ting me with this truly
elegant and highly creditable specimen of the handiwork of the mechanics
of your State of Massachusetts, and I beg of you to express my hearty
thanks to the donors. It displays a perfection of workmanship which I
really wish I had time to acknowledge in more fitting words, and I might
then follow your idea that it is suggestive, for it is evidently expected
that a good deal of whipping is to be done. But as we meet here socially
let us not think only of whipping rebels, or of those who seem to think
only of whipping negroes, but of those pleasant days, which it is to be
hoped are in store for us, when seated behind a good pair of horses we can
crack our whips and drive through a peaceful, happy, and prosperous land.
With this idea, gentlemen, I must leave you for my business duties. [It
was likely a Buggy-Whip D.W.]

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON CITY, March 20, 1862.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

The third section of the "Act further to promote the efficiency of the
Navy," approved December 21, 1861, provides:

"That the President of the United States, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the retired
list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single ships such
officers as he may believe the good of the service requires to be thus
placed in command; and such officers may, if upon the recommendation of
the President of the United States they shall receive a vote of thanks cf
Congress for their services and gallantry in action against an enemy, be
restored to the active list, and not otherwise."

In conformity with this law, Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, of the navy, was
nominated to the Senate for continuance as the flag-officer in command of
the squadron which recently rendered such important service to the Union
in the expedition to the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Believing that no occasion could arise which would more fully correspond
with the intention of the law or be more pregnant with happy influence as
an example, I cordially recommend that Captain Samuel F. Du Pont receive a
vote of thanks of Congress for his service and gallantry displayed in the
capture since the 21st December, 1861, of various ports on the coasts of
Georgia and Florida, particularly Brunswick, Cumberland Island and Sound,
Amelia Island, the towns of St. Mary's, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville
and Fernandina.