SPECIAL MESSAGE.
EXECUTIVE OFFICE,
Washington, August 21, 1856.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I transmit herewith a letter from the Secretary of War, in relation to the balances remaining in the Treasury from the last appropriation for the support of the Army.
FRANKLIN PIERCE.
FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
WASHINGTON, December 2, 1856.
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
The Constitution requires that the President shall from time to time not only recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as he may judge necessary and expedient, but also that he shall give information to them of the state of the Union. To do this fully involves exposition of all matters in the actual condition of the country, domestic or foreign, which essentially concern the general welfare. While performing his constitutional duty in this respect, the President does not speak merely to express personal convictions, but as the executive minister of the Government, enabled by his position and called upon by his official obligations to scan with an impartial 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, manufactures, navigation, and commerce—it is necessary only to say that the internal prosperity of the country, its continuous and steady advancement in wealth and population and in private as well as public well-being, attest the wisdom of our institutions and the predominant spirit of intelligence and patriotism which, notwithstanding occasional irregularities of opinion or action resulting from popular freedom, has distinguished and characterized the people of America.