been engaged, have continued to be
maintained with vicissitudes of success adverse and favorable.

Similar motives have rendered expedient the keeping of a like force on
the coasts of Peru and Chile on the Pacific. The irregular and
convulsive character of the war upon the shores has been extended to the
conflicts upon the ocean. An active warfare has been kept up for years
with alternate success, though generally to the advantage of the
American patriots. But their naval forces have not always been under the
control of their own Governments. Blockades, unjustifiable upon any
acknowledged principles of international law, have been proclaimed by
officers in command, and though disavowed by the supreme authorities,
the protection of our own commerce against them has been made cause of
complaint and erroneous imputations against some of the most gallant
officers of our Navy. Complaints equally groundless have been made by
the commanders of the Spanish royal forces in those seas; but the most
effective protection to our commerce has been the flag and the firmness
of our own commanding officers. The cessation of the war by the complete
triumph of the patriot cause has removed, it is hoped, all cause of
dissension with one party and all vestige of force of the other. But an
unsettled coast of many degrees of latitude forming a part of our own
territory and a flourishing commerce and fishery extending to the
islands of the Pacific and to China still require that the protecting
power of the Union should be displayed under its flag as well upon the
ocean as upon the land.

The objects of the West India Squadron have been to carry into execution
the laws for the suppression of the African slave trade; for the
protection of our commerce against vessels of piratical character,
though bearing commissions from either of the belligerent parties; for
its protection against open and unequivocal pirates. These objects
during the present year have been accomplished more effectually than at
any former period. The African slave trade has long been excluded from
the use of our flag, and if some few citizens of our country have
continued to set the laws of the Union as well as those of nature and
humanity at defiance by persevering in that abominable traffic, it has
been only by sheltering themselves under the banners of other nations
less earnest for the total extinction of the trade than ours. The
irregular privateers have within the last