apidity never known before, except in time
of war, in the history of our foreign commerce; the Treasury was
unexpectedly left without the means which it had reasonably counted upon
to meet the public engagements; trade was paralyzed; manufactures were
stopped; the best public securities suddenly sunk in the market; every
species of property depreciated more or less, and thousands of poor men
who depended upon their daily labor for their daily bread were turned
out of employment.

I deeply regret that I am not able to give you any information upon the
state of the Union which is more satisfactory than what I was then
obliged to communicate. On the contrary, matters are still worse at
present than they then were. When Congress met, a strong hope pervaded
the whole public mind that some amicable adjustment of the subject would
speedily be made by the representatives of the States and of the people
which might restore peace between the conflicting sections of the
country. That hope has been diminished by every hour of delay, and as
the prospect of a bloodless settlement fades away the public distress
becomes more and more aggravated. As evidence of this it is only
necessary to say that the Treasury notes authorized by the act of 17th
of December last were advertised according to the law and that no
responsible bidder offered to take any considerable sum at par at a
lower rate of interest than 12 per cent. From these facts it appears
that in a government organized like ours domestic strife, or even a
well-grounded fear of civil hostilities, is more destructive to our
public and private interests than the most formidable foreign war.

In my annual message I expressed the conviction, which I have long
deliberately held, and which recent reflection has only tended to deepen
and confirm, that no State has a right by its own act to secede from the
Union or throw off its federal obligations at pleasure. I also declared
my opinion to be that even if that right existed and should be exercised
by any State of the Confederacy the executive department of this
Government had no authority under the Constitution to recognize its
validity by acknowledging the independence of such State. This left me
no alternative, as the chief executive officer under the Constitution of
the United States, but to collect the public revenues and to protect the
public property so far as this might be practicable under existing laws.
This is still my purpose