the organic law by the States themselves.

In the month of September a party of armed men from Upper Canada invaded
the territory of the United States and forcibly seized upon the person
of one Grogan, and under circumstances of great harshness hurriedly
carried him beyond the limits of the United States and delivered him up
to the authorities of Upper Canada. His immediate discharge was ordered
by those authorities upon the facts of the case being brought to their
knowledge--a course of procedure which was to have been expected from
a nation with whom we are at peace, and which was not more due to the
rights of the United States than to its own regard for justice. The
correspondence which passed between the Department of State and the
British envoy, Mr. Fox, and with the governor of Vermont, as soon as the
facts had been made known to this department, are herewith communicated.

I regret that it is not in my power to make known to you an equally
satisfactory conclusion in the case of the _Caroline_ steamer, with the
circumstances connected with the destruction of which, in December,
1837, by an armed force fitted out in the Province of Upper Canada, you
are already made acquainted. No such atonement as was due for the public
wrong done to the United States by this invasion of her territory, so
wholly irreconcilable with her rights as an independent power, has yet
been made. In the view taken by this Government the inquiry whether
the vessel was in the employment of those who were prosecuting an
unauthorized war against that Province or was engaged by the owner in
the business of transporting passengers to and from Navy Island in hopes
of private gain, which was most probably the case, in no degree alters
the real question at issue between the two Governments. This Government
can never concede to any foreign government the power, except in a case
of the most urgent and extreme necessity, of invading its territory,