heir
regard for the peace and welfare of the country, to aid the efforts of
the public authorities in the discharge of their duties.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed to these presents.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington the 30th day of October, 1858, and of
the Independence of the United States the eighty-third.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

By the President:
LEWIS CASS,
_Secretary of State_.

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON CITY, _December 6, 1858_.

_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives_:

When we compare the condition of the country at the present day with
what it was one year ago at the meeting of Congress, we have much reason
for gratitude to that Almighty Providence which has never failed to
interpose for our relief at the most critical periods of our history.
One year ago the sectional strife between the North and the South on the
dangerous subject of slavery had again become so intense as to threaten
the peace and perpetuity of the Confederacy. The application for the
admission of Kansas as a State into the Union fostered this unhappy
agitation and brought the whole subject once more before Congress. It
was the desire of every patriot that such measures of legislation might
be adopted as would remove the excitement from the States and confine
it to the Territory where it legitimately belonged. Much has been done,
I am happy to say, toward the accomplishment of this object during the
last session of Congress.

The Supreme Court of the United States had previously decided that all
American citizens have an equal right to take into the Territories
whatever is held as property under the laws of any of the States,
and to hold such property there under the guardianship of the Federal
Constitution so long as the Territorial condition shall remain.

This is now a well-established position, and the proceedings of the last
session were alone wanting to give it practical effect. The principle
has been recognized in some form or other by an almost unanimous vote of
both Houses of Congress that a Territory has a right to come into the
Union either as a free or a slave State, according to the will of a
majority of its people. The just equality of all the States has thus
been vindicated and a fruitful source of dangerous dissension among them
has been removed.

Whilst such has been the beneficial tendency o