LLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:--In the midst
of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great gratitude to
God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests.

You will not be surprised to learn that in the peculiar exigencies of the
times our intercourse with foreign nations has been attended with profound
solicitude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs.

A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year been
engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union. A nation which
endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect abroad,
and one party, if not both, is sure sooner or later to invoke foreign
intervention.

Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the
counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although measures
adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and injurious
to those adopting them.

The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin of
our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked
abroad have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably
expected. If it were just to suppose, as the insurgents have seemed to
assume, that foreign nations in this case, discarding all moral, social,
and treaty obligations, would act solely and selfishly for the most speedy
restoration of commerce, including especially the acquisition of cotton,
those nations appear as yet not to have seen their way to their object
more directly or clearly through the destruction than through the
preservation of the Union. If we could dare to believe that foreign
nations are actuated by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a
sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim
more readily and easily by aiding to crush this rebellion than by giving
encouragement to it.

The principal lever relied on by the insurgents for exciting foreign
nations to hostility against us, as already intimated, is the
embarrassment of commerce. Those nations, however, not improbably saw
from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as
our domestic commerce. They can scarcely have failed to perceive that the
effort for disunion produces the existing difficulty, and that one strong
nation promises more durable peace and a more extensive, valuable, and
reliable commerce than can the same nation broken into hostile fragm