of the States and their equal
representation in the Senate. That independent sovereignty in every one of
the States, with its reserved rights of local self-government assured to
each by their coequal power in the Senate, was the fundamental condition of
the Constitution. Without it the Union would never have existed. However
desirous the larger States might be to reorganize the Government so as to
give to their population its proportionate weight in the common counsels,
they knew it was impossible unless they conceded to the smaller ones
authority to exercise at least a negative influence on all the measures of
the Government, whether legislative or executive, through their equal
representation in the Senate. Indeed, the larger States themselves could
not have failed to perceive that the same power was equally necessary to
them for the security of their own domestic interests against the aggregate
force of the General Government. In a word, the original States went into
this permanent league on the agreed premises of exerting their common
strength for the defense of the whole and of all its parts, but of utterly
excluding all capability of reciprocal aggression. Each solemnly bound
itself to all the others neither to undertake nor permit any encroachment
upon or intermeddling with another's reserved rights.
Where it was deemed expedient particular rights of the States were
expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, but in all things besides these
rights were guarded by the limitation of the powers granted and by express
reservation of all powers not granted in the compact of union. Thus the
great power of taxation was limited to purposes of common defense and
general welfare, excluding objects appertaining to the local legislation of
the several States; and those purposes of general welfare and common
defense were afterwards defined by specific enumeration as being matters
only of co-relation between the States themselves or between them and
foreign governments, which, because of their common and general nature,
could not be left to the separate control of each State.
Of the circumstances of local condition, interest, and rights in which a
portion of the States, constituting one great section of the Union,
differed from the rest and from another section, the most important was the
peculiarity of a larger relative colored population in the Southern than in
the Northern States.
A population of this class, held in subjection, existed in nearly all the
States, but was more numerous and of more serious concernment in the South
than in the North on account of natural differences of climate and
production; and it was foreseen that, for the same reasons, while this
population would diminish and sooner or later cease to exist in some
States, it might increase in others. The peculiar character and magnitude
of this question of local rights, not in material relations only, but still
more in social ones, caused it to enter into the special stipulations of
the Constitution.
Hence, while the General Government, as well by the enumerated powers
granted to it as by those not enumerated, and therefore refused to it, was
forbidden to touch this matter in the sense of attack or offense, it was
placed under the general safeguard of the Union in the sense of defense
against either invasion or domestic violence, like all other local
interests of the several States. Each State expressly stipulated, as well
for itself as for each and all of its citizens, and every citizen of each
State became solemnly bound by his allegiance to the Constitution that any
person held to service or labor in one State, escaping into another, should
not, in consequence of any law or regulation thereof, be discharged from
such service or labor, but should be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor might be due by the laws of his State.
Thus and thus only, by the reciprocal guaranty of all the rights of every
State against interference on the part of another, was the present form of
government established by our fathers and transmitted to us, and by no
other means is it possible for it to exist. If one State ceases to respect
the rights of another and obtrusively intermeddles with its local
interests; if a portion of the States assume to impose their institutions
on the others or refuse to fulfill their obligations to them, we are no
longer united, friendly States, but distracted, hostile ones, with little
capacity left of common advantage, but abundant means of reciprocal injury
and mischief. Practically it is immaterial whether aggressive interference
between the States or deliberate refusal on the part of any one of them to
comply with constitutional obligations arise from erroneous conviction or
blind prejudice, whether it be perpetrated by direction or indirection. In
either case it is full of threat and of danger to the durability of the
Union.
Placed in the office of Chief Magistrate as the executive agent of the
whole country, bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and
specially enjoined by the Constitution to give information to Congress on
the state of the Union, it would be palpable neglect of duty on my part to
pass over a subject like this, which beyond all things at the present time
vitally concerns individual and public security.
