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I recommend also, as a more effectual safeguard and encouragement ~o our growing manufactures, that the additional duties on imports which are to expire at the end of one year after a peace with Great Britain be prolonged to the end of two years after that event, and that, in favor of our moneyed institutions, the exportation of specie be prohibited throughout the same period. JAMES MADISON.

PROCLAMATIONS.

[From Niles's Weekly Register, vol. 6, p. 279.]

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas information has been received that a number of individuals who have deserted from the Army of the United States have become sensible of their offenses and are desirous of returning to their duty, a full pardon is hereby granted and proclaimed to each and all such individuals as shall within three months from the date hereof surrender themselves to the commanding officer of any military post within the United States or the Territories thereof.

In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Washington, the 17th day of June, A. D. 1814, and of the Independence of the United States the thirtyeighth. JAMES MADISON.

[SEAL.]

By the President:

JAMES MONROE,

Secretary of State.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas it is manifest that the blockade which has been proclaimed by the enemy of the whole Atlantic coast of the United States, nearly 2,000 miles in extent, and abounding in ports, harbors, and navigable inlets, can not be carried into effect by any adequate force actually stationed for the purpose, and it is rendered a matter of certainty and notoriety by the multiplied and daily arrivals and departures of the public and private armed vessels of the United States and of other vessels that no such adequate force has been so stationed; and

Whereas a blockade thus destitute of the character of a regular and legal blockade as defined and recognized by the established law of nations, whatever other purposes it may be made to answer, forms no lawful

prohibition or obstacle to such neutral and friendly vessels as may choose to visit and trade with the United States; and

Whereas it accords with the interest and the amicable views of the United States to favor and promote as far as may be the free and mutually beneficial commercial intercourse of all friendly nations disposed to engage therein, and with that view to afford to their vessels destined to the United States a more positive and satisfactory security against all interruptions, molestations, or vexations whatever from the cruisers of the United States:

Now be it known that I, James Madison, President of the United States of America, do by this my proclamation strictly order and instruct all the public armed vessels of the United States and all private armed vessels commissioned as privateers or with letters of marque and reprisal not to interrupt, detain, or otherwise molest or vex any vessels whatever belonging to neutral powers or the subjects or citizens thereof, which vessels shall be actually bound and proceeding to any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, but, on the contrary, to render to all such vessels all the aid and kind offices which they may need or require. Given under my hand and the seal of the United States at the city of Washington, the 29th day of June, A. D. 1814, and of the Independence of the United States the thirty-eighth.

[SEAL.]

By the President:

JAMES MONROE,

JAMES MADISON.

Secretary of State.

[From Annals of Congress, Thirteenth Congress, vol. 3, 9.]

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas great and weighty matters claiming the consideration of the Congress of the United States form an extraordinary occasion for convening them, I do by these presents appoint Monday, the 19th day of September next, for their meeting at the city of Washington, hereby requiring the respective Senators and Representatives then and there to assemble in Congress, in order to receive such communications as may then be made to them and to consult and determine on such measures as in their wisdom may be deemed meet for the welfare of the United States. In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, and signed the same with my hand.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, the 8th day of August, A. D. 1814, and of the Independence of the United States the thirtyninth. JAMES MADISON.

By the President:

JAMES MONROE,

Secretary of State.

[From Niles's Weekly Register, vol. 7, p. 2.]

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas the enemy by a sudden incursion have succeeded in invading the capital of the nation, defended at the moment by troops less numerous than their own and almost entirely of the militia, during their possession of which, though for a single day only, they wantonly destroyed the public edifices, having no relation in their structure to operations of war nor used at the time for military annoyance, some of these edifices being also costly monuments of taste and of the arts, and others depositories of the public archives, not only precious to the nation as the memorials of its origin and its early transactions, but interesting to all nations as contributions to the general stock of historical instruction and political science; and

Whereas advantage has been taken of the loss of a fort more immediately guarding the neighboring town of Alexandria to place the town within the range of a naval force too long and too much in the habit of abusing its superiority wherever it can be applied to require as the alternative of a general conflagration an undisturbed plunder of private property, which has been executed in a manner peculiarly distressing to the inhabitants, who had inconsiderately cast themselves upon the justice and generosity of the victor; and

