JAMES K. POLK.

WASHINGTON, May 6, 1846.

To the House of Representatives: 

I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, in answer to a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 8th ultimo, requesting the President to communicate to that body, “if not incompatible with the public interest, copies of the correspondence of George William Gordon, late consul of the United States at Rio de Janeiro, with the Department of State, relating to the slave trade in vessels and by citizens of the United States between the coast of Africa and Brazil.”

JAMES K. POLK.

WASHINGTON, May 6, 1846.

To the House of Representatives: 

I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of War, in answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 4th instant, calling for information “whether any soldier or soldiers of the Army of the United States have been shot for desertion, or in the act of deserting, and, if so, by whose order and under what authority.”

JAMES K. POLK.

WASHINGTON, May 11, 1846.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

The existing state of the relations between the United States and Mexico renders it proper that I should bring the subject to the consideration of Congress.  In my message at the commencement of your present session the state of these relations, the causes which led to the suspension of diplomatic intercourse between the two countries in March, 1845, and the long-continued and unredressed wrongs and injuries committed by the Mexican Government on citizens of the United States in their persons and property were briefly set forth.

As the facts and opinions which were then laid before you were carefully considered, I can not better express my present convictions of the condition of affairs up to that time than by referring you to that communication.

The strong desire to establish peace with Mexico on liberal and honorable terms, and the readiness of this Government to regulate and adjust our boundary and other causes of difference with that power on such fair and equitable principles as would lead to permanent relations of the most friendly nature, induced me in September last to seek the reopening of diplomatic relations between the two countries.  Every measure adopted on our part had for its object the furtherance of these desired results.  In communicating to Congress a succinct statement of the injuries which we had suffered from Mexico, and which have been accumulating during a period of more than twenty years, every expression that could tend to inflame the people of Mexico or defeat or delay a pacific result was carefully avoided.  An envoy of the United States repaired to Mexico with full powers to adjust every existing difference.  But though present on the Mexican soil by agreement between the two Governments, invested with full powers, and bearing evidence of the most friendly dispositions, his mission has been unavailing.  The Mexican Government not only refused to receive him or listen to his propositions, but after a long-continued series of menaces have at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil.