SPECIAL MESSAGES. EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D. C., October 17, 1877. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I have the honor to transmit herewith the report of a board of inquiry appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to examine into the causes of the fire which destroyed a part of the Interior Department building on the 24th of last month. R. B. HAYES. EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D. C., October 17, 1877. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I have the honor to transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of the Navy, setting forth the particulars with reference to the existing deficiencies in the Navy Department. To the House of Representatives: R. B. HAYES. WASHINGTON, November 12, 1877. In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the Ist instant, I transmit herewith reports from the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War, with their accompanying papers.* To the House of Representatives: R. B. HAYES. WASHINGTON, November 12, 1877. In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 5th instant, I transmit herewith reports from the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, with their accompanying documents.† R. B. HAYES. EXECUTIVE MANSION, November 12, 1877. To the Senate of the United States: In compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 16th of October, 1877, I have the honor to transmit herewith a statement of the appropriations and expenditures by the Navy Department from the 4th of March, 1789, to June 30, 1876. A similar statement for the War Department is being prepared as *Correspondence relative to Mexican border troubles. +Correspondence relative to the imposition of a differential duty of 50 cents per ton upon Spanish vessels entering ports of the United States. rapidly as the limited clerical force in the Treasury Department will permit, and when completed will be transmitted to the Senate. R. B. HAYES. EXECUTIVE MANSION, November 12, 1877. To the Senate of the United States: In compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 30th of October, 1877, I have the honor to transmit herewith a statement of the annual appropriations and expenditures for army and navy pensions, showing also the repayments, the amounts carried to the surplus fund, and the net expenditures under each appropriation from March 4, 1789, to June 30, 1876. . R. B. HAYES. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, November 14, 1877. In answer to the resolution of the Senate of the 8th instant, I transmit herewith a report * from the Secretary of State. R. B. HAVES. WASHINGTON, D. C., November 15, 1877. To the House of Representatives: I transmit to the House of Representatives, in answer to its resolution of the 12th instant, a report † from the Secretary of State. To the House of Representatives: R. B. HAYES. WASHINGTON, November 20, 1877. In answer to a joint resolution of the House of Representatives of the 6th instant, requesting the opinions of the heads of the Departments respecting the obligatory use of the metrical system of weights and measures, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of State. R. B. HAYES. WASHINGTON, November 27, 1877. To the Senate of the United States: I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a declaration between the United States and the Government of Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, for the reciprocal protection of the marks of manufacture and trade in the two countries, signed on the 24th of October, 1877. R. B. HAYES. *Stating that the information relative to the forcible rescue of two prisoners from the jail of Starr County, Tex., by an armed band of Mexicans had been transmitted by the President to the House of Representatives on the 12th instant. Relating to the indemnity paid by Spain on account of the execution of General Ryan and others at Santiago de Cuba. PROCLAMATION. BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. A PROCLAMATION. The completed circle of summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, has brought us to the accustomed season at which a religious people celebrates with praise and thanksgiving the enduring mercy of Almighty God. This devout and public confession of the constant dependence of man upon the divine favor for all the good gifts of life and health and peace and happiness, so early in our history made the habit of our people, finds in the survey of the past year new grounds for its joyful and grateful manifestation. In all the blessings which depend upon benignant seasons, this has indeed been a memorable year. Over the wide territory of our country, with all its diversity of soil and climate and products, the earth has yielded a bountiful return to the labor of the husbandman. The health of the people has been blighted by no prevalent or widespread diseases. No great disasters of shipwreck upon our coasts or to our commerce on the seas have brought loss and hardship to merchants or mariners and clouded the happiness of the community with sympathetic sorrow. In all that concerns our strength and peace and greatness as a nation; in all that touches the permanence and security of our Government and the beneficent institutions on which it rests; in all that affects the character and dispositions of our people and tests our capacity to enjoy and uphold the equal and free condition of society, now permanent and universal throughout the land, the experience of the last year is conspicuously marked by the protecting providence of God and is full of promise and hope for the coming generations. Under a sense of these infinite obligations to the Great Ruler of Times