GREENBACK PROPOSITIONS,

1874.

The proposal to resume specie payment was the occasion of a Greenback convention at Indianapolis, Nov. 25, 1874, at which resolutions were adopted embodying these three propositions: I, that the currency of all banks and corporations should be withdrawn; 2, that paper money issued by the Government, "based on the faith and resources of the Nation," and exchangeable on demand for bonds bearing interest at 3.65 per cent., should be the only currency; and, 3, that coin should be paid only for interest on the present national debt, and for that portion of the principal for which coin had been specifically promised:

THE CONTEST OF 1876.

The political field in 1876 was again considerably cut up by differing parties. The American National Platform was adopted as early as June, 1875, on the 9th of which month its framers met in mass convention in Pittsburg. On May 17, 1876, the Prohibition Reform Party met in convention in Cleveland, Ohio; and on the same day the Independent Party (Greenback) met in Indianapolis, Ind. Each party adopted a platform embodying its views. The Republican national convention assembled in Cincinnati, June 14, and the Democratic national convention met in St. Louis the 28th of the same month. The customary platform was adopted at each convention.

American National Platform.

We hold:

I. That ours is a Christian and not a heathen Nation, and that the God of the Christian Scriptures is the author of civil government.

2. That God requires and man needs a Sabbath.

3. That the prohibition of the importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage, is the true policy on the temperance question.

4. That charters of all secret lodges granted by our Federal and State legislatures should be withdrawn, and their oaths prohibited by law.

5. That the civil equality secured to all American citizens by articles 13th, 14th and 15th of our

amended Constitution should be preserved inviolate.

6. That arbitration of differences with nations is the most direct and sure method of securing and perpetuating a permanent peace.

7. That to cultivate the intellect without improving the morals of men is to make mere adepts and experts; therefore, the Bible should

be associated with books of science and literature in all our educational institutions.

8. That land and other monopolies should be discountenanced.

9. That the Government should furnish the people with an ample and sound currency and a return to specie payment as soon as practicable.

10. The maintenance of the public credit, protection to all loyal citizens and justice to Indians, are essential to the honor and safety of

our Nation.

11. And, finally, we demand for the American people the abolition of electoral colleges, and a direct vote for President and Vice-President of the United States.

Prohibition Reform Platform.

The Prohibition Reform party of the United States, organized in the name of the people, to revive, enforce and perpetuate in the Government the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, submit, in this centennial year of the Republic, for the suffrages of all good citizens, the following platform of national reforms and

measures:

1. The legal prohibition in the District of Columbia, the Territories, and in every other place subject to the laws of Congress, of the importation, exportation, manufacture, and traffic of all alcoholic beverages, as high crime against society; an amendment of the National Constitution, to render these prohibitory measures universal and permanent; and the adoption of treaty stipulations with foreign powers, to prevent the importation and exportation of all alcoholic beverages.

2. The abolition of class legislation, and of special privileges in the Government, and the adoption of equal suffrage and eligibility to office, without distinction of race, religious creed, property or sex.

3. The appropriation of the public lands, in limited quantities, to actual settlers only; the reduction of the rates of inland and ocean postage; of telegraph communication; of railroad and water transportation and travel, to the lowest practical point, by force of laws, wisely and justly framed, with reference, not only to the interest of capital employed, but to the higher claims of the general good.

4. The suppression by laws of lotteries and gambling in gold, stocks, produce, and every form of money and property, and the penal

inhibition of the use of the public mails for advertising schemes of gambling and lotteries.

5. The abolition of those foul enormities, polygamy and the social evil; and the protection of purity, peace and happiness of homes, by ample and efficient legislation.

6. The national observance of the Christian Sabbath, established by laws prohibiting ordinary labor and business in all departments of public service and private employment (works of necessity, charity and religion excepted) on that day.

7. The establishment, by mandatory provisions in national and State constitutions, and by

sites; the practice of strict economy in Government expenses, and a free and thorough investigation into any and all alleged abuses of public

trusts.

Independent Platform (Greenback).

The Independent party is called into existence by the necessities of the people whose industries are prostrated, whose labor is deprived of its just reward by a ruinous policy which the Republican and Democratic parties refuse to change; and, in view of the failure of these parties to furnish relief to the depressed industries of the country, thereby disappointing the just

lic schools for the universal and forced education of all the youth of the land.

8. The free use of the Bible, not as a ground of religious creeds, but as a text-book of the purest morality, the best liberty, and the noblest literature, in our public schools, that our children may grow up in its light, and that its spirit and principles may pervade our Nation.

9. The separation of the Government in all its departments and institutions, including the public schools and all funds for their maintenance, from the control of every religious sect or other association, and the protection alike of all sects by equal laws, with entire freedom of religious faith and worship.

