advancement of our country, and with it of the human race, in freedom,
in prosperity, and in happiness. The thirteen States have grown to be
thirty-one, with relations reaching to Europe on the one side and on the
other to the distant realms of Asia.

I am deeply sensible of the immense responsibility which the present
magnitude of the Republic and the diversity and multiplicity of its
interests devolves upon me, the alleviation of which, so far as relates
to the immediate conduct of the public business, is, first, in my
reliance on the wisdom and patriotism of the two Houses of Congress,
and, secondly, in the directions afforded me by the principles of public
polity affirmed by our fathers of the epoch of 1798, sanctioned by long
experience, and consecrated anew by the overwhelming voice of the people
of the United States.

Recurring to these principles, which constitute the organic basis of
union, we perceive that vast as are the functions and the duties of
the Federal Government, vested in or intrusted to its three great
departments--the legislative, executive, and judicial--yet the
substantive power, the popular force, and the large capacities for
social and material development exist in the respective States, which,
all being of themselves well-constituted republics, as they preceded
so they alone are capable of maintaining and perpetuating the American
Union. The Federal Government has its appropriate line of action in the
specific and limited powers conferred on it by the Constitution, chiefly
as to those things in which the States have a common interest in their
relations to one another and to foreign governments, while the great
mass of interests which belong to cultivated men--the ordinary business
of life, the springs of industry, all the diversified personal and
domestic affairs of society--rest securely upon the general reserved