A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 4, part 3: James Knox Polk

The net revenue from customs during the year ending on the 1st of December, 1846, being the last year under the operation of the tariff act of 1842, was $22,971,403.10, and the...

I recommend that Congress should immediately provide by law for granting letters of marque and reprisal against vessels under the Mexican flag. It is true that there are but few...

I return to the Senate, in which it originated, the bill entitled "An act to provide for the ascertainment and satisfaction of claims of American citizens for spoliations commit...

Our gallant forces in the Mexican war, by whose patriotism and unparalleled deeds of arms we obtained these possessions as an indemnity for our just demands against Mexico, were...

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support...

The consul of the United States at the City of Mexico was therefore instructed by the Secretary of State on the 15th of September, 1845, to make the inquiry of the Mexican Gover...

It will be perceived that in this list there are twenty-one officers (besides the medical staff and officers of volunteers) who are highly commended by General Worth for gallant...

I transmit herewith, for the consideration and constitutional action of the Senate, articles of a treaty which has been concluded by the commissioners appointed for the purpose...

It has never been contemplated by me, as an object of the war, to make a permanent conquest of the Republic of Mexico or to annihilate her separate existence as an independent n...

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate, of the 21st June, 1848, I herewith communicate to the Senate a report of the Secretary of War, with the accompanying documents, co...

I therefore again invite the attention of Congress to the subject, and recommend that laws be promptly passed establishing a Territorial government and granting authority to rai...

But the bank was but one branch of the new system. A public debt of more than $120,000,000 existed, and it is not to be disguised that many of the authors of the new system did...

In compliance with the resolution of the House of the 11th instant, requesting the President to inform that body "whether he has received any information that American citizens...

The commissioner of the United States took with him the project of a treaty already prepared, by the terms of which the indemnity required by the United States was a cession of...

In reply to the resolutions of the House of Representatives of the 5th instant, I communicate herewith a report from the Secretary of State, accompanied with all the documents a...

In pursuance of the joint resolution of Congress "for annexing Texas to the United States," my predecessor, on the 3d day of March, 1845, elected to submit the first and second...

Severe commercial revulsions abroad have always heretofore operated to depress and often to affect disastrously almost every branch of American industry. The temporary depressio...

The war with Mexico has thus fully developed the capacity of republican governments to prosecute successfully a just and necessary foreign war with all the vigor usually attribu...

In the meantime it is not just that Mexico, by her obstinate persistence in this contest, should compel us to overthrow our own financial policy and arrest this great nation in...

It appears that within the period specified in the resolution of the House certificates were given by my immediate predecessor, upon which settlements have been made at the Trea...

In the early periods of the Government the opinion and advice of the Senate were often taken in advance upon important questions of our foreign policy. General Washington repeat...

Accordingly, on the 26th of August, 1844, the British plenipotentiary offered to divide the Oregon Territory by the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude from the Rocky Mountai...

I refer you to the accompanying report of the Secretary of War for a detailed account of the operations of the various branches of the public service connected with the Departme...

But it has been urged by those who object to the exercise of this undoubted constitutional power that it assails the representative principle and the capacity of the people to g...

JAMES KNOX POLK was born in Mecklenburg County, N.C., November 2, 1795. He was a son of Samuel Polk, a farmer, whose father, Ezekiel, and his brother, Colonel Thomas Polk, one o...

The late President, in his annual message of December last, recommended an appropriation to satisfy the claims of the Texan Government against the United States, which had been...

Texas had been an independent state, with an organized government, defying the power of Mexico to overthrow or reconquer her, for more than ten years before Mexico commenced the...

I herewith communicate to the Senate, for its consideration, a declaration of the Government of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, bearing date at the city of Schwerin on...

It will be important during your present session to establish a Territorial government and to extend the jurisdiction and laws of the United States over the Territory of Oregon....

On the 28th of December, 1793, the State of Maryland passed a law authorizing the appointment of a health officer for the port of Baltimore, and laying a tonnage duty on vessels...

Upon the earnest and repeated remonstrances of our ministers at London in opposition to this discrimination against American and in favor of African rice, as a violation of the...

4. In entering into the mutual guaranties proposed by the thirty-fifth article of the treaty neither the Government of New Granada nor that of the United States has any narrow o...

This view is supported by a series of measures, all of a marked character, preceding the adoption of the Constitution. As early as the year 1781 Congress recommended it to the S...

Under our present land system, limiting the minimum price at which the public lands can be entered to $1.25 per acre, large quantities of lands of inferior quality remain unsold...

I lay before the Senate a letter of the 12th February, 1848, from N.P. Trist, together with the authenticated map of the United Mexican States and of the plan of the port of San...

I trust it may not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion for me to dwell for a moment on the memory of the most eminent citizen of our country who during the summer that is go...

The Army moved from Corpus Christi on the 11th of March, and on the 28th of that month arrived on the left bank of the Del Norte opposite to Matamoras, where it encamped on a co...

On the other hand, the Constitution and laws of the United States, as well as of the several States, would render it impossible that crimes committed by our citizens in Germany...

Committees of both Houses of Congress, to which this message of the President was referred, fully sustained his views of the character of the wrongs which we had suffered from M...

The power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises" was an indispensable one to be conferred on the Federal Government, which without it would possess no means of...

The protocol contains nothing from which it can be inferred that the assignee could rightfully demand the payment of the money in case the consideration should fail which is sta...