You enjoy the highest, because the truest honour, of being the first magistrate, by the unanimous choice of the freest people on the face of the earth." After noticing the several communications made in the speech, intense of deep felt respect and affection, the answer concludes thus: "Such are the sentiments with which we have thought fit to address you.

They flow from our own hearts, and we verily believe that among the millions we represent, there is not a virtuous citizen whose heart will disown them.
"All that remains is, that we join in your fervent supplications for the blessing of heaven on our country; and that we add our own for the choicest of these blessings on the most beloved of her citizens." [Sidenote: Situation of the United States at this period in their domestic and foreign relations.] A perfect knowledge of the antecedent state of things being essential to a due administration of the executive department, its attainment engaged the immediate attention of the President; and he required the temporary heads of departments to prepare and lay before him such statements and documents as would give this information.
But in the full view which it was useful to take of the interior, many objects were to be contemplated, the documents respecting which were not to be found in official records.

The progress which had been made in assuaging the bitter animosities engendered in the sharp contest respecting the adoption of the constitution, and the means which might be used for conciliating the affections of all good men to the new government, without enfeebling its essential principles, were subjects of the most interesting inquiry.
The agitation had been too great to be suddenly calmed; and for the active opponents of the system to become suddenly its friends, or even indifferent to its fate, would have been a victory of reason over passion, or a surrender of individual judgment to the decision of a majority, examples of which are rarely given in the progress of human affairs.
In some of the states, a disposition to acquiesce in the decision which had been made, and to await the issue of a fair experiment of the constitution, was avowed by the minority.

In others, the chagrin of defeat seemed to increase the original hostility to the instrument; and serious fears were entertained by its friends, that a second general convention might pluck from it the most essential of its powers, before their value, and the safety with which they might be confided where they were placed, could be ascertained by experience.
From the same cause, exerting itself in a different direction, the friends of the new system had been still more alarmed.

In all those states where the opposition was sufficiently formidable to inspire a hope of success, the effort was made to fill the legislature with the declared enemies of the government, and thus to commit it, in its infancy, to the custody of its foes.