duty to request a postponement of the adjournment in order that I might submit for your consideration certain matters of public intnow laid before you. When that request was made the most important measures that had occupied your attention during the session had not been so far advanced as to be submitted for Executive action, and the state of the country had been so materially affected by the events of the last four months as to evince the necessity of further and more energetic legislation than was contemplated in November last.

Our country is now environed with perils which it is our duty calmly to contemplate. Thus alone can the measures necessary to avert threatened calamities be wisely devised and efficiently enforced.

Recent military operations of the enemy have been successful in the capture of some of our sea-ports, in interrupting some of our lines of communication, and in devastating large districts of our country. These events have had the natural effect of encouraging our foes and dispiriting many of our people. The Capital of the Confederate States is now threatened, and is in greater danger than it has heretofore been during the war. The fact is stated without reserve or concealment, as due to the people whose servants we are, and in whose courage and constancy entire trust is reposed; as due to you in whose wisdom and resolute spirit the people have confided for the adoption of the measures required to guard them from threatened perils.

While stating to you that our country is in danger, I desire also to state my deliberate conviction that it is within our power to avert the calamities which menace us, and to secure the triumph of the sacred cause for which so much sacrifice has been made, so much suffering endured, so many precious lives been lost. This result is to be obtained by fortitude, by courage, by constancy in enduring the sacrifices still needed; in a word, by the prompt and resolute devotion of the whole resources of men and money in the Confederacy to the achievement of our liberties and independence. The measures now required, to be successful, should be prompt. Long deliberation and protracted debate over important measures are not only natural, but laudable in representative assemblies under ordinary circumstances; but in moments of danger, when action becomes urgent, the delay thus caused is itself a new source of peril. Thus it has unfortunately happened that some of the measures passed by you in pursuance of the recommendations contained in my message of November last have been so retarded as to lose much of their value, or have, for the same reason, been abandoned after being matured, because no longer applicable to our altered condition, and others have not been brought under examination. In making these remarks it is far from my intention to attribute the loy other cause than those inherent in deliberative assemblies, but only urgently to recommend prompt action upon the measures now submitted.

We need, for carrying on the war successfully, men and supplies for the Army. We have both within our country sufficient to obtain success. To obtain the supplies it is necessary to protect productive districts and guard our lines of communication by an increase in the number of our forces; and hence it results that with a large augmentation in the number of men in the Army, the facility of supplying the troops would be greater than with our present reduced strength. For the purchase of the supplies now required, especially for the armies in Virginiia and North Carolina, the Treasury must be provided with means, and a modification in the impressment law is