It has been matter of painful regret to see States conspicuous for their
services in rounding this Republic and equally sharing its advantages
disregard their constitutional obligations to it. Although conscious of
their inability to heal admitted and palpable social evils of their own,
and which are completely within their jurisdiction, they engage in the
offensive and hopeless undertaking of reforming the domestic institutions
of other States, wholly beyond their control and authority. In the vain
pursuit of ends by them entirely unattainable, and which they may not
legally attempt to compass, they peril the very existence of the
Constitution and all the countless benefits which it has conferred. While
the people of the Southern States confine their attention to their own
affairs, not presuming officiously to intermeddle with the social
institutions of the Northern States, too many of the inhabitants of the
latter are permanently organized in associations to inflict injury on the
former by wrongful acts, which would be cause of war as between foreign
powers and only fail to be such in our system because perpetrated under
cover of the Union.
Is it possible to present this subject as truth and the occasion require
without noticing the reiterated but groundless allegation that the South
has persistently asserted claims and obtained advantages in the practical
administration of the General Government to the prejudice of the North, and
in which the latter has acquiesced? That is, the States which either
promote or tolerate attacks on the rights of persons and of property in
other States, to disguise their own injustice, pretend or imagine, and
constantly aver, that they, whose constitutional rights are thus
systematically assailed, are themselves the aggressors. At the present time
this imputed aggression, resting, as it does, only in the vague declamatory
charges of political agitators, resolves itself into misapprehension, or
misinterpretation, of the principles and facts of the political
organization of the new Territories of the United States.
What is the voice of history? When the ordinance which provided for the
government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio and for its
eventual subdivision into new States was adopted in the Congress of the
Confederation, it is not to be supposed that the question of future
relative power as between the States which retained and those which did not
retain a numerous colored population escaped notice or failed to be
considered. And yet the concession of that vast territory to the interests
and opinions of the Northern States, a territory now the seat of five among
the largest members of the Union, was in great measure the act of the State
of Virginia and of the South.
When Louisiana was acquired by the United States, it was an acquisition not
less to the North than to the South; for while it was important to the
country at the mouth of the river Mississippi to become the emporium of the
country above it, so also it was even more important to the whole Union to
have that emporium; and although the new province, by reason of its
imperfect settlement, was mainly regarded as on the Gulf of Mexico, yet in
fact it extended to the opposite boundaries of the United States, with far
greater breadth above than below, and was in territory, as in everything
else, equally at least an accession to the Northern States. It is mere
delusion and prejudice, therefore, to speak of Louisiana as acquisition in
the special interest of the South.
The patriotic and just men who participated in the act were influenced by
motives far above all sectional jealousies. It was in truth the great event
which, by completing for us the possession of the Valley of the
Mississippi, with commercial access to the Gulf of Mexico, imparted unity
and strength to the whole Confederation and attached together by
indissoluble ties the East and the West, as well as the North and the
South.
As to Florida, that was but the transfer by Spain to the United States of
territory on the east side of the river Mississippi in exchange for large
territory which the United States transferred to Spain on the west side of
that river, as the entire diplomatic history of the transaction serves to
demonstrate. Moreover, it was an acquisition demanded by the commercial
interests and the security of the whole Union. In the meantime the people
of the United States had grown up to a proper consciousness of their
strength, and in a brief contest with France and in a second serious war
with Great Britain they had shaken off all which remained of undue
reverence for Europe, and emerged from the atmosphere of those
transatlantic influences which surrounded the infant Republic, and had
begun to turn their attention to the full and systematic development of the
internal resources of the Union.
Among the evanescent controversies of that period the most conspicuous was
the question of regulation by Congress of the social condition of the
future States to be rounded in the territory of Louisiana.
The ordinance for the government of the territory northwest of the river
Ohio had contained a provision which prohibited the use of servile labor
therein, subject to the condition of the extraditions of fugitives from
service due in any other part of the United States. Subsequently to the
adoption of the Constitution this provision ceased to remain as a law, for
its operation as such was absolutely superseded by the Constitution. But
the recollection of the fact excited the zeal of social propagandism in
some sections of the Confederation, and when a second State, that of
Missouri, came to be formed in the territory of Louisiana proposition was
made to extend to the latter territory the restriction originally applied
to the country situated between the rivers Ohio and Mississippi.
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