In
compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our
Federal Constitution, and sanctioned by the example of my
predecessors in the career upon which I am about to enter, I
appear, my fellow-citizens, in your presence and in that of
Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of religious
obligation to the faithful performance of the duties
allotted to me in the station to which I have been called.
In
unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall
be governed in the fulfillment of those duties my first
resort will be to that Constitution which I shall swear to
the best of my ability to preserve, protect, and defend.
That revered instrument enumerates the powers and prescribes
the duties of the Executive Magistrate, and in its first
words declares the purposes to which these and the whole
action of the Government instituted by it should be
invariably and sacredly devoted to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to the people of this
Union in their successive generations. Since the adoption of
this social compact one of these generations has passed
away. It is the work of our forefathers. Administered by
some of the most eminent men who contributed to its
formation, through a most eventful period in the annals of
the world, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war
incidental to the condition of associated man, it has not
disappointed the hopes and aspirations of those illustrious
benefactors of their age and nation. It has promoted the
lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all; it has to
an extent far beyond the ordinary lot of humanity secured
the freedom and happiness of this people. We now receive it
as a precious inheritance from those to whom we are indebted
for its establishment, doubly bound by the examples which
they have left us and by the blessings which we have enjoyed
as the fruits of their labors to transmit the same
unimpaired to the succeeding generation.
In
the compass of thirty-six years since this great national
covenant was instituted a body of laws enacted under its
authority and in conformity with its provisions has unfolded
its powers and carried into practical operation its
effective energies. Subordinate departments have distributed
the executive functions in their various relations to
foreign affairs, to the revenue and expenditures, and to the
military force of the Union by land and sea. A coordinate
department of the judiciary has expounded the Constitution
and the laws, settling in harmonious coincidence with the
legislative will numerous weighty questions of construction
which the imperfection of human language had rendered
unavoidable. The year of jubilee since the first formation
of our Union has just elapsed; that of the declaration of
our independence is at hand. The consummation of both was
effected by this Constitution.
Since
that period a population of four millions has multiplied to
twelve. A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been
extended from sea to sea. New States have been admitted to
the Union in numbers nearly equal to those of the first
Confederation. Treaties of peace, amity, and commerce have
been concluded with the principal dominions of the earth.
The people of other nations, inhabitants of regions acquired
not by conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in
the participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens
and blessings. The forest has fallen by the ax of our
woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage of
our farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. The
dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by
the invention of our artists. Liberty and law have marched
hand in hand. All the purposes of human association have
been accomplished as effectively as under any other
government on the globe, and at a cost little exceeding in a
whole generation the expenditure of other nations in a
single year.
Such
is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a
Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal
rights. To admit that this picture has its shades is but to
say that it is still the condition of men upon earth. From
evil physical, moral, and political it is not our claim
to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the visitation
of Heaven through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice
of other nations, even to the extremities of war; and,
lastly, by dissensions among ourselves dissensions perhaps
inseparable from the enjoyment of freedom, but which have
more than once appeared to threaten the dissolution of the
Union, and with it the overthrow of all the enjoyments of
our present lot and all our earthly hopes of the future. The
causes of these dissensions have been various, founded upon
differences of speculation in the theory of republican
government; upon conflicting views of policy in our
relations with foreign nations; upon jealousies of partial
and sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices and
prepossessions which strangers to each other are ever apt to
entertain.
It
is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to
observe that the great result of this experiment upon the
theory of human rights has at the close of that generation
by which it was formed been crowned with success equal to
the most sanguine expectations of its founders. Union,
justice, tranquility, the common defense, the general
welfare, and the blessings of liberty all have been
promoted by the Government under which we have lived.
