such of them as desire to maintain and perpetuate
thrones and monarchical or aristocratical principles will view it with
exultation and delight, because in it they will see the elements of
faction, which they hope must ultimately overturn our system. Ours is
the great example of a prosperous and free self-governed republic,
commanding the admiration and the imitation of all the lovers of freedom
throughout the world. How solemn, therefore, is the duty, how impressive
the call upon us and upon all parts of our country, to cultivate a
patriotic spirit of harmony, of good-fellowship, of compromise and
mutual concession, in the administration of the incomparable system of
government formed by our fathers in the midst of almost insuperable
difficulties, and transmitted to us with the injunction that we should
enjoy its blessings and hand it down unimpaired to those who may come
after us.

In view of the high and responsible duties which we owe to ourselves and
to mankind, I trust you may be able at your present session to approach
the adjustment of the only domestic question which seriously threatens,
or probably ever can threaten, to disturb the harmony and successful
operations of our system.

The immensely valuable possessions of New Mexico and California are
already inhabited by a considerable population. Attracted by their great
fertility, their mineral wealth, their commercial advantages, and the
salubrity of the climate, emigrants from the older States in great
numbers are already preparing to seek new homes in these inviting
regions. Shall the dissimilarity of the domestic institutions in the
different States prevent us from providing for them suitable
governments? These institutions existed at the adoption of the
Constitution, but the obstacles which they interposed were overcome
by that spirit of compromise which is now invoked. In a conflict of
opinions or of interests, real or imaginary, between different sections
of our country, neither can justly demand all which it might desire to
obtain. Each, in the true spirit of our institutions, should concede
something to the other.

Our gallant forces in the Mexican war, by whose patriotism and
unparalleled deeds of arms we obtained these possessions as an indemnity
for our just demands against Mexico, were composed of citizens who
belonged to no one State or section of our Union. They were men from
slave-holding and nonslaveholding States, from the North and the Sou