JAMES K. POLK.

WASHINGTON, August 14, 1848.

To the House of Representatives of the United States: 

When the President has given his official sanction to a bill which has passed Congress, usage requires that he shall notify the House in which it originated of that fact.  The mode of giving this notification has been by an oral message delivered by his private secretary.

Having this day approved and signed an act entitled “An act to establish the Territorial government of Oregon,” I deem it proper, under the existing circumstances, to communicate the fact in a more solemn form.  The deeply interesting and protracted discussions which have taken place in both Houses of Congress and the absorbing interest which the subject has excited throughout the country justify, in my judgment, this departure from the form of notice observed in other cases.  In this communication with a coordinate branch of the Government, made proper by the considerations referred to, I shall frankly and without reserve express the reasons which have constrained me not to withhold my signature from the bill to establish a government over Oregon, even though the two territories of New Mexico and California are to be left for the present without governments.  None doubt that it is proper to establish a government in Oregon.  Indeed, it has been too long delayed.  I have made repeated recommendations to Congress to this effect.  The petitions of the people of that distant region have been presented to the Government, and ought not to be disregarded.  To give to them a regularly organized government and the protection of our laws, which, as citizens of the United States, they claim, is a high duty on our part, and one which we are bound to perform, unless there be controlling reasons to prevent it.

In the progress of all governments questions of such transcendent importance occasionally arise as to cast in the shade all those of a mere party character.  But one such question can now be agitated in this country, and this may endanger our glorious Union, the source of our greatness and all our political blessings.  This question is slavery.  With the slaveholding States this does not embrace merely the rights of property, however valuable, but it ascends far higher, and involves the domestic peace and security of every family.

The fathers of the Constitution, the wise and patriotic men who laid the foundation of our institutions, foreseeing the danger from this quarter, acted in a spirit of compromise and mutual concession on this dangerous and delicate subject, and their wisdom ought to be the guide of their successors.  Whilst they left to the States exclusively the question of domestic slavery within their respective limits, they provided that slaves who might escape into other States not recognizing the institution of slavery shall be “delivered up on the claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”