10. The introduction into all treaties hereafter negotiated with foreign governments of a provision for the amicable settlement of international difficulties by arbitration.

II. The abolition of all barbarous modes and instruments of punishment; the recognition of the laws of God and the claims of humanity in the discipline of jails and prisons, and of that higher and wiser civilization worthy of our age and Nation, which regards the reform of criminals as a means for the prevention of crime.

12. The abolition of executive and legislative patronage, and the election of President, VicePresident, United States Senators, and of all civil officers, so far as practicable, by the direct vote of the people.

13. The practice of a friendly and liberal policy to immigrants from all nations, the guarantee to them of ample protection, and of equal rights and privileges.

14. The separation of the money of the Government from all banking institutions. The National Government only should exercise the high prerogative of issuing paper money, and that should be subject to prompt redemption on demand, in gold and silver, the only equal standards of value recognized by the civilized world.

15. The reduction of the salaries of public officers in a just ratio with the decline of wages and market prices; the abolition of sinecures, unnecessary offices, and official fees and perqui

declare our principles, and invite all independent and patriotic men to join our ranks in this movement for financial reform and industrial emancipation.

1. We demand the immediate and unconditional repeal of the specie resumption act of January 14, 1875, and the rescue of our industries from ruin and disaster resulting from its enforcement; and we call upon all patriotic men to organize in every Congressional district of the country, with a view of electing representatives to Congress who will carry out the wishes of the people in this regard and stop the present suicidal and destructive policy of contraction.

2. We believe that a United States note, issued directly by the Government, and convertible, on demand, into United States obligations, bearing a rate of interest not exceeding one cent a day on each one hundred dollars and exchangeable for United States notes at par, will afford the best circulating medium ever devised. Such United States notes should be full legal tenders for all purposes, except for the payment of such obligations as are, by existing contracts, especially made payable in coin; and we hold that it is the duty of the Government to provide such a circulating medium, and insist, in the language of Thomas Jefferson, that "bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulation restored to the Nation, to whom it belongs."

3. It is the paramount duty of the Government, in all its legislation, to keep in view the full development of all legitimate business, agricultural, mining, manufacturing and commercial.

4. We most earnestly protest against any further issue of gold bonds for sale in foreign markets, by which we would be made, for a long period, "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to foreigners, especially as the American people would gladly and promptly take at par all bonds the Government may need to sell, provided they are made payable at the option of the holder, and bearing interest at 3.65 per cent. per annum, or even a lower rate.

5. We further protest against the sale of Government bonds for the purpose of purchasing silver to be used as a substitute for our more convenient and less fluctuating fractional currency, which, although well calculated to enrich owners of silver mines, yet in operation it will still further oppress, in taxation, an already overburdened people.

Republican Platform.

When, in the economy of Providence, this land was to be purged of human slavery, and when the strength of the Government of the people, by the people and for the people, was to be demonstrated, the Republican party came into power. Its deeds have passed into history, and we look back to them with pride. Incited by their memories to high aims for the good of our country and mankind, and looking to the future with unfaltering courage, hope and purpose, we, the representatives of the party, in national convention assembled, make the following declaration of principles:

1. The United States of America is a nation, not a league. By the combined workings of the National and State Governments, under their respective constitutions, the rights of every citizen are secured at home and abroad and the common welfare promoted.

2. The Republican party has preserved these governments to the hundredth anniversary of the Nation's birth, and they are now embodiments of the great truths spoken at its cradle"That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that for the attainment of these ends governments have been instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Until these truths are cheerfully obeyed, or, if need be, vigorously enforced, the work of the Republican party is unfinished.

3. The permanent pacification of the Southern section of the Union and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their rights is a duty to which the Republican party stands sacredly pledged. The power to provide for the enforcement of the principles embodied in the recent Constitutional amendments is vested, by those amendments, in the Congress of the United States; and we declare it to be the solemn obligation of the legislative and executive departments of the Government to put into immediate and vigorous exercise all their Constitutional powers for removing any just causes of discontent on the part of any class, and for securing to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political and public rights. To this end we imperatively demand a Congress and a Chief

Executive whose courage and fidelity to these duties shall not falter until these results are placed beyond dispute or recall.

4. In the first act of Congress signed by President Grant the National Government assumed to remove any doubt of its purpose to discharge all just obligations to the public creditors and "solemnly pledged its faith to make provision at the earliest practicable period for the redemption of the United States notes in coin." Commercial prosperity, public morals and national credit demand that this promise be fulfilled by a continuous and steady progress to specie pay

ment.

