BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas an extraordinary occasion has occurred rendering it necessary and proper that the Senate of the United States shall be convened to receive and act upon such communications as have been or may be made to it on the part of the Executive: 

Now, therefore, I, James Buchanan, President of the United States, do issue this my proclamation, declaring that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene for the transaction of business at the Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the 26th day of June instant, at 12 o’clock at noon of that day, of which all who shall then be entitled to act as members of that body are hereby required to take notice.

[SEAL.]

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington, this 25th day of June, A. D. 1860, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-fourth.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

By the President: 
  LEWIS CASS,
    Secretary of State.

FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON CITY, December 3, 1860.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: 

Throughout the year since our last meeting the country has been eminently prosperous in all its material interests.  The general health has been excellent, our harvests have been abundant, and plenty smiles throughout the land.  Our commerce and manufactures have been prosecuted with energy and industry, and have yielded fair and ample returns.  In short, no nation in the tide of time has ever presented a spectacle of greater material prosperity than we have done until within a very recent period.

Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the Union of the States, which is the source of all these blessings, is threatened with destruction?

The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects.  The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed.

I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger.  This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive-slave law.  All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union (as others have been) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy.  The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery