every citizen of the United States neither to
give countenance nor encouragement of any kind to those who have thus
forfeited their claim to the protection of their country; upon those
misguided or deluded persons who are engaged in them to abandon projects
dangerous to their own country, fatal to those whom they profess a
desire to relieve, impracticable of execution without foreign aid, which
they can not rationally expect to obtain, and giving rise to imputations
(however unfounded) upon the honor and good faith of their own
Government; upon every officer, civil or military, and upon every
citizen, by the veneration due by all freemen to the laws which they
have assisted to enact for their own government, by his regard for the
honor and reputation of his country, by his love of order and respect
for the sacred code of laws by which national intercourse is regulated,
to use every effort in his power to arrest for trial and punishment
every offender against the laws providing for the performance of our
obligations to the other powers of the world. And I hereby warn all
those who have engaged in these criminal enterprises, if persisted in,
that, whatever may be the condition to which they may be reduced, they
must not expect the interference of this Government in any form on their
behalf, but will be left, reproached by every virtuous fellow-citizen,
to be dealt with according to the policy and justice of that Government
whose dominions they have, in defiance of the known wishes of their own
Government and without the shadow of justification or excuse,
nefariously invaded.

[SEAL.]

Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, the 21st day of
November, A.D. 1838, and the sixty-third of the Independence of the
United States.

M. VAN BUREN.

By the President:
JOHN FORSYTH,
_Secretary of State_.

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, _December 3, 1838_.

_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives_:

I congratulate you on the favorable circumstances in the condition
of our country under which you reassemble for the performance of your
official duties. Though the anticipations of an abundant harvest have
not everywhere been realized, yet on the whole the labors of the
husbandman are rewarded with a bountiful return; industry prospers in
its various channels of business and enterprise; general health again
prevails through our vast diversity of climate; nothing threatens from
abroa