A History of the Republican PartyPlatt, George Washington
History
A History of the Republican Party
Platt, George Washington
Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) -- History
5. That the present Democratic administration has far exceeded our worst
apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a
sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions to
force the infamous Lecompton constitution upon the protesting people of
Kansas; in construing the personal relations between master and servant
to involve an unqualified property in persons; in its attempted
enforcement everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of
Congress and of the federal courts, of the extreme pretensions of a
purely local interest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the
power intrusted to it by a confiding people.
6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance
which pervades every department of the federal government; that a return
to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the
systematic plunder of the public treasury by favored partisans, while
the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at the
federal metropolis show that an entire change of administration is
imperatively demanded.
7. That the new dogma--that the Constitution, of its own force, carries
slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States--is a
dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of
that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with
legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency and
subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.
8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States
is that of freedom; that, as our republican fathers, when they had
abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no
person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such
legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution
against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of
Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give
legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.
9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under
the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power,
as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age;
and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the
total and final suppression of that execrable traffic.
10. That in the recent vetoes, by their federal governors, of the acts
of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those
territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic
principle of non-intervention and popular sovereignity, embodied in the
Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demonstration of the deception and fraud
involved therein.
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