Whereas it now appears by a direct communication from the British commander on the American station to be his avowed purpose to employ the force under his direction "in destroying and laying waste such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found assailable," adding to this declaration the insulting pretext that it is in retaliation for a wanton destruction committed by the army of the United States in Upper Canada, when it is notorious that no destruction has been committed, which, notwithstanding the multiplied outrages previously committed by the enemy was not unauthorized, and promptly shown to be so, and that the United States have been as constant in their endeavors to reclaim the enemy from such outrages by the contrast of their own example as they have been ready to terminate on reasonable conditions the war itself; and

Whereas these proceedings and declared purposes, which exhibit a deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity and the rules of civilized warfare, and which must give to the existing war a character of extended devastation and barbarism at the very moment of negotiations for peace, invited by the enemy himself, leave no prospect of safety to anything within the reach of his predatory and incendiary operations but in manful and universal determination to chastise and expel the invader:

Now, therefore, I, James Madison, President of the United States, do M P-VOL I-35

issue this my proclamation, exhorting all the good people thereof to unite their hearts and hands in giving effect to the ample means possessed for that purpose. I enjoin it on all officers, civil and military, to exert themselves in executing the duties with which they are respectively charged; and more especially I require the officers commanding the respective military districts to be vigilant and alert in providing for the defense thereof, for the more effectual accomplishment of which they are authorized to call to the defense of exposed and threatened places portions of the militia most convenient thereto, whether they be or be not parts of the quotas detached for the service of the United States under requisitions of the General Government.

On an occasion which appeals so forcibly to the proud feelings and patriotic devotion of the American people none will forget what they owe to themselves, what they owe to their country and the high destinies which await it, what to the glory acquired by their fathers in establishing the independence which is now to be maintained by their sons with the augmented strength and resources with which time and Heaven had blessed them.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed to these presents.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, the 1st day of September, A. D. 1814, and of the Independence of the United States the thirty-ninth.

By the President:

JAMES MONROE,

Secretary of State.

JAMES MADISON.

SPECIAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, September 17, 1814.

The PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

SIR: The destruction of the Capitol by the enemy having made it necessary that other accommodations should be provided for the meeting of Congress, chambers for the Senate and for the House of Representatives, with other requisite apartments, have been fitted up, under the direction of the superintendent of the city, in the public building heretofore allotted for the post and other public offices.

With this information, be pleased, sir, to accept assurances of my great respect and consideration.

JAMES MADISON.

SIXTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, September 20, 1814.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Notwithstanding the early day which had been fixed for your session of the present year, I was induced to call you together still sooner, as well that any inadequacy in the existing provisions for the wants of the Treasury might be supplied as that no delay might happen in providing for the result of the negotiations on foot with Great Britain, whether it should require arrangements adapted to a return of peace or further and more effective provisions for prosecuting the war.

That result is not yet known. If, on the one hand, the repeal of the orders in council and the general pacification in Europe, which withdrew the occasion on which impressments from American vessels were practiced, suggest expectations that peace and amity may be reestablished, we are compelled, on the other hand, by the refusal of the British Government to accept the offered mediation of the Emperor of Russia, by the delays in giving effect to its own proposal of a direct negotiation, and, above all, by the principles and manner in which the war is now avowedly carried on to infer that a spirit of hostility is indulged more violent than ever against the rights and prosperity of this country.

This increased violence is best explained by the two important circumstances that the great contest in Europe for an equilibrium guaranteeing all its States against the ambition of any has been closed without any check on the overbearing power of Great Britain on the ocean, and it has left in her hands disposable armaments, with which, forgetting the difficulties of a remote war with a free people, and yielding to the intoxication of success, with the example of a great victim to it before her eyes, she cherishes hopes of still further aggrandizing a power already formidable in its abuses to the tranquillity of the civilized and commercial world.

But whatever may have inspired the enemy with these more violent purposes, the public councils of a nation more able to maintain than it was to acquire its independence, and with a devotion to it rendered more ardent by the experience of its blessings, can never deliberate but on the means most effectual for defeating the extravagant views or unwarrantable passions with which alone the war can now be pursued against us. In the events of the present campaign the enemy, with all his augmented means and wanton use of them, has little ground for exultation, unless he can feel it in the success of his recent enterprises against this metropolis and the neighboring town of Alexandria, from both of which his retreats were as precipitate as his attempts were bold and fortunate. In his other incursions on our Atlantic frontier his progress, often checked

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