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repealed; sixty millions of the public debt have been discharged;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.
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