Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1872-05-15
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY,

F'reesoilers and Republicans accepted
as vital, animating, and living faith
the creed Of human equality. Accept
ing the doctrine that emancipation was
the duty of the master and the right OF
the slave, and that it. was the duty OF
the nation to prohibit and abolish sla.
very wherever it had the power, they
petitioned Congress to perform the
work in the District of Columbia and
in the territories.
They maintained, when assailed, the
sacred right of petition and the free
dom of speech.
They opposed the annexation OF
Texas, by which it was sought to pre-
vent the abolition of slavery there, and
TO strengthen it at home.
They struggled to prohibit slavery in
free territory won from Mexico by war.
They resisted with all their power
the opening of the free territories OF
Utah and New Mexico to slavery, and
the surrender of thousands of square
miles of free soil to slave-holding
Texas.
They opposed the enactment of the
fugitive slave bill and the unholy COM
promises of 1850.
They sternly resisted the repeal of
the Missouri compromise, which had
secured hundreds of thousands of
square miles to free labor, and for free
laboring men.
invaders of Kansas, their unholy legls-
lation establishing slavery, i'll the IN
human slave code.
They pronounced the Lecompton
! Constitution "the product of fraud
! and violence.
They denounced the Dred Scott
dicta, by which twas pronounced that
"black men had no rights white men
were bound to respect"
They exposed the delusions of squat
/ ter sovereignty, and denied the right of
slave masters to take their slaves into
national territory and be protected by
national authority.
/ They steadily and sternly rejected,
when menaced by rebellion and civil
way, the Crittenden compromise, by
which the nation, by irrepealable con-
/ stitutional amendments, was to recog-
nize slavery south of the Missouri COM
promise line, allow slave masters to
! take their fettered bondmen into and
through the free States, deprive men
of African descent of citizenship and
and suffrage, and deny to Congress the
right to abolish slavery IN the capital
of the nation.
When the Republican party came into
/ power in 1861 it infexibIy adhered, at
/ the risk of civil war, to the principles
it had enunciated for impartial liberty,
and against the aggressive and dom
mating influences of the slave masters.
It made free slaves used by the re-
bells for military purposes.
/ 1t forbade officers to return to their
masters fugitives coming within the
lines of the army to seek the protection
of the national flag.
1t abolished slavery in the District of
Columbia, and made the national cap
ital free.
1t annulled the inhuman, cruel, and
degrading Black Code of the District,
and provided that colored men should
be tried and punished in the same man
ner the white man was tried and punish
ed.
It gave its colored people the right
to testify in the courts of law, to ride
in the public conveyances, to educate
their children, to vote and to be voted
for.
It prohibited slavery in the vast terri
tories of the United States, and saved
them from It's chains and whips, its
auction blocks, and it's bloodhounds.
1t made free slaves captured by its
armies, or who came within their adj
yancing lines.
It repealed the cruel and humiliatine
Fugitive Slave Act, and brought to q
close its inhuman and dastardy slave
hunts
1t recognized the nationality of Hayti
and Liberia, which had been SO long
and so wickedly withheld by the slave
power.
1t enrolled black mer, and weaponed
their hands to fight the battles of then
country.
It gave freedom to the slaves who
Joined the army of the Union
It made free the wife and children o.
the black soldier.
It struck the word white from the
military laws, and made black men {
portion of the national militia.
It prohibited the barbarous and bar
| VI OhCllCCI
by whipping in the reconstructed
States.
It abolished and forever prohibited
the system OF peonage in New Mexico
It entered into treaty stipulation:
with the British Government for The
final extirpation of the African slave
trade.
It made the coast-wise slave traffic
illegal.
1t gave black men the right to testi
fy in the courts of the United States
1t gave suffrage to black men in al
the Territories of the Republic
1t sustained Abraham Lincoln's pro
clamation of emancipation that gave
freedom to three and half millions O.
; men, women, and children.
1t forever abolished slavery through
out the land, by the adoption of The
18th Amendment.
, 1t created the Freedmen's Bureau
for the protection and education of the
emancipated bondmen.
It secured to black men the full ant
equal benefit of all laws for the protec
ton of life and property by the civi
rights act.
It made colored men citizens of The
United States.
Tt secured, by the adoption of tn,
) 18th Amendment equal protection tt
citizens in all the States.
: { It steadily opposed and defeated th
5 "policy " of President Johnson, whicl
t would have left colored men complete
: ly helpless-a degraded caste of serf
+ at the mercy of their old masters.
r 1t removed unjust restrictions, anc
2 gave to colored men a right in the pub
lie domain, till then withheld.
1t gave suffrage to three quarters 0
million of black men by its measure
OF reconstruction. 1t gave, by th
| adoption of the 18th amendment an,
: the laws to enforce it, suffrage to blacl
t men throughout the United State 8.
= 1t has given, by the law to enforc
: the 18th amendment and it's execution
some measure of protection to the col
ored race against the lawless and mur
a ! derOuS Ku-Kiux KlanS