hed public services, the President
directs that appropriate honors to his memory be paid by the Army.

JEFFERSON DAVIS,

_Secretary of War_.

II. On the day next succeeding the receipt of this order at each
military post the troops will be paraded at 10 o'clock a.m. and this
order read to them.

The national flag will be displayed at half-staff.

At dawn of day thirteen guns will be fired. Commencing at 12 o'clock m.
seventeen minute guns will be fired and at the close of the day the
national salute of thirty-one guns.

The usual badge of mourning will be worn by officers of the Army and the
colors of the several regiments will be put in mourning for the period
of three months.

By order:

S. COOPER,

_Adjutant-General_.

[From the Daily National Intelligencer, April 21, 1853.]

GENERAL ORDER.

NAVY DEPARTMENT,

_April 20, 1853_.

With deep sorrow the President announces to the officers of the Navy
and Marine Corps the death of William Rufus King, Vice-President of the
United States, who died on the evening of Monday, the 18th instant, at
his residence in Alabama.

Called into the service of his country at a period of life when but few
are prepared to enter upon its realities, his long career of public
usefulness at home and abroad has always been honored by the public
confidence, and was closed in the second office within the gift of the
people.

From sympathy with his relatives and the American people for their loss
and from respect for his distinguished public services, the President
directs that appropriate honors be paid to his memory at each of the
navy-yards and naval stations and on board all the public vessels in
commission on the day after this order is received by firing at dawn
of day thirteen guns, at 12 o'clock m. seventeen minute guns, and at
the close of the day the national salute, by carrying their flags at
half-mast one day, and by the officers wearing crape on the left arm
for three months.

J.C. DOBBIN,

_Secretary of the Navy_.

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., _December 5, 1853_.

_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

The interest with which the people of the Republic anticipate the
assembling of Congress and the fulfillment on that occasion of the duty
imposed upon a new President is one of the best evidences of their
capacity to realize the hopes of the founders of a political system
at once complex and symmet