State of the Union Addresses

by Franklin Pierce

State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce

The addresses are separated by three asterisks: ***

Dates of addresses by Franklin Pierce in this eBook:

[December 5, 1853]
[December 4, 1854]
[December 31, 1855]
[December 2, 1856]

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State of the Union Address
Franklin Pierce
December 5, 1853

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

The interest with which the people of the Republic anticipate the assembling of Congress and the fulfillment on that occasion of the duty imposed upon a new President is one of the best evidences of their capacity to realize the hopes of the founders of a political system at once complex and symmetrical. While the different branches of the Government are to a certain extent independent of each other, the duties of all alike have direct reference to the source of power. Fortunately, under this system no man is so high and none so humble in the scale of public station as to escape from the scrutiny or to be exempt from the responsibility which all official functions imply.

Upon the justice and intelligence of the masses, in a government thus organized, is the sole reliance of the confederacy and the only security for honest and earnest devotion to its interests against the usurpations and encroachment of power on the one hand and the assaults of personal ambition on the other.