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