E.D.  TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
Washington City, November 4, 1868.

By direction of the President, Brevet Major-General E.R.S.  Canby is hereby assigned to the command of the Fifth Military District, created by the act of Congress of March 2, 1867, and of the Military Department of Texas, consisting of the State of Texas.  He will, without unnecessary delay, turn over his present command to the next officer in rank and proceed to the command to which he is hereby assigned, and on assuming the same will, when necessary to a faithful execution of the laws, exercise any and all powers conferred by acts of Congress upon district commanders and any and all authority pertaining to officers in command of military departments.

Brevet Major-General J.J.  Reynolds is hereby relieved from the command of the Fifth Military District.

J.M.  SCHOFIELD,

Secretary of War.

FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, December 9, 1868.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: 

Upon the reassembling of Congress it again becomes my duty to call your attention to the state of the Union and to its continued disorganized condition under the various laws which have been passed upon the subject of reconstruction.

It may be safely assumed as an axiom in the government of states that the greatest wrongs inflicted upon a people are caused by unjust and arbitrary legislation, or by the unrelenting decrees of despotic rulers, and that the timely revocation of injurious and oppressive measures is the greatest good that can be conferred upon a nation.  The legislator or ruler who has the wisdom and magnanimity to retrace his steps when convinced of error will sooner or later be rewarded with the respect and gratitude of an intelligent and patriotic people.

Our own history, although embracing a period less than a century, affords abundant proof that most, if not all, of our domestic troubles are directly traceable to violations of the organic law and excessive legislation.  The most striking illustrations of this fact are furnished by the enactments of the past three years upon the question of reconstruction.  After a fair trial they have substantially failed and proved pernicious in their results, and there seems to be no good reason why they should longer remain upon the statute book.  States to which the Constitution guarantees a republican form of government have been reduced to military dependencies, in each of which the people have been made subject to the arbitrary will of the commanding general.  Although the Constitution requires that each State shall be represented in Congress, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas are yet excluded from the two Houses, and, contrary to the express provisions of that instrument, were denied