5. Under the Constitution the President and heads of departments are to make nominations for office, the Senate is to advise and consent to appointments and the House of Representatives is to accuse and prosecute faithless officers. The best interest of the public service demand that these distinctions be respected; that Senators and Representatives who may be judges and accusers should not dictate appointments to office. The invariable rule in appointment should have reference to the honesty, fidelity and capacity of the appointees, giving to the party in power those places when harmony and vigor of administration require its policy to be represented, but permitting all others to be filled by persons selected with sole reference to the efficiency of the public service and the right of all citizens to share in the honor of rendering faithful service to the country.

6. We rejoice in the quickened conscience of the people concerning political affairs, and will hold all public officers to a rigid responsibility, and engage that the prosecution and punishment of all who betray official trusts shall be swift, thorough and unsparing.

7. The public school system of the several States is the bulwark of the American Republic, and with a view to its security and permanence we recommend an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, forbidding the application of any public funds or property for the benefit of any schools or institutions under sectarian control.

8. The revenue necessary for current expenditures and the obligations of the public debt must be largely derived from duties upon importations, which, so far as possible, should be adjusted to promote the interests of American labor and advance the prosperity of the whole country.

9. We reaffirm our opposition to further grants of the public lands to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be devoted to free homes for the people.

Io. It is the imperative duty of the Government so to modify existing treaties with European governments, that the same protection

shall be afforded to the adopted American citizen that is given to the native-born; and that all necessary laws should be passed to protect emigrants, in the absence of power in the States, for that purpose.

11. It is the immediate duty of Congress to fully investigate the effect of the immigration and importation of Mongolians upon the moral and material interest of the country.

12. The Republican party recognizes with approval the substantial advances recently made toward the establishment of equal rights for women by the many important amendments effected by Republican legislatures in the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives, mothers, and widows, and by the appointment and election of women to the superintendence of education, charities and other public trusts. The honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights, privileges, and immunities, should be treated with respectful consideration.

13. The Constitution confers upon Congress Sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their Government; and in the exercise of this power it is the right and duty of Congress to prohibit and extirpate, in the Territories, that relic of barbarism-polygamy; and we demand such legislation as shall secure this end and the supremacy of American institutions in all the Territories.

14. The pledges which the Nation has given to her soldiers and sailors must be fulfilled, and a grateful people will always hold those who imperiled their lives for the country's preservation in the kindest remembrance.

15. We sincerely deprecate all sectional feeling and tendencies. We, therefore, note with deep solicitude that the Democratic party counts, as its chief hope of success, upon the electoral vote of a united South, secured through the efforts of those who were recently arrayed against the Nation; and we invoke the earnest attention of the country to the grave truth that a success thus achieved would reopen sectional strife and imperil national honor and human rights.

16. We charge the Democratic party with being the same in character and spirit as when it sympathized with treason; with making its control of the House of Representatives the triumph and opportunity of the Nation's recent foes; with reasserting and applauding in the National Capitol, the sentiments of irrepentant rebellion; with sending Union soldiers to the rear, and promoting Confederate soldiers to the front; with deliberately proposing to repudiate the plighted faith of the Government; with being equally false and imbecile upon the overshadowing financial questions; with thwarting the ends of justice by its partisan mismanagement and obstruction of investigation; with proving itself

through the period of its ascendancy in the lower house of Congress utterly incompetent to administer the Government; and we warn the country against trusting a party thus alike unworthy, recreant and incapable.

17. The national administration merits commendation for its honorable work in the management of domestic and foreign affairs, and President Grant deserves the continued hearty gratitude of the American people for his patriotism and his eminent services in war and in peace.

18. We present, as our candidates for PresiIdent and Vice-President of the United States, two distinguished statesmen of eminent ability and character, and conspicuously fitted for those high offices, and we confidently appeal to the American people to entrust the administration of their public affairs to Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler.

Democratic Platform.

We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States, in national convention assembled, do hereby declare the administration of the Federal Government to be in urgent need of immediate reform; do hereby enjoin upon the nominees of this convention and of the Democratic party in each State, a zealous effort and co-operation to this end; and do hereby appeal to our fellow-citizens of every former political connection to undertake, with us, this first and most pressing patriotic duty.

For the Democracy of the whole country we do here reaffirm our faith in the permanence of the Federal Union, our devotion to the Constitution of the United States, with its amendments, universally accepted as a final settlement of the controversies that engineered civil war, and do here record our steadfast confidence in the perpetuity of republican self-government.

