much to the satisfaction of our country and to the honor of our
country's name is known to you all. The great features of its
policy, in general concurrence with the will of the Legislature,
have been to cherish peace while preparing for defensive war; to
yield exact justice to other nations and maintain the rights of
our own; to cherish the principles of freedom and of equal rights
wherever they were proclaimed; to discharge with all possible
promptitude the national debt; to reduce within the narrowest
limits of efficiency the military force; to improve the
organization and discipline of the Army; to provide and sustain a
school of military science; to extend equal protection to all the
great interests of the nation; to promote the civilization of the
Indian tribes, and to proceed in the great system of internal
improvements within the limits of the constitutional power of the
Union. Under the pledge of these promises, made by that eminent
citizen at the time of his first induction to this office, in his
career of eight years the internal taxes have been repealed; sixty
millions of the public debt have been discharged; provision has
been made for the comfort and relief of the aged and indigent
among the surviving warriors of the Revolution; the regular armed
force has been reduced and its constitution revised and perfected;
the accountability for the expenditure of public moneys has been
made more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably acquired,
and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean; the
independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere has been
recognized, and recommended by example and by counsel to the
potentates of Europe; progress has been made in the defense of the
country by fortifications and the increase of the Navy, toward the
effectual suppression of the African traffic in slaves; in
alluring the aboriginal hunters of our land to the cultivation of