On this first occasion of addressing Congress since, by the choice of my constituents, I have entered on a second term of administration, I embrace the opportunity to give this public assurance that I will exert my best endeavors to administer faithfully the executive department, and will zealously cooperate with you in every measure which may tend to secure the liberty, property, and personal safety of our fellow citizens, and to consolidate the republican forms and principles of our Government.

In the course of your session you shall receive all the aid which I can give for the dispatch of public business, and all the information necessary for your deliberations, of which the interests of our own country and the confidence reposed in us by others will admit a communication.

TH.  JEFFERSON

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State of the Union Address
Thomas Jefferson
December 2, 1806

The Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

It would have given me, fellow citizens, great satisfaction to announce in the moment of your meeting that the difficulties in our foreign relations existing at the time of your last separation had been amicably and justly terminated.  I lost no time in taking those measures which were most likely to bring them to such a termination—­by special missions charged with such powers and instructions as in the event of failure could leave no imputation on either our moderation or forbearance.  The delays which have since taken place in our negotiations with the British Government appear to have proceeded from causes which do not forbid the expectation that during the course of the session I may be enabled to lay before you their final issue.  What will be that of the negotiations for settling our differences with Spain nothing which had taken place at the date of the last dispatches enables us to pronounce.  On the western side of the Mississippi she advanced in considerable force, and took post at the settlement of Bayou Pierre, on the Red River.  This village was originally settled by France, was held by her as long as she held Louisiana, and was delivered to Spain only as a part of Louisiana.  Being small, insulated, and distant, it was not observed at the moment of redelivery to France and the United States that she continued a guard of half a dozen men which had been stationed there.  A proposition, however, having been lately made by our commander in chief to assume the Sabine River as a temporary line of separation between the troops of the two nations until the issue of our negotiations shall be known, this has been referred by the Spanish commandant to his superior, and in the mean time he has withdrawn his force to the western side of the Sabine River.  The correspondence on this subject now communicated will exhibit more particularly the present state of things in that quarter.