U.S.  GRANT.

[Footnote 17:  Statement of the number and character of the ironclad vessels of the Navy, their cost, by whom designed, who recommended their construction, and their condition.]

EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 29, 1870.

To the House of Representatives: 

In reply to your resolution of December 20, 1869, asking “whether any citizens of the United States are imprisoned or detained in military custody by officers of the Army of the United States, and, if any, to furnish their names, date of arrest, the offenses charged, together with a statement of what measures have been taken for the trial and punishment of the offenders,” I transmit herewith the report of the Secretary of War, to whom the resolution was referred.

U.S.  GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 30, 1870.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

It is unusual to notify the two Houses of Congress by message of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment.  In view, however, of the vast importance of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable.  A measure which makes at once 4,000,000 people voters who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so (with the assertion that “at the time of the Declaration of Independence the opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect"), is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free Government to the present day.

Institutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and industry.  I call the attention, therefore, of the newly enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege.  To the race more favored heretofore by our laws I would say, Withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizen.  The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people.  The Father of his Country, in his Farewell Address, uses this language: 

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.  In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message.