The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1860-06-09
REPUBLICAN PLATFORM FOR 1880

REPUBLICAN PLATFORM FOR 1880
Resolved, That we. the delegated repre- /
sentatives OF the Republican electors of the
United States, in Convention assembled. in
discharge of the duty we owe to our con-
stituents and our country. unite in the fol-
lowing declarations:
/. That the history of the nation during
the last four years has fully established the
propriety and necessity of the organization
and perpetuation of the Republican party, |
and that the causes which called it into ex-
istenee are permanent in their nature, and
now, more than eyer before, demand its
peaceful and constitutional triumph.
g. That the maintenance of the princi-
Piles promulgated in the Declaration of In
dependence. and embodied in the Federal
Constitution. that all men are created equal; !
that they are endowed by their Creator with |
certain inalienable rights that among these
are life, liberty aud the pursuit of happi- |
ness that, 70 secure these rights, SoyeFii, j
ments are instituted among men. deriving
their just powers from the consent of the
governed; is essential to the preservation of
our Republican institutions and that the
Federal Constitution, the Rights of the
States, and the Union of the States, must
and shall be preserved.
8. That to the Union of the States this
nation owes its unprecedented increase in
population, its surprising development of
material resources. its rapid augmentation
of wealth, its happiness at home and its
honor abroad and we hold in adherence
all schemes for disunion, come from what
ever source they may: and we congratulate
the country that no Republican member of
Congress has uttered or countenanced the
threats of Disunion so often made by Dem
ocratic members, without rebuke and with
applause from their political associates. and
we Cenounce those threats of disunion, in
case of a popular overthrow of their ascend
ancy as denying the vital principles of q
free government, and as an avowal of con-
templated treason, which it is the impera-
tive duty of an indignant people sternly to
rebuke and forever silence.
4. That the maintenance inviolate of the
rights of the States, and especially the right
of each State to order and control its own
domestic institutions according to its own
Judgment exclusively, is essential to that
balance of power on which the perfection and
endurance Of cur political fabric depends !;
and we denounce the lawless invasion by
armed force of the soil of any State or Ter
ritory, no matter under what pretext, as the
gravest of crimes.
5. That the present Democratic Admin
istration has far exceeded our worst appre
tensions, in its measureless subserviency to
the eXactions of sectional interest, as es-
pecially evinced in its desperate exertions to
force the Infamous Lecompton Constitution
upon the protesting people of Kansas in
constituting the personal relation between
master and servant to involve an unqualified
property in persons in its attempted en-
forcemeut everywhere, on land and sea,
through the Intervention of Congress and
the Federal Courts, of the extreme preten-
sions of purely local interest; and in its
general and unvarying abuse of the power
entrusted to it by a conflicting people.
6. That the people justly view with
alarm the reckless extravaganza which per
vades every department of the Federal Gov
eminent: that a return to rigid economy
and accountability is indispensable to arrest
the systematic plumber of the public treas
ury by favored partisans while the recent
startling developments of frauds and cor
ruptions at the Federal metropolis shows
that an entire change of administration is
imperatively demanded.
7. That the new dogma. that the ConsLi-
tuition, 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 ex
position, 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 bad abolished slavery in all our
national territory, ordained that "no person
should be deprived of life, liberty, or prop
erty, without due process of law" it be-
comes 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 au-
thority of Congress, of territorial Legisla-
existence to slavery in any Territory of the
United States.
9. That we brand the recent re-opening
of the African slave trade, under the cover
of our national flag, aided by perversions OF
judicial power, as crime against humanity
and 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 Leg
islatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohib-
ting slavery in those Territories. we find a
practical illustration of the boosted Demo-
cratic principle Of Intervention and
Popular Sovereignty embodied in the Kan
sas- Nebraska bill, and demonstration of
the deception and fraud involved therein.
II. That Kansas should, of right, be i'm
mediateIy admitted as a State under the
Constitution recently formed and adopted
by her people, and accepted by the House
of Representatives.