MESSAGE. Fellow Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: With devout gratitude to the bountiful Giver of all good, I congratulate you that, at the beginning of your first regular session, you find our country blessed with health and peace and abundant harvests, and with encouraging prospects of an early return of general prosperity. To complete and make permanent the pacification of the country continues to be, and, until it is fully accomplished, must remain, the most important of all our national interests. The earnest purpose of good citizens generally to unite their efforts in this endeavor is evident. It found decided expression in the resolutions announced in 1876, by the national conventions of the leading political parties of the country. There was a wide-spread apprehension that the momentous results in our progress as a nation, marked by the recent amendments to the Constitution, were in imminent jeopardy; that the good understanding which prompted their adoption, in the interest of a loyal devotion to the general welfare, might prove a barren truce, and that the two sections of the country, once engaged in civil strife, might be again almost as widely severed and disunited as they were when arrayed in arms against each other. The course to be pursued, which in my judgment seemed wisest, in the presence of this emergency, was plainly indicated in my inaugural address. It pointed to the time, which all our people desire to see, when a genuine love of our whole country, and of all that concerns its true welfare, shall supplant the destructive forces of the mutual animosity of races and of sectional hostility. Opinions have differed widely as to the measures best calculated to secure this great end. This was to be expected. The measures adopted by the administration have been subjected to severe and varied criticism. Any course whatever which might have been entered upon would certainly have encountered distrust and opposition. These measures were, in my judgment, such as were most in harmony with the Constitution and with the genius of our people, and best adapted, under all the circumstances, to attain the end in view. Beneficent results, already apparent, prove that these endeavors are not to be regarded as a mere experiment, and should sustain and encourage us in our efforts. Already, in the brief period which has elapsed, the immediate effectiveness, no less than the justice of the course pursued, is demonstrated, and I have an abiding faith that time. will furnish its ample vindication in the minds of the great majority of my fellow-citizens. The discontinuance of the use of the Army for the purpose of upholding local governments in two States of the Union was no less a constitutional duty and requirement, under the circumstances existing at the time, than it was a much-needed measure for the restoration of local self-government and the promotion of national harmony. The withdrawal of the troops from such employment was effected deliberately, and with solicitous care for the peace and good order of society, and the protection of the property and persons and every right of all classes of citizens. The results that have followed are indeed significant and encouraging. All apprehension of danger from remitting those States to local self-government is dispelled; and a most salutary change in the minds of the people has begun, and is in progress in every part of that section of the country once the theater of unhappy civil strife, substituting for suspicion, distrust, and aversion concord, friendship, and patriotic at tachment to the Union. No unprejudiced mind will deny that the ter rible and often fatal collisions which for several years have been of frequent occurrence, and have agitated and alarmed the public mind, have almost entirely ceased, and that a spirit of mutual forbearance and hearty national interest has succeeded. There has been a general reestablishment of order and of the orderly administration of justice. Instances of remaining lawlessness have become of rare occurrence; political turmoil and turbulence have disappeared; useful industries have been resumed; public credit in the Southern States has been greatly strength. ened; and the encouraging benefits of a revival of commerce between the sections of the country, lately embroiled in civil war, are fully enjoyed. Such are some of the results already attained, upon which the country is to be congratulated. They are of such importance, that we may with confidence patiently await the desired consummation that will surely come with the natural progress of events. It may not be improper here to say that it should be our fixed and unalterable determination to protect, by all available and proper means, under the Constitution and the laws, the lately-emancipated race in the enjoyment of their rights and privileges; and I urge upon those to whom heretofore the colored people have sustained the relation of bondmen the wisdom and justice of humane and liberal local legislation with respect to their education and general welfare. A firm adherence to the laws, both national and State, as to the civil and political rights of the colored people, now advanced to full and equal citizenship; the immediate repression and sure punishment by the national and local authorities, within their respective jurisdictions, of every instance of lawlessness and violence toward them, is required for the security alike of both races, and is justly demanded by the public opinion of the country and the age. In this way the restoration of harmony and good-will, and the complete protection of every citizen in the full enjoyment of every constitutional right, will surely be attained. Whatever authority rests with me to this end, I shall not hesitate to put forth. Whatever belongs to the power of Congress and the jurisdiction of the courts of the Union, they may confidently be relied upon to provide and perform. And to the legislatures, the courts, and the executive authorities of the several States I earnestly appeal to secure, by adequate, appropriate, and seasonable means, within their borders, these common and uniform rights of a united people, which loves liberty, abhors oppression, and reveres justice. These objects are very dear to my heart. I shall continue most earnestly to strive for their attainment. The cordial co-operation of all classes-of all sections of the country and of both races-is required for this purpose; and with these blessings assured, and not otherwise, we may safely hope to hand down our free institutions of government unimpaired to the generations that will succeed us. Among the other subjects of great and general importance to the people of this country, I cannot be mistaken, I think, in regarding as pre-eminent the policy and measures which are designed to secure the restoration of the currency to that normal and healthful condition in which, by the resumption of specie payments, our internal trade and foreign commerce may be brought into harmony with the system of exchanges which is based upon the precious metals as the intrinsic money of the world. In the public judgment that this end should be sought and compassed as speedily and securely as the resources of the people and the wisdom of their government can accomplish, there is a much greater degree of unanimity than is found to concur in the specific measures which will bring the country to this desired end or the rapidity of the steps by which it can be safely reached. Upon a most anxious and deliberate examination which I have felt it my duty to give to the subject, I am but the more confirmed in the opinion which I expressed in accepting the nomination for the Presidency, and again upon my inauguration, that the policy of resumption should be pursued by every suitable means, and that no legislation would be wise that should disparage the importance or retard the attainment of that result. I have no disposition, and certainly no right, to question the sincerity or the intelligence of opposing opinions, and would neither conceal nor undervalue the considerable difficulties, and even occasional distresses, which may attend the progress of the nation toward this primary condition to its general and permanent prosperity. I must, however, adhere to my most earnest conviction that any wavering in purpose or unsteadiness in methods, so far from avoiding or reducing the inconvenience inseparable from the transition from an irredeemable to a redeemable paper currency, would only tend to increased and prolonged disturbance in values, and, unless retrieved, must end in serious disorder, dishonor, and disaster in the financial affairs of the government and of the people. The mischiefs which I apprehend, and urgently deprecate, are confined to no class of the people indeed, but seem to me most certainly to threaten |