Special Message

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:

I transmit herewith to Congress a copy of the instructions prepared by the Secretary of State and furnished to the ministers of the United States appointed to attend at the assembly of American plenipotentiaries first held at Panama and thence transferred to Tacubaya. The occasion upon which they were given has passed away, and there is no present probability of the renewal of the negotiations; but the purposes for which they were intended are still of the deepest interest to our country and to the world, and may hereafter call again for the active efforts and beneficent energies of the Government of the United States. The motives for withholding them from general publication having ceased, justice to the Government from which they emanated and to the people for whose benefit it was instituted requires that they should be made known. With this view, and from the consideration that the subjects embraced by these instructions must probably engage hereafter the deliberations of our successors, I deem it proper to make this communication to both Houses of Congress. One copy only of the instructions being prepared, I send it to the Senate, requesting that it may be transmitted also to the House of Representatives.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.