competent to these objects, why
should this Government wish to assume the power? If they do not, then
they will not hesitate to make the grant. Both Governments are the
Governments of the people; improvements must be made with the money of
the people, and if the money can be collected and applied by those more
simple and economical political machines, the State governments, it will
unquestionably be safer and better for the people than to add to the
splendor, the patronage, and the power of the General Government. But if
the people of the several States think otherwise they will amend the
Constitution, and in their decision all ought cheerfully to acquiesce.

For a detailed and highly satisfactory view of the operations of the War
Department I refer you to the accompanying report of the Secretary of
War.

The hostile incursions of the Sac and Fox Indians necessarily led to the
interposition of the Government. A portion of the troops, under Generals
Scott and Atkinson, and of the militia of the State of Illinois were
called into the field. After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the
nature of the country and by the difficulty of procuring subsistence,
the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed
or destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in
the service. Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered
necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that
its impression will be permanent and salutary.

This campaign has evinced the efficient organization of the Army and its
capacity for prompt and active service. Its several departments have
performed their functions with energy and dispatch, and the general
movement was satisfactory.

Our fellow-citizens upon the frontiers were ready, as they always are,
in the tender of their services in the hour of danger. But a more
efficient organization of our militia system is essential to that
security which is one of the principal objects of all governments.
Neither our situation nor our institutions require or permit the
maintenance of a large regular force. History offers too many lessons of
the fatal result of such a measure not to warn us against its adoption
here. The expense which attends it, the obvious tendency to employ it
because it exists and thus to engage in unnecessary wars, and its
ultimate danger to public liberty will lead us, I trust, to place our
principal dependence for protection up