Non-fiction: Annual Message to Congress (1854)

Overview
Franklin Pierce’s 1854 Annual Message to Congress surveys a nation of rapid expansion and commercial vigor while warning against sectional discord and lawlessness at home and abroad. He presents the federal government as fiscally sound, constitutionally restrained, and duty-bound to protect American rights on the seas and along expanding frontiers. The message pauses on the tumult unleashed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the settlement of the Mexican boundary through the Gadsden Purchase, the opening of Japan to American commerce, and tense episodes in the Caribbean and Central America.

Union, Law, and the Territories
Pierce defends the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a principled reaffirmation of local self-government in the territories, grounding it in the constitutional balance and the spirit of the Compromise measures. He urges all sections to abide by lawful processes, condemning extralegal coercion and sectional agitation that threaten public peace. The executive’s role, he argues, is to enforce existing statutes, Fugitive Slave provisions included, while leaving questions in the territories to their inhabitants and competent tribunals. He notes the negotiation of numerous Indian treaties to clear titles in Kansas and Nebraska and to rationalize the frontier, promising humane administration coupled with firm protection of settlers and routes of travel.

Finances, Commerce, and Public Lands
Reporting buoyant revenues, Pierce champions economy in administration and application of any surplus to the reduction of public debt. He favors a revenue tariff rather than protectionist schemes and cautions against extravagant appropriations, particularly for projects of a local or sectional character. On internal improvements he reiterates a strict-construction view: the general government should avoid undertaking works not clearly national in scope. He supports a more orderly disposition of public lands through existing preemption and graduation policies, linking settlement to surveyed titles, treaty obligations, and the extension of postal and judicial services.

Army, Navy, and Infrastructure
Pierce calls for modest but effective increases in readiness, especially along the southwestern frontier and overland trails, and for reforms that modernize command, staff, and supply. He underscores the growing importance of steam power and ocean mail service to national defense and commerce, urging a balanced naval program that combines economy with technological advancement. The spread of settlements, he adds, demands prudent expansion of court districts, post routes, lighthouses, and harbor maintenance where genuinely national interests are implicated.

Mexico and the Southwest
Pierce hails the final settlement of the border with Mexico through the Gadsden Purchase, securing a practicable southern route across the continent and removing a chronic source of dispute. He stresses the need for coordinated efforts with Mexico to suppress cross-border raids and to protect travel and trade across arid reaches newly brought within American jurisdiction.

Caribbean and Central America
The President recounts the Black Warrior affair at Havana and insists upon reparation for unlawful seizures and obstruction of American commerce while expressing a preference for amicable settlement. He argues that conditions in Cuba bear directly on the security of the Gulf and the southern coast, and he treats the island as a legitimate subject of negotiation, without foreclosing future measures should American rights be persistently denied. In Central America he challenges British pretensions under the so‑called protectorates and insists upon faithful observance of treaty commitments, defending decisive U.S. action at Greytown as a response to chronic disorder that endangered lives and property and mocked regular jurisdiction.

Pacific and Asia
Pierce celebrates the opening of Japan to American ships, anticipating a vast enlargement of Pacific trade and the need for coaling stations, charts, and consular protection. He notes the growth of commerce with China and renewed ties with island polities of strategic value, urging vigilance against European monopolies and a steady, peaceful assertion of equal access.

Closing Themes
The message knits prosperity, expansion, and prudence into a single program: constitutional restraint at home; economical administration; firm yet peaceful diplomacy; and the steady extension of lawful order across new territories. Above all, Pierce pleads for sectional forbearance and obedience to law as the surest safeguard of the Union’s strength amid unprecedented growth.