ase. Information
has been given to me, derived from official and other sources, that
many citizens of the United States have associated together to make
hostile incursions from our territory into Canada and to aid and abet
insurrection there, in violation of the obligations and laws of the
United States and in open disregard of their own duties as citizens.
This information has been in part confirmed by a hostile invasion
actually made by citizens of the United States, in conjunction with
Canadians and others, and accompanied by a forcible seizure of the
property of our citizens and an application thereof to the prosecution
of military operations against the authorities and people of Canada.

The results of these criminal assaults upon the peace and order
of a neighboring country have been, as was to be expected, fatally
destructive to the misguided or deluded persons engaged in them and
highly injurious to those in whose behalf they are professed to have
been undertaken. The authorities in Canada, from intelligence received
of such intended movements among our citizens, have felt themselves
obliged to take precautionary measures against them; have actually
embodied the militia and assumed an attitude to repel the invasion to
which they believed the colonies were exposed from the United States.
A state of feeling on both sides of the frontier has thus been produced
which called for prompt and vigorous interference. If an insurrection
existed in Canada, the amicable dispositions of the United States toward
Great Britain, as well as their duty to themselves, would lead them to
maintain a strict neutrality and to restrain their citizens from all
violations of the laws which have been passed for its enforcement. But
this Government recognizes a still higher obligation to repress all
attempts on the part of its citizens to disturb the peace of a country
where order prevails or has been reestablished. Depredations by our
citizens upon nations at peace with the United States, or combinations
for committing them, have at all times been regarded by the American
Government and people with the greatest abhorrence. Military incursions
by our citizens into countries so situated, and the commission of acts
of violence on the members thereof, in order to effect a change in their
government, or under any pretext whatever, have from the commencement of
our Government been held equally criminal on the part of those engaged
in them, and a