myself. I have no temper for strife. I am passing through the last chapter of my public life, and I have no wish to identify my name with anything like a personal controversy. I have never sought it. When the question comes to be examined and solved as to who was the aggressor, it will be found that it was not I on any occasion. I admit that I have three peculiarities of manners, impatience, excitability, and perhaps, absent-mindedness. They are peculiarities which have followed me from the cradle. But, sir, I hope I have never known the time when reason and repentance would not suppress even a temporary injustice."

CHAPTER XX.

PRESIDENTIAL YEAR-LAST ANNUAL MESSAGE-WHAT OF IT? PREJUDICE AND FANATICISM.

L

ONG before the adjournment of Congress the

Presidential contest had begun. The KansasNebraska Act had very materially benefited the KnowNothings, who in the North were conservative or non-committal on the slavery question. In the South the Whigs, who were pro-slavery, to a great extent, went into that new organization; and its leaders were hopeful of so weakening and dividing the other two parties as to come in winners themselves at the end. But there never was a reasonable ground for such hope, and the most they did was to secure the election. of Mr. Buchanan. In the contests in Congress arising out of the Kansas troubles, all the Southern KnowNothings, and many of the Northern ones sided with the Administration. By their aid alone was the Army Appropriation Bill finally passed. But the events of Mr. Pierce's Administration had been greatly instrumental in giving rise to another new party, or an old one with a new name. As the old distinctive issues had become of less weight or passed away, the Whig and Democratic parties had little about which to contend. President Pierce was a candidate for re-election.

His course had divided and weakened the Democratic party, and he was anxious to see himself vindicated in the nominating convention. But in the main point, he was not gratified. Beyond this ambition to test his standing and policy, he had, perhaps, little desire to remain at the head of affairs during the continuuance of a strife which he had been instrumental in originating, and which two or three years' experience might have showed him his utter inability to quell. While the Cincinnati convention indorsed his Administration, Kansas policy and all, it clearly showed that he now wanted the elements of strength necessary for the doubtful emergency.

The Democratic Convention met at Cincinnati June 2, 1856, and John E. Ward, of Georgia, was made chairman. On the first ballot for President two hundred and ninety-six votes were cast, of which Pierce received one hundred and twenty-two, and Buchanan one hundred and thirty-five. After a few ballots the votes for President Pierce began to be cast for Stephen A. Douglas, until on the sixteenth, when Mr. Douglas had twenty-one votes. On the next ballot all the votes of the convention were given to James Buchanan. John Cabell Breckinridge, of Kentucky, was then unanimously chosen for the Vice-Presidency on the third ballot. For a history of this convention see the succeeding volume of this work.

On the 1st day of December, 1856, which was this time the first Monday, Congress convened again. ("Last session of Thirty-Fourth Congress.") John W. Whitfield, whether justly or unjustly, was

admitted as the delegate from Kansas, after some resistance. On the 2d President Pierce sent in his

LAST ANNUAL MESSAGE.

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.

In the brief interval between the termination of the last and the commencement of the present session of Congress, the public mind has been occupied with the care of selecting, for another Constitutional term, the President and Vice-President of the United States.

The determination of the persons who are of right, or contingently, to preside over the administration of the Government, is, under our system, committed to the States and the people. We appeal to them, by their voice pronounced in the forms of

law, to call whomsoever they will to the high post of Chief Magistrate.

And thus it is that as the Senators represent the respective States of the Union, and the members of the House of Representatives the several constituencies of each State, so the President represents the aggregate population of the United States. Their election of him is the explicit and solemn act of the sole sovereign authority of the Union.

It is impossible to misapprehend the great principles, which, by their recent political action, the people of the United States have sanctioned and announced.

They have asserted the Constitutional equality of each and all of the States of the Union as States; they have affirmed the Constitutional equality of each and all of the citizens of the United States as citizens, whatever their religion, wherever their birth, or their residence; they have maintained the inviolability of the Constitutional rights of the different sections of the Union; and they have proclaimed their devoted and unalterable attachment to the Union and to the Constitution, as objects of interest superior to all subjects of local or sectional controversy, as the safeguard of the rights of all, as the spirit and the essence of the liberty, peace, and greatness of the Republic.

In doing this, they have, at the same time, emphatically condemned the idea of organizing in these United States mere geographical parties; of marshaling in hostile array towards each other the different parts of the country, North or South, East or West.

Schemes of this nature, fraught with incalculable mischief, and which the considerate sense of the people has rejected, could have had countenance in no part of the country, had they not been disguised by suggestions plausible in appearance, acting upon an excited state of the public mind, induced by causes temporary in their character, and it is to be hoped transient in their influence.

Perfect liberty of association for political objects, and the widest scope of discussion, are the received and ordinary conditions of government in our country. Our institutions, framed in the spirit of confidence in the intelligence and integrity of the people, do not forbid citizens either individually or associated