"In resuming your labours in the service of the people, it is a subject of congratulation that there has been no period in our past history when all the elements of national prosperity have been so fully developed. Since your last Session no afflicting dispensation has visited our country, general good health has prevailed, abundance has crowned the toil of the husbandman, and labour in all its branches is receiving an ample reward, while education, science, and the arts are rapidly enlarging the means of social happiness. The progress of our country in her career of greatness, not only in the vast extension of our territorial limits and the rapid increase of our population, but in resources and wealth, and in the happy condition of our people, is without example in the history of nations.

"As the wisdom, strength, and beneficence of our free institutions are unfolded, every day adds fresh motives to contentment, and fresh incentives to patriotism.

"Our devout and sincere acknowledgments are due to the gracious Giver of all good, for the numberless blessings which our beloved country enjoys.

"It is a source of high satisfaction to know that the relations of the United States with all other nations, with a single exception, are of the most amicable character. Sincerely attached to the policy of peace, early adopted and steadily pursued by this Government, I have

The

anxiously desired to cultivate and cherish friendship and commerce with every foreign Power. spirit and habits of the American tenance of such international harpeople are favourable to the mainmony. In adhering to this wise policy, a preliminary and paramount duty obviously consists in the protection of our national interests from encroachment or sacrifice, and our national honour from reproach. These must be maintained at any hazard. They admit of no compromise or neglect, and must be scrupulously and constantly guarded. In their vigilant vindication, collision and conflict with foreign Powers may sometimes become unavoidable. Such has been our scrupulous adherence to the dictates of justice in all our foreign intercourse, that, though steadily and rapidly advancing in prosperity and power, we have given no just cause of complaint to any nation, and have enjoyed the blessings of peace for more than thirty years. From a policy so sacred to humanity, and so salutary in its effects upon our political system, we should never be induced voluntarily to depart.

"The existing war with Mexico was neither desired nor provoked by the United States. On the contrary, all honourable means were resorted to to avert it. After years of endurance of aggravated and unredressed wrongs on our part, Mexico, in violation of solemn treaty stipulations, and of every principle of justice recognised by civilized nations, commenced hostilities; and thus, by her own act, forced the war upon us. Long before the advance of our army to the left bank of the Rio Grande, we had ample cause of war against Mexico; and had the United States

resorted to this extremity, we might have appealed to the whole civilized world for the justice of our course. "The wrongs which we have suffered from Mexico almost ever since she became an independent Power, and the patient endurance with which we have borne them, are without a parallel in the history of modern civilized notions.

"Scarcely had Mexico achieved her independence, which the United States were the first among the nations to acknowledge, when she commenced the system of insult and spoliation which she has ever since pursued. Our citizens engaged in lawful commerce were imprisoned, their vessels seized, and our flag insulted in her ports. If money was wanted, the lawless seizure and confiscation of our merchant vessels and their cargoes was a ready resource, and if to accomplish their purposes it became necessary to imprison the owners, captains, and crews, it was done. Rulers superseded rulers in Mexico in rapid succession, but still there was no change in this system of depredation. The Government of the United States made repeated reclamations on behalf of its citizens, but these were answered by the perpetration of new outrages. Promises of redress made by Mexico in the most solemn forms were postponed or evaded. The files and records of the Department of State contain conclusive proofs of numerous lawless acts perpetrated upon the property and persons of our citizens by Mexico, and of wanton insults to our national flag. The interposition of our Government to obtain redress was again and again invoked, under circumstances which no nation ought to disregard.

"It was hoped that these outrages

would cease, and that Mexico would be restrained by the laws which regulate the conduct of civilized nations in their intercourse with each other, after the treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation of the 5th of April, 1831, was concluded between the two republics, but this hope soon proved to be vain."