Standing at this point of time, looking back to that
generation which has gone by and forward to that which is
advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and
in cheering hope. From the experience of the past we derive
instructive lessons for the future. Of the two great
political parties which have divided the opinions and
feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now
admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless
integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices
to the formation and administration of this Government, and
that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion
of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of
Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the
Government of the United States first went into operation
under this Constitution, excited a collision of sentiments
and of sympathies which kindled all the passions and
embittered the conflict of parties till the nation was
involved in war and the Union was shaken to its center. This
time of trial embraced a period of five and twenty years,
during which the policy of the Union in its relations with
Europe constituted the principal basis of our political
divisions and the most arduous part of the action of our
Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars
of the French Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent
peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife
was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle,
connected either with the theory of government or with our
intercourse with foreign nations, has existed or been called
forth in force sufficient to sustain a continued combination
of parties or to give more than wholesome animation to
public sentiment or legislative debate. Our political creed
is, without a dissenting voice that can be heard, that the
will of the people is the source and the happiness of the
people the end of all legitimate government upon earth; that
the best security for the beneficence and the best guaranty
against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the
purity, and the frequency of popular elections; that the
General Government of the Union and the separate governments
of the States are all sovereignties of limited powers,
fellow-servants of the same masters, uncontrolled within
their respective spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments
upon each other; that the firmest security of peace is the
preparation during peace of the defenses of war; that a
rigorous economy and accountability of public expenditures
should guard against the aggravation and alleviate when
possible the burden of taxation; that the military should be
kept in strict subordination to the civil power; that the
freedom of the press and of religious opinion should be
inviolate; that the policy of our country is peace and the
ark of our salvation union are articles of faith upon which
we are all now agreed. If there have been those who doubted
whether a confederated representative democracy were a
government competent to the wise and orderly management of
the common concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have
been dispelled; if there have been projects of partial
confederacies to be erected upon the ruins of the Union,
they have been scattered to the winds; if there have been
dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and antipathies
against another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of
peace, at home and abroad, have assuaged the animosities of
political contention and blended into harmony the most
discordant elements of public opinion. There still remains
one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and
passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation
who have heretofore followed the standards of political
party. It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor
against each other, of embracing as countrymen and friends,
and of yielding to talents and virtue alone that confidence
which in times of contention for principle was bestowed only
upon those who bore the badge of party communion.
The
collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative
opinions or in different views of administrative policy are
in their nature transitory. Those which are founded on
geographical divisions, adverse interests of soil, climate,
and modes of domestic life are more permanent, and
therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this which gives
inestimable value to the character of our Government, at
once federal and national. It holds out to us a perpetual
admonition to preserve alike and with equal anxiety the
rights of each individual State in its own government and
the rights of the whole nation in that of the Union.
Whatsoever is of domestic concernment, unconnected with the
other members of the Union or with foreign lands, belongs
exclusively to the administration of the State governments.
Whatsoever directly involves the rights and interests of the
federative fraternity or of foreign powers is of the resort
of this General Government. The duties of both are obvious
in the general principle, though sometimes perplexed with
difficulties in the detail. To respect the rights of the
State governments is the inviolable duty of that of the
Union; the government of every State will feel its own
obligation to respect and preserve the rights of the whole.
The prejudices everywhere too commonly entertained against
distant strangers are worn away, and the jealousies of
jarring interests are allayed by the composition and
functions of the great national councils annually assembled
from all quarters of the Union at this place. Here the
distinguished men from every section of our country, while
meeting to deliberate upon the great interests of those by
whom they are deputed, learn to estimate the talents and do
justice to the virtues of each other. The harmony of the
nation is promoted and the whole Union is knit together by
the sentiments of mutual respect, the habits of social
intercourse, and the ties of personal friendship formed
between the representatives of its several parts in the
performance of their service at this metropolis.
Passing
from this general review of the purposes and injunctions of
the Federal Constitution and their results as indicating the
first traces of the path of duty in the discharge of my
public trust, I turn to the Administration of my immediate
predecessor as the second. It has passed away in a period of
profound peace, how much to the satisfaction of our country
and to the honor of our country's name is known to you all.
