individual, as by the other eminent advantages attending it. The
American people have encountered together great dangers and
sustained severe trials with success. They constitute one great
family with a common interest. Experience has enlightened us on
some questions of essential importance to the country. The
progress has been slow, dictated by a just reflection and a
faithful regard to every interest connected with it. To promote
this harmony in accord with the principles of our republican
Government and in a manner to give them the most complete effect,
and to advance in all other respects the best interests of our
Union, will be the object of my constant and zealous exertions.

Never did a government commence under auspices so favorable, nor
ever was success so complete. If we look to the history of other
nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so
rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy. In
contemplating what we have still to perform, the heart of every
citizen must expand with joy when he reflects how near our
Government has approached to perfection; that in respect to it we
have no essential improvement to make; that the great object is to
preserve it in the essential principles and features which
characterize it, and that is to be done by preserving the virtue
and enlightening the minds of the people; and as a security
against foreign dangers to adopt such arrangements as are
indispensable to the support of our independence, our rights and
liberties. If we persevere in the career in which we have advanced
so far and in the path already traced, we can not fail, under the
favor of a gracious Providence, to attain the high destiny which
seems to await us.