The Message then goes into a long detail of the grievances committed by Mexico against the United States; and thus proceeds :

"Such is the history of the wrongs which we have suffered and patiently endured from Mexico through a long series of years. So far from affording reasonable satisfaction for the injuries and insults we have borne, a great aggravation of them consists in the fact, that while the United States, anxious to preserve a good understanding with Mexico, have been constantly, but vainly, employed in seeking redress for past wrongs, new outrages were constantly occurring, which have continued to increase our causes of complaint and to swell the amount of our demands. While the citizens of the United States were conducting a lawful commerce with Mexico under the guarantee of a treaty of "amity, commerce, and navigation," many of them have suffered all the injuries which would have resulted from open war. This treaty, instead of affording protection to our citizens, has been the means of inviting them into the ports of Mexico, that they might be, as they have been in numerous instances, plundered of their property and deprived of their personal liberty if they dared insist on their rights. Had the unlawful seizures of American property, and the viola

tion of personal liberty of our citizens, to say nothing of the insults to our flag, which have occurred in the ports of Mexico, taken place on the high seas, they would themselves long since have constituted a state of actual war between the two countries. In so long suffering Mexico to violate her most solemn treaty obligations, plunder our citizens of their property, and imprison their persons without offering them any redress, we have failed to perform one of the first and highest duties which every Government owes to its citizens; and the consequence has been, that many of them have been reduced from a state of affluence to bankruptcy. The proud name of American citizen, which ought to protect all who bear it from insult and injury throughout the world, has afforded no such protection to our citizens in Mexico. We had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities. But even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands, until Mexico herself became the aggressor by invading our soil in hostile array and shedding the blood of our citizens.

"Such are the grave causes of complaint on the part of the United States against Mexico-causes which existed long before the annexation of Texas to the American Union; and yet, animated by the love of peace and a magnanimous moderation, we did not adopt those measures of redress which, under such circumstances, are the justified resort of injured nations.

"The annexation of Texas to the United States constituted no just cause of offence to Mexico. The pretext that it did so is wholly inconsistent, and irreconcilable with well-authenticated

facts connected with the revolution by which Texas became independent of Mexico. That this may be the more manifest, it may be proper to advert to the causes and to the history of the principal events of that revolution.

Texas constituted a portion of the ancient province of Louisiana, ceded to the United States by France in the year 1803. In the year 1819 the United States, by the Florida Treaty, ceded to Spain all that part of Louisiana within the present limits of Texas; and Mexico, by the revolution which separated her from Spain, and rendered her an independent nation, succeeded to the rights of the mother country over this territory. In the year 1824 Mexico established a federal constitution, under which the Mexican Republic was composed of a number of sovereign states, confederated together in a federal union similar to our own. Each of these states had its own Executive, Legislature, and judiciary, and for all, except federal purposes, was as independent of the general Government, and that of the other states, as is Pennsylvania or Virginia under our constitution. Texas and Coahuila united and formed one of these Mexican states. The state constitution which they adopted, and which was approved by the Mexican confederacy, asserted that they were "free and independent of the other Mexican united states, and of every other power and dominion whatsoever;" and proclaimed the great principle of human liberty, that "the sovereignty of the state resides originally and essentially in the general mass of the individuals who compose it." To the Government under this constitution, as well as to that under the federal consti

tution, the people of Texas owed allegiance.

"Emigrants from foreign countries, including the United States, were invited by the colonization laws of the State and of the Federal Government to settle in Texas. Advantageous terms were offered to induce them to leave their own country, and become Mexican citizens. This invitation was accepted by many of our citizens, in the full faith that in their new home they would be governed by laws enacted by representatives elected by themselves, and that their lives, liberty and property would be protected by constitutional guarantees similar to those which existed in the republic they had left. Under a Government thus organized they continued until the year 1835, when a military revolution broke out in the city of Mexico, which entirely subverted the Federal and State constitutions, and placed a military dictator at the head of the government.

