country. It can not accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you would be the first victims. Its First Magistrate can not, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty. The consequence must be fearful for you, distressing to your fellow-citizens here and to the friends of good government throughout the world. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal; it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. It is yet in your power to disappoint them. There is yet time to show that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your Revolutionary history will not abandon that Union to support which so many of them fought and bled and died. I adjure you, as you honor their memory, as you love the cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives, as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its convention; bid its members to reassemble and promulgate the decided expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor. Tell them that compared to disunion all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all. Declare that you will never take the field unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you; that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the Constitution of your country. Its destroyers you can not be. You may disturb its peace, you may interrupt the course of its prosperity, you may cloud its reputation for stability; but its tranquillity will be restored, its prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character will be transferred and remain an eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the disorder.

Fellow-citizens of the United States, the threat of unhallowed disunion, the names of those once respected by whom it is uttered, the array of military force to support it, denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments may depend. The conjuncture demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my intentions, but of my principles of action; and as the claim was asserted of a right by a State to annul the laws of the Union, and even to secede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in relation to the origin and form of our Government and the construction I give to the instrumen by which it was created seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties which has been expressed, I rely with equal confidence on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws, to preserve the Union by all constitutional means, to arrest, if possible, by moderate and irm measures the necessity of a recourse to

force; and if it be the will of Heaven that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States.

Fellow-citizens, the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your Government depends the decision of the great question it involves-whether your sacred Union will be preserved and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed will be such as to inspire new confidence in republican institutions, and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage which it will bring to their defense will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children.

May the Great Ruler of Nations grant that the signal blessings with which He has favored ours may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis to see the folly before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, having signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Washington, this 10th day of December, A. D. 1832, and of the Independence of the United States the fifty-seventh. ANDREW JACKSON.

[SKAL.]

By the President:

EDW. LIVINGSTON,

Secretary of State.

CARTOON ON ANDREW JACKSON'S CAMPAIGN FOR HIS

SECOND TERM, PICTURING HIS POWER OF CON

ERRATA.

[The following papers were found too late for insertion in Vol. I.]

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT ELECT.

[From Annals of Congress, Fourth Congress, second session, 1544.]

The Vice-President laid before the Senate the following communication:

Gentlemen of the Senate:

In consequence of the declaration made yesterday in the Chamber of the House of Representatives of the election of a President and VicePresident of the United States, the record of which has just now been read from your journal by your secretary, I have judged it proper to give notice that on the 4th of March next, at 12 o'clock, I propose to attend again in the Chamber of the House of Representatives, in order to take the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President, to be administered by the Chief Justice or such other judge of the Supreme Court of the United States as can most conveniently attend, and, in case none of those judges can attend, by the judge of the district of Pennsylvania, before such Senators and Representatives of the United States as may find it convenient to honor the transaction with their presence.

FEBRUARY 9, 1797.

PROCLAMATION.

[JOHN ADAMS.]

[From Annals of Congress, Fifth Congress, Vol. I, 620.]

UNITED STATES, July 16, 1798. —, Senator for the State of

The President of the United States to Certain matters touching the public good requiring that the session of the Senate for executive business should be continued, and that the members thereof should convene on Tuesday, the 17th day of July instant, you are desired to attend at the Senate Chamber, in Philadelphia, on that day, at 10 o'clock in the forenoon, then and there to receive and deliberate on such communications as shall be made to you on my part. JOHN ADAMS.

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