and Seasons and Events, let us humbly ascribe it to our own faults and frailties if in any degree that perfect concord and happiness, peace and justice, which such great mercies should diffuse through the hearts and lives of our people do not altogether and always and everywhere prevail. Let us with one spirit and with one voice lift up praise and thanksgiving to God for His manifold goodness to our land, His manifest care for our nation. Now, therefore, I, Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States, do appoint Thursday, the 29th day of November next, as a day of national thanksgiving and prayer; and I earnestly recommend that, withdrawing themselves from secular cares and labors, the people of the United States do meet together on that day in their respective places of worship, there to give thanks and praise to Almighty God for His mercies and to devoutly beseech their continuance. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 29th day of October, [SEAL.] By the President: WM. M. EVARTS, Secretary of State. EXECUTIVE ORDER. EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D. C., November 2, 1877. I lament the sad occasion which makes it my duty to testify the public. respect for the eminent citizen and distinguished statesman whose death yesterday at his home in Indianapolis has been made known to the people by telegraphic announcement. The services of Oliver P. Morton to the nation in the difficult and responsible administration of the affairs of the State of Indiana as its governor at a critical juncture of the civil war can never be overvalued by his countrymen. His long service in the Senate has shown his great powers as a legislator and as a leader and chief counselor of the political party charged with the conduct of the Government during that period. In all things and at all times he has been able, strenuous, and faithful in the public service, and his fame with his countrymen rests upon secure foundations. The several Executive Departments will be closed on the day of his funeral, and appropriate honors should be paid to the memory of the deceased statesman by the whole nation. R. B. HAYES. FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE. DECEMBER 3, 1877. Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: With devout gratitude to the bountiful Giver of All Good, I congratulate you that at the beginning of your first regular session you find our country blessed with health and peace and abundant harvests, and with encouraging prospects of an early return of general prosperity. To complete and make permanent the pacification of the country con tinues to be, and until it is fully accomplished must remain, the most important of all our national interests. The earnest purpose of good citizens generally to unite their efforts in this endeavor is evident. It found decided expression in the resolutions announced in 1876 by the national conventions of the leading political parties of the country. There was a widespread apprehension that the momentous results in our progress as a nation marked by the recent amendments to the Constitution were in imminent jeopardy; that the good understanding which prompted their adoption, in the interest of a loyal devotion to the general welfare, might prove a barren truce, and that the two sections of the country, once engaged in civil strife, might be again almost as widely severed and disunited as they were when arrayed in arms against each other. The course to be pursued, which, in my judgment, seemed wisest in the presence of this emergency, was plainly indicated in my inaugural address. It pointed to the time, which all our people desire to see, when a genuine love of our whole country and of all that concerns its true welfare shall supplant the destructive forces of the mutual animosity of races and of sectional hostility. Opinions have differed widely as to the measures best calculated to secure this great end. This was to be expected. The measures adopted by the Administration have been subjected to severe and varied criticism. Any course whatever which might have been entered upon would certainly have encountered distrust and opposition. These measures were, in my judgment, such as were most in harmony with the Constitution and with the genius of our people, and best adapted, under all the circumstances, to attain the end in view. Beneficent results, already apparent, prove that these endeavors are not to be regarded as a mere experiment, and should sustain and encourage us in our efforts. Already, in the brief period which has elapsed, the immediate effectiveness, no less than the justice, of the course pursued is demonstrated, and I have an abiding faith that time will furnish its ample vindication in the minds of the great majority of my fellow-citizens. The discontinuance of the use of the Army for the purpose of upholding local governments in two States of the Union was no less a constitutional duty and requirement, under the circumstances existing at the time, than it was a much-needed measure for the restoration of local self-government and the promotion of national harmony. The withdrawal of the troops from such employment was effected deliberately, and with solicitous care for the peace and good order of society and the protection of the property and persons and every right of all classes of citizens. The results that have followed are indeed significant and encouraging. All apprehension of danger from remitting those States to local self-government is dispelled, and a most salutary change in the minds of the people has begun and is in progress in every part of that section of the country once the theater of unhappy civil strife, substituting for suspicion, |