"By a sweeping decree of a Congress subservient to the will of the dictator, the several state constitutions were abolished, and the states themselves converted into mere departments of the Central Government. The people of Texas were unwilling to submit to this usurpation. Resistance to such tyranny became a high duty. Texas was fully absolved from all alle giance to the Central Government of Mexico from the moment that Government had abolished her state constitution, and in its place substituted an arbitrary and despotic Central Government.

"Such were the principal causes of the Texan revolution. The people of Texas at once determined upon resistance, and flew to arms.

In the midst of these important and exciting events, however, they did not omit to place their liberties upon a secure and permanent foundation. They elected members to a convention, who, in the month of March, 1836, issued a formal declaration that their 6 political connection with the Mexican nation has for ever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations.' They also adopted for their government a liberal republican constitution. About the same time Santa Anna, then the Dictator of Mexico, invaded Texas with a numerous army, for the purpose of subduing her people, and enforcing obedience to his arbitrary and despotic government. On the 21st of April, 1836, he was met by the Texan citizen soldiers, and on that day was achieved by them the memorable victory of San Jacinta, by which they conquered their independence. Considering the numbers engaged on the respective sides, history does not record a more brilliant achievement. Santa Anna himself was among the captives.

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In the month of May, 1836, Santa Anna acknowledged, by a treaty with the Texan authorities, in the most solemn form, the full, entire, and perfect independence of the republic of Texas.' It is true, he was then a prisoner of war; but it is equally true, that he had failed to reconquer Texas, and had met with signal defeat; that his authority had not been revoked, and that by virtue of this treaty he obtained his personal release. By it hostilities were suspended, and the army which had invaded Texas

under his command returned, in pursuance of this arrangement, unmolested to Mexico.

"From the day that the battle of San Jacinta was fought until the present hour, Mexico has never possessed the power to reconquer Texas. Texas had been an independent state, with an organized Government, defying the power of Mexico to overthrow or reconquer her, for more than ten years before Mexico commenced the present war against the United States. Texas had given such evidence to the world of her ability to maintain her separate existence as an independent nation, that she had been formally recognised as such, not only by the United States, but by several of the principal Powers of Europe. These Powers had entered into treaties of amity, commerce, and navigation with her. They had received and accredited her Ministers and other diplomatic agents at their respective courts, and they had commissioned Ministers and diplomatic agents on their part to the Government of Texas. If Mexico, notwithstanding all this, and her utter inability to subdue or reconquer Texas, still stubbornly refused to recognise her as an independent nation, she was none the less so on that account. Mexico herself has been recognised as an independent nation by the United States and by other Powers, many years before Spain, of which, before her revolution, she had been a colony, would agree to recognise her as such; and yet Mexico was at that time, in the estimation of the civilized world, and in fact, none the less an independent power because Spain still claimed her as a colony. If Spain had continued until the present period to assert that Mexico was one of her colo

nies, in rebellion against her, this would not have made her so, or changed the fact of her independent existence. Texas, at the period of her annexation to the United States, bore the same relation to Mexico that Mexico had borne to Spain for many years before Spain acknowledged her independence, with this important difference, that before the annexation of Texas to the United States was consummated, Mexico herself, by a formal act of her Government, had acknowledged the independence of Texas as a nation. It is true that in the act of recognition she prescribed a condition, which she had no power or authority to impose, that Texas should not annex herself to any other Power; but this could not detract in any degree from the recognition which Mexico then made of her actual independence. Upon this plain statement of facts, it is absurd for Mexico to allege, as a pretext for commencing hostilities against the United States, that Texas is still a part of her territory.

"But there are those who, conceding all this to be true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas is the Nueces, instead of the Rio Grande; and that, therefore, in marching our army to the east bank of the latter river, we passed the Texan line and invaded the territory of Mexico. A simple statement of facts, known to exist, will conclusively refute such an assumption.

The President then minutely examines the validity of this plea, and, after elaborately refuting it, proceeds :

"But Mexico herself has never placed the war which she has waged upon the ground that our army occupied the intermediate