In compliance with the act of Congress of March 2, 1853, the oath of office was administered to him on the 24th of that month at Ariadne estate, near Matanzas, in the island of Cuba; but his strength gradually declined, and was hardly sufficient to enable him to return to his home in Alabama, where, on the 18th day of April, in the most calm and peaceful way, his long and eminently useful career was terminated.  Entertaining unlimited confidence in your intelligent and patriotic devotion to the public interest, and being conscious of no motives on my part which are not inseparable from the honor and advancement of my country, I hope it may be my privilege to deserve and secure not only your cordial cooperation in great public measures, but also those relations of mutual confidence and regard which it is always so desirable to cultivate between members of coordinate branches of the Government.

***

State of the Union Address
Franklin Pierce
December 4, 1854

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: 

The past has been an eventful year, and will be hereafter referred to as a marked epoch in the history of the world.  While we have been happily preserved from the calamities of war, our domestic prosperity has not been entirely uninterrupted.  The crops in portions of the country have been nearly cut off.  Disease has prevailed to a greater extent than usual, and the sacrifice of human life through casualties by sea and land is without parallel.  But the pestilence has swept by, and restored salubrity invites the absent to their homes and the return of business to its ordinary channels.  If the earth has rewarded the labor of the husbandman less bountifully than in preceding seasons, it has left him with abundance for domestic wants and a large surplus for exportation.  In the present, therefore, as in the past, we find ample grounds for reverent thankfulness to the God of grace and providence for His protecting care and merciful dealings with us as a people.

Although our attention has been arrested by painful interest in passing events, yet our country feels no more than the slight vibrations of the convulsions which have shaken Europe.  As individuals we can not repress sympathy with human suffering nor regret for the causes which produce it; as a nation we are reminded that whatever interrupts the peace or checks the prosperity of any part of Christendom tends more or less to involve our own.  The condition of States is not unlike that of individuals; they are mutually dependent upon each other.  Amicable relations between them and reciprocal good will are essential for the promotion of whatever is desirable in their moral, social, and political condition.  Hence it has been my earnest endeavor to maintain peace and friendly intercourse with all nations.