them, chiefly for purposes of military and naval strategy in carrying out European policy and designs in regard to this continent.  In our Revolutionary War ports and harbors in the West India islands were used by our enemy, to the great injury and embarrassment of the United States.  We had the same experience in our second war with Great Britain.  The same European policy for a long time excluded us even from trade with the West Indies, while we were at peace with all nations.  In our recent civil war the rebels and their piratical and blockade-breaking allies found facilities in the same ports for the work, which they too successfully accomplished, of injuring and devastating the commerce which we are now engaged in rebuilding.  We labored especially under this disadvantage, that European steam vessels employed by our enemies found friendly shelter, protection, and supplies in West Indian ports, while our naval operations were necessarily carried on from our own distant shores.  There was then a universal feeling of the want of an advanced naval outpost between the Atlantic coast and Europe.  The duty of obtaining such an outpost peacefully and lawfully, while neither doing nor menacing injury to other states, earnestly engaged the attention of the executive department before the close of the war, and it has not been lost sight of since that time.  A not entirely dissimilar naval want revealed itself during the same period on the Pacific coast.  The required foothold there was fortunately secured by our late treaty with the Emperor of Russia, and it now seems imperative that the more obvious necessities of the Atlantic coast should not be less carefully provided for.  A good and convenient port and harbor, capable of easy defense, will supply that want.  With the possession of such a station by the United States, neither we nor any other American nation need longer apprehend injury or offense from any transatlantic enemy.  I agree with our early statesmen that the West Indies naturally gravitate to, and may be expected ultimately to be absorbed by, the continental States, including our own.  I agree with them also that it is wise to leave the question of such absorption to this process of natural political gravitation.  The islands of St. Thomas and St. John, which constitute a part of the group called the Virgin Islands, seemed to offer us advantages immediately desirable, while their acquisition could be secured in harmony with the principles to which I have alluded.  A treaty has therefore been concluded with the King of Denmark for the cession of those islands, and will be submitted to the Senate for consideration.

It will hardly be necessary to call the attention of Congress to the subject of providing for the payment to Russia of the sum stipulated in the treaty for the cession of Alaska.  Possession having been formally delivered to our commissioner, the territory remains for the present in care of a military force, awaiting such civil organization as shall be directed by Congress.