The commission report that so fully has their time been occupied by other important duties that they are not at this time prepared to submit a plan or make proper recommendations.
U.S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 29, 1877.
To the House of Representatives:
I have the honor to transmit herewith reports and accompanying papers received from the Secretaries of State and War, in answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 9th instant, relative "to the imprisonment and detention by the Mexican authorities at Matamoras of John Jay Smith, an American citizen, and also to the wounding and robbing by Mexican soldiers at New Laredo of Dr. Samuel Huggins, an American citizen."
U.S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 29, 1877.
To the Senate of the United States:
I follow the example heretofore occasionally permitted of communicating in this mode my approval of the "act to provide for and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice-President, and the decision of questions arising thereon, for the term commencing March 4, A.D. 1877," because of my appreciation of the imminent peril to the institutions of the country from which, in my judgment, the act affords a wise and constitutional means of escape.
For the first time in the history of our country, under the Constitution as it now is, a dispute exists with regard to the result of the election of the Chief Magistrate of the nation.