The great features of its policy, in general concurrence
with the will of the Legislature, have been to cherish peace
while preparing for defensive war; to yield exact justice to
other nations and maintain the rights of our own; to cherish
the principles of freedom and of equal rights wherever they
were proclaimed; to discharge with all possible promptitude
the national debt; to reduce within the narrowest limits of
efficiency the military force; to improve the organization
and discipline of the Army; to provide and sustain a school
of military science; to extend equal protection to all the
great interests of the nation; to promote the civilization
of the Indian tribes, and to proceed in the great system of
internal improvements within the limits of the
constitutional power of the Union. Under the pledge of these
promises, made by that eminent citizen at the time of his
first induction to this office, in his career of eight years
the internal taxes have been repealed; sixty millions of the
public debt have been discharged; provision has been made
for the comfort and relief of the aged and indigent among
the surviving warriors of the Revolution; the regular armed
force has been reduced and its constitution revised and
perfected; the accountability for the expenditure of public
moneys has been made more effective; the Floridas have been
peaceably acquired, and our boundary has been extended to
the Pacific Ocean; the independence of the southern nations
of this hemisphere has been recognized, and recommended by
example and by counsel to the potentates of Europe; progress
has been made in the defense of the country by
fortifications and the increase of the Navy, toward the
effectual suppression of the African traffic in slaves; in
alluring the aboriginal hunters of our land to the
cultivation of the soil and of the mind, in exploring the
interior regions of the Union, and in preparing by
scientific researches and surveys for the further
application of our national resources to the internal
improvement of our country.
In
this brief outline of the promise and performance of my
immediate predecessor the line of duty for his successor is
clearly delineated. To pursue to their consummation those
purposes of improvement in our common condition instituted
or recommended by him will embrace the whole sphere of my
obligations. To the topic of internal improvement,
emphatically urged by him at his inauguration, I recur with
peculiar satisfaction. It is that from which I am convinced
that the unborn millions of our posterity who are in future
ages to people this continent will derive their most fervent
gratitude to the founders of the Union; that in which the
beneficent action of its Government will be most deeply felt
and acknowledged. The magnificence and splendor of their
public works are among the imperishable glories of the
ancient republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been
the admiration of all after ages, and have survived
thousands of years after all her conquests have been
swallowed up in despotism or become the spoil of barbarians.
Some diversity of opinion has prevailed with regard to the
powers of Congress for legislation upon objects of this
nature. The most respectful deference is due to doubts
originating in pure patriotism and sustained by venerated
authority. But nearly twenty years have passed since the
construction of the first national road was commenced. The
authority for its construction was then unquestioned. To how
many thousands of our countrymen has it proved a benefit? To
what single individual has it ever proved an injury?
Repeated, liberal, and candid discussions in the Legislature
have conciliated the sentiments and approximated the
opinions of enlightened minds upon the question of
constitutional power. I can not but hope that by the same
process of friendly, patient, and persevering deliberation
all constitutional objections will ultimately be removed.
The extent and limitation of the powers of the General
Government in relation to this transcendently important
interest will be settled and acknowledged to the common
satisfaction of all, and every speculative scruple will be
solved by a practical public blessing.
Fellow-citizens,
you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the
recent election, which have resulted in affording me the
opportunity of addressing you at this time. You have heard
the exposition of the principles which will direct me in the
fulfillment of the high and solemn trust imposed upon me in
this station. Less possessed of your confidence in advance
than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the
prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your
indulgence. Intentions upright and pure, a heart devoted to
the welfare of our country, and the unceasing application of
all the faculties allotted to me to her service are all the
pledges that I can give for the faithful performance of the
arduous duties I am to undertake. To the guidance of the
legislative councils, to the assistance of the executive and
subordinate departments, to the friendly cooperation of the
respective State governments, to the candid and liberal
support of the people so far as it may be deserved by honest
industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success may
attend my public service; and knowing that "except the
Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain,"
with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling
providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my
own fate and the future destinies of my country.
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