In compliance with the Senate resolution of the 10th July instant, requesting that I would “cause to be communicated to the Senate copies of all the correspondence and other official documents on file in the Department of the Interior respecting the claims of persons for services performed and supplies and subsistence furnished to Indians in California under contracts with Indian agents in the year 1851, and embracing the names of claimants, the amount, respectively, of their claims, on what account created and by what authority, if any,” I transmit herewith a communication from the Secretary of the Interior, accompanied by copies of all the papers called for which have not heretofore been furnished.  As it appears that most of the papers called for were communicated to the Senate at its first and special sessions of the Thirty-second Congress, I have not supposed that it was the intention of the Senate to have them again sent, and I have therefore not directed them to be copied.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, July 31, 1854.

To the Senate of the United States: 

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 28th instant, requesting information in respect to the bombardment of San Juan de Nicaragua, I transmit reports from the Secretaries of State and of the Navy, with the documents which accompanied them.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, July 31, 1854.

To the House of Representatives: 

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 28th instant, requesting information in regard to the destruction of San Juan de Nicaragua, I transmit reports from the Secretaries of State and of the Navy, with the documents accompanying them.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, August 1, 1854.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I hasten to respond briefly to the resolution of the Senate of this date, “requesting the President to inform the Senate, if in his opinion it be not incompatible with the public interest, whether anything has arisen since the date of his message to the House of Representatives of the 15th of March last concerning our relations with the Government of Spain which in his opinion may dispense with the suggestions therein contained touching the propriety of ‘provisional measures’ by Congress to meet any exigency that may arise in the recess of Congress affecting those relations.”

In the message to the House of Representatives referred to I availed myself of the occasion to present the following reflections and suggestions: