the
ceremonies.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, _December 3, 1861_.

_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives_:

In the midst of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great
gratitude to God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests.

You will not be surprised to learn that in the peculiar exigencies of
the times our intercourse with foreign nations has been attended with
profound solicitude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs.

A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year
been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union. A nation
which endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect
abroad, and one party, if not both, is sure sooner or later to invoke
foreign intervention.

Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the
counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although
measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and
injurious to those adopting them.

The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin of
our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked
abroad have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably
expected. If it were just to suppose, as the insurgents have seemed to
assume, that foreign nations in this case, discarding all moral, social,
and treaty obligations, would act solely and selfishly for the most
speedy restoration of commerce, including especially the acquisition of
cotton, those nations appear as yet not to have seen their way to their
object more directly or clearly through the destruction than through the
preservation of the Union. If we could dare to believe that foreign
nations are actuated by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a
sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim
more readily and easily by aiding to crush this rebellion than by giving
encouragement to it.

The principal lever relied on by the insurgents for exciting foreign
nations to hostility against us, as already intimated, is the
embarrassment of commerce. Those nations, however, not improbably saw
from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as
our domestic commerce. They can scarcely have failed to perceive that
the effort for disunion produces the existing difficulty, and that one
strong nation promises more durable