Grant's First Annual Message to Congress

Today we call the president’s annual message to Congress the State of the Union address, and since 1934 it has been held in January. Prior to that time, the address was usually given in December, and was referred to as the President’s Annual Message to Congress.

Although George Washington read his own messages in front of Congress, most presidents in the 19th century wrote their speeches and a clerk was responsible for reading them to the joint session of Congress. It has only been since 1966 that a response to the president’s message has been presented by a member of the party opposite that of the president.

When Ulysses Grant delivered his first annual message on December 6, 1869, the nation was still facing difficult issues resulting from the Civil War. He had only been in office for nine months and had already confronted numerous challenges. He began his speech thankful for a free and democratic country:
“In coming before you for the first time, as Chief Magistrate of this great Nation, it is with gratitude to the Giver of all good for the many blessings we enjoy. We are blessed with peace at home and are without tangling alliance abroad to forebode trouble. We are blessed with a territory unequaled in fertility,… With abundant crops: with a variety of climate suited to the production of every specie of earths riches, … with a population of forty million of free people, …with facilities for every mortal to acquire an education, … with freedom of the pulpit, the press, and the school…”

From this beginning, Grant went on to discuss domestic and foreign conditions that he wanted Congress to address, laying out a policy of equality and justice and plans for returning the nation to financial and economic stability.

Without the scrutiny of the camera or concern for “sound bites” that we are used to today, Grant’s message was lengthy—taking 26 single-spaced, typewritten pages in volume 20 of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Despite the differences between today’s State of the Union Address and the Annual Message of the President in Grant’s time, the sentiment of gratitude for the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities that the United States offers for all citizens spans the generations:  past, present, and future.