land and march, for he would say that henceforward there would remain to an invading army but to choose between captivity and a grave.  To protect commercial ports against naval assault forts are needful and should be completed so as to render them defensible by small garrisons, and to save those garrisons as far as possible from the sacrifice of life.  Our people require no wall to separate them from other countries, unless it be needful for our own restraint.  Our policy is peace, and the fact shines brightly on the pages of our history that not one acre of its extensive acquisitions have been claimed as the spoil of the sword.  Unpeopled deserts have been purchased, and on its own application a community has been admitted to our family of states.  But we have offered to the world the singular example of conquered territory returned to the vanquished.

Permit me in this connection, whilst ever mindful of the just relation and necessity for concurrent action between the civil and military departments of government, to bear testimony to the value of the militia for the purposes of peace.  The principle of self-government and the spirit of independence are so deep rooted in the American mind that our people would illy brook the enforcement of law by any extraneous power, and it is to be hoped we never will see a case in which the people of a State will not be able to maintain the civil authority, and vindicate offended law against all opposers whomsoever.  To give energy and activity to such popular action the organization of the militia will be most convenient whenever force shall be needful.  It is not a little remarkable that though the first Presidents in emphatic language from time to time recommended a thorough organization of the militia as one of the most important duties of the government, but little more has yet been done than to make provisions for supplying them with arms, and for calling them out when required for federal purposes.  There is a moral effect arising from the spectacle of each State possessed of a body of instructed militia, ready not only to maintain its government at home, but to unite with the militia of other States and to form an army upon which all can rely whenever a common danger calls for a common defence.  It has been thus that from time to time the fraternity of our revolutionary fathers has been renewed among their sons, and additional assurance has been given that the sentiment of nationality on which our Union was founded could never die.  That the expansion of the circle did not weaken its cohesive power, nor the piling of arch upon arch endanger the foundation on which our political temple was built.  It was not a structure of expediency; master workmen cleared away the surface where the errors and prejudices of ages had accumulated, dug deep down to the unmutable rock of truth, and with unchanging principles constructed the walls to stand till time should become eternity.  Who is there, then, forgetful of his revolutionary