The number of those who, never having invested any principle in the struggle, had become tired of the war, had largely increased. The expectation of a draft--or a “conscription,” as it better suited the objects of the disaffected to term it--which was passed at the next session of Congress, made the lukewarm love of many to wax cold. Newspapers and stump-speakers had the hardihood to demand peace upon any terms. It was even claimed that an opposition majority had been secured in the lower House of the next Congress. Their representatives in the Congress of 1862 began to re-assume those airs of insolence and defiance which they had previously found it convenient to lay aside for the time. Dark days, indeed, when the Thirty-seventh Congress assembled for its last session, on the 1st of December, 1862. Yet there was one who never faltered in purpose, however discouraging the prospect; one, who, assured that he was right, was determined to follow the right, wherever it might lead him. And, though his careworn expression and anxious look told plainly how the fearful responsibilities of his office weighed upon him, he had ever a cheerful word, a happy illustration, a kindly smile, or a look of sympathy for those with whom he came in contact. * * * * * The essential portions of his Annual Message on this occasion are given below: “FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:--Since your last annual assembling, another year of health and bountiful harvests has passed. And, while it has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return of peace, we can but press on, guided by the best light He gives us, trusting that, in His own good time and wise way, all will yet be well.... “If the condition of our relations with other nations is less gratifying than it has usually been at former periods, it is certainly more satisfactory than a nation so unhappily distracted as we are, might reasonably have apprehended. In the month of June last there were some grounds to expect that the maritime powers which, at the beginning of our domestic difficulties, so unwisely and unnecessarily, as we think, recognized the insurgents as a belligerent, would soon recede from that position, which has proved only less injurious to themselves than to our own country. But the temporary reverses which afterward befell the National arms, and which were exaggerated by our own disloyal citizens abroad, have hitherto delayed that act of simple justice.