.

Upon these principles and with these views the good people of the United
States are invited, in conformity with the resolution aforesaid, to
dedicate the day above named to the religious solemnities therein
recommended.

[SEAL.]

Given at Washington, this 23d day of July, A.D. 1813.

JAMES MADISON.

FIFTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, _December 7, 1813_.

_Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

In meeting you at the present interesting conjuncture it would have been
highly satisfactory if I could have communicated a favorable result to
the mission charged with negotiations for restoring peace. It was a just
expectation, from the respect due to the distinguished Sovereign who had
invited them by his offer of mediation, from the readiness with which
the invitation was accepted on the part of the United States, and from
the pledge to be found in an act of their Legislature for the liberality
which their plenipotentiaries would carry into the negotiations, that no
time would be lost by the British Government in embracing the experiment
for hastening a stop to the effusion of blood. A prompt and cordial
acceptance of the mediation on that side was the less to be doubted, as
it was of a nature not to submit rights or pretensions on either side
to the decision of an umpire, but to afford merely an opportunity,
honorable and desirable to both, for discussing and, if possible,
adjusting them for the interest of both.

The British cabinet, either mistaking our desire of peace for a dread
of British power or misled by other fallacious calculations, has
disappointed this reasonable anticipation. No communications from
our envoys having reached us, no information on the subject has been
received from that source; but it is known that the mediation was
declined in the first instance, and there is no evidence,
notwithstanding the lapse of time, that a change of disposition in the
British councils has taken place or is to be expected.

Under such circumstances a nation proud of its rights and conscious of
its strength has no choice but an exertion of the one in support of the
other.

To this determination the best encouragement is derived from the success
with which it has pleased the Almighty to bless our arms both on the
land and on the water.

Whilst proofs have been continued of the enterprise and skill of our
cruisers, public and private, on the ocean, and a new trophy gained