Democratic (constitutionalist) President Pierce vetoes the Indigent Insane Persons Public Lands Act, which would have distributed the profits from the sale of 12,225,000 acres of federal land to the States for the construction of institutions for confining the insane, indigent, blind, deaf and mute:

       … I can not [sic] find any authority in the Constitution for making the [f]ederal [g]overnment the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States.  To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.

       [restored 2/11/2022]