In absolute acquiescence in the will of a majority-the vital principle of republics; in the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; in the total separation of church and State, for the sake alike of civil and religious freedom; in the equality of all citizens before just laws of their own enactment; in the liberty of individual conduct, unvexed by sumptuary laws; in the faithful education of the rising generation, that they may preserve, enjoy and transmit these best conditions of human happiness and hopewe behold the noblest products of a hundred years of changeful history; but while upholding the bond of our Union and great charter of these our rights, it behooves a free people to practice also that eternal vigilance which is the price of

liberty.

Reform is necessary to rebuild and establish in the hearts of the whole people the Union, eleven years ago happily rescued from the danger of a secession of States, but now to be saved

from a corrupt centralism which, after inflicting upon ten States the rapacity of carpet-bag tyranny, has honeycombed the offices of the Federal Government itself with incapacity, waste and fraud; infected States and municipalities with the contagion of misrule, and locked fast the prosperity of an industrious people in the paralysis of "hard times."

Reform is necessary to establish a sound currency, restore the public credit, and maintain the national honor.

We denounce the failure, for all these eleven years of peace, to make good the promise of the legal tender notes, which are a changing standard of value in the hands of the people, and the non-payment of which is a disregard of the plighted faith of the Nation.

We denounce the improvidence which, in eleven years of peace, has taken from the people, in federal taxes, thirteen times the whole amount of the legal-tender notes, and squandered four times their sum in useless expense without accumulating any reserve for their redemption. We denounce the financial imbecility and immorality of that party which, during eleven years of peace, has made no advance toward resumption, no preparation for resumption, but, instead, has obstructed resumption by wasting our resources and exhausting all our surplus income; and, while annually professing to intend a speedy return to specie payments, has annually enacted fresh hindrances thereto. As such hindrance we denounce the resumption clause of 1875, and we here demand its repeal. We demand a judicious system of preparation, by public economies, by official retrenchments, and by wise finance, which shall enable the Nation soon to assure the whole world of its perfect ability and of its perfect readiness to meet any of its promises at the call of the creditor entitled to payment. We believe such a system, well devised and, above all, entrusted to competent hands for execution, creating at no time an artificial scarcity of currency, and at no time alarming the public mind into a withdrawal of that vaster machinery of credit by which 95 per cent. of all business transactions are performed; a system open, public, and inspiring general confidence, would, from the day of its adoption, bring healing on its wings to all Our harassed industries-set in motion the Wheels of commerce, manufactures, and the mechanic arts-restore employment to laborand renew, in all its natural sources, the prosperity of the people.

Reform is necessary in the sense and modes of Federal taxation, to the end that capital may be set free from distrust and labor lightly burdened.

We denounce the present tariff, levied upon nearly four thousand articles, as a masterpiece

of injustice, inequality and false pretense. It yields a dwindling, not a yearly rising, revenue. It has impoverished many industries, to subsidize a few. It prohibits imports that might purchase products of American labor. It has degraded American commerce from the first to an inferior rank on the high seas. It has cut down the sales of American manufactures at home and abroad, and depleted the returns of American agriculture-an industry followed by half our people. It costs the people five times more than it produces to the Treasury, obstructs the processes of production, and wastes the fruits of labor. It promotes fraud, fosters smuggling, enriches dishonest officials, and bankrupts honest merchants. We demand that all custom-house taxation shall be only for revenue.

Reform is necessary in the scale of public expense-Federal, State and municipal. Our Federal taxation has swollen from sixty millions gold, in 1860, to four hundred and fifty millions currency, in 1870; our aggregate taxation from one hundred and fifty-four millions gold, in 1860, to seven hundred and thirty millions currency, in 1870 or, in one decade, from less than five dollars per head to more than eighteen dollars per head. Since the peace, the people have paid to their tax-gatherers more than thrice the sum of the national debt, and more than twice that sum for the Federal Government alone. We demand a vigorous frugality in every department and from every officer of the Government.

Reform is necessary to put a stop to the profligate waste of public lands, and their diversion from actual settlers, by the party in power, which has squandered 200,000,000 of acres upon railroads alone, and, out of more than thrice that aggregate, has disposed of less than a sixth directly to tillers of the soil.

Reform is necessary to correct the omission of a Republican Congress, and the errors of our treaties and our diplomacy which have stripped our fellow-citizens of foreign birth and kindred race, recrossing the Atlantic, of the shield of American citizenship, and have exposed our brethren of the Pacific coast to the incursions of a race not sprung from the same great parent stock, and in fact now, by law, denied citizenship through naturalization, as being neither accustomed to the traditions of a progressive civilization nor exercised in liberty under equal laws. We denounce the policy which thus discards the liberty-loving German and tolerates a revival of the coolie trade in Mongolian women, imported for immoral purposes, and Mongolian men, held to perform servile labor contracts, and demand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within Constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race.