refusal of the Democratic House of Representatives, for partisan purposes, to favorably consider these bills, is a willful violation of the sacred American principle of local self government and merits the condemnation of all just men. The pending bills in the Senate for acts to enable the people of Washington, North Dakota and Montana territories to form Constitutions and establish State Governments, should be passed without unnecessary delay. The Republican party pledges itself to do all in its power to facilitate the admission of the Territories of New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho and Arizona to the enjoyment of selfgovernment as States, such of them as are not qualified as soon as they may become so. The political power of the Mormon church in the Territories, as exercised in the past, is a menace to free institutions, a danger no longer to be suffered;

Therefore, we pledge the Republican party to appropriate legislation asserting the sovereignty of the Nation in all Territories where the same is questioned, and in furtherance of that end to place upon the statute books legislation stringent enough to divorce the political from the ecclesiastical power, and thus stamp out the attendant wickedness of polygamy.

The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic Administration in its efforts to demonetize silver.

We demand the reduction of letter postage to one cent per ounce.

In a Republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign and the official the servant; where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign-the people-should possess intelligence. The free school is the promotor of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation; the State or nation, or both combined, should support free institutions of learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education.

We earnestly recommend that prompt action be taken by Congress in the enactment of such legislation as will best secure the rehabilitation of the American mer chant marine, and we protest against the passage by Congress of a free ship bill, as calculated to work injustice to labor by lessening the wages of those engaged in preparing materials as well as those directly employed in our ship yards. We demand appropriations for the early rebuilding of our navy; for the construction of coast fortifications and modern ordnance and other approved modern means of defence for the protection of our defenceless harbors and cities; for the payment of just pensions to our soldiers; for necessary works of national importance in the improvement of harbors and the channels of internal, coastwise and foreign com

merce; for the encouragement of the shipping interests of the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific States, as well as for the payment of the maturing public debt. This policy will give employment to our labor, activity to our various industries, increase the security of our country, promote trade, open new and direct markets for our produce, and cheapen the cost of transportation. We affirm this to be far better for our country than the Democratic policy of loaning the Government's money without interest to pet banks."

The conduct of foreign affairs by the present administration has been distinguished by its inefficiency and its cowardice. Having withdrawn from the Senate all pending treaties affected by Republican administrations for the removal of foreign burdens and restrictions upon our commerce and for its extension into better markets, in has neither effected nor proposed any others in their stead. Professing adherence to the Monroe doctrine, it has seen with idle complacency the extension of foreign influence in Central America and of foreign trade everywhere among our neighbors. It has refused to charter, sanction or encourage any American organization for constructing the Nicaragua canal, a work of vital importance to the maintenance of the Monroe doctrine and of our national influence in Central and South America, and necessary for the development of trade with our Pacific territory, with South America and with the islands and further coasts of the Pacific Ocean.

We arraign the present Democratic administration for its weak and unpatriotic treatment of the fisheries question, and its pusillanimous surrender of the essential privileges to which our fishing vessels are entitled in Canadian ports under the treaty of 1818, the reciprocal maritime legislation of 1830, and the comity of nations, and which Canadian fishing vessels receive in ports of the United States.

We condemn the policy of the present administration and the Democratic majority in Congress towards our fisheries as unfriendly and conspicuously unpatriotic, and as tending to destroy a valuable national industry and an indispensable resource of defense against a foreign enemy.

The name of American applies alike to all citizens of the Republic, and imposes upon all alike the same obligation to obedience to the laws. At the same time that citizenship is and must be the panoply and safeguard of him who wears it, and protect him, whether high or low, rich or poor, in all his civil rights, it should and must af ford him protection at home and follow and protect him abroad in whatever land he may be on a lawful errand.

The men who abandoned the Republican party in 1884 and continue to adhere to the Democratic party have deserted not only the cause of honest government, of

political and public periment of war, rights should be es- during which, untablished and effec-der the pretense of tually maintained a military necessity throughout the Un- or war-power higher ion by efficient and than the Constituappropriate State tion, the Constituand Federal Legis- tion itself has been lation. Neither the disregarded in every law nor its adminis-part, and public libtration should ad-erty and private mit any discrimina- right alike trodden tion in respect of down, and the macitizens by reasons terial prosperity of of race, creed, color the country essenor previous condi- tially impaired, justion of servitude. tice, humanity, lib[Plank 3. erty, and the public 1876-The United welfare demand that States of America is immediate efforts be a Nation not a made for a cessation league. By the com- of hostilities, with a bined workings of view to the ultimate the National and convention of the State Governments, States, or other under their respec- peaceable means, tive constitutions, to the end that, at the rights of every citizen are secured at home or abroad, and the common welfare promoted.

1880-The constitution of the United States is a supreme law and not a mere contract. Out of confederate States it made a sovereign nation. Some powers are denied to the nation, while others are denied to the States, but the boundary between the powers delegated and those reserved is to be determined by the National, and not by the State tribunal. [Cheers.] [Plank 2.

the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.

[1st resolution.

REPUBLICAN,

authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that laying aside all differences of political opinions, we pledge ourselves as Union men, animated by a common sentiment, and aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the Government, in quelling by force of arms the rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment due to thei crimes the rebels and traitors arrayel against it.

That we approve the determination of the Government of the United States not to compromise with rebels, or to offer them any terms of peace, except such as may be

based upon an unconditional surrender of their hostility and a return to their just allegiance to the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that we call upon the Government to maintain this position and to prosecute the war with the utmost possible vigor to the complete suppression of the rebellion, in full reliance upon the self-sacrificing patriotism, the heroic valor, and the undying devotion of the American people to the country and its free institutions.

[1st and 2d resolutions.]

tutional rights of the people of Kansas have been fraudulently and violently taken from them; their territory has been invaded by an armed force; spurious and pretended legislative, judicial, and executive officers have been set over them, by whose usurped authority, sustained by the military power of the Government, tyrannical and unconstitutional laws have been enacted and enforced; the right of the people to keep and bear arms has been infringed; test-oaths of an extraordinary and entangling nature have been im- 1860-That when posed as a condition the settlers in a Terof exercising the ritory, having an adright of suffrage equate population, and holding office; form a State Constithe right of an ac- tution, the right of cused person to a sovereignty comspeedy and public mences, and, being trial by an impartial consummated by adjury has been de- mission into the Unnied; the right of ion, they stand on the people to be se- an equal footing with cure in their per- the people of other sons, houses, papers, States; and the State and effects against thus organized ought unreasonable to be admitted into searches and seiz- the Federal Union, ures, has been violated; they have been deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law; that the freedom of speech and of the press has been abridged; the right

whether its constitution prohibits or recognizees the institution of slavery. [Plank 3, Breckinridge, Dem.

1864

1868 After the to choose their rep- most solemn and resentatives has unanimous pledge of been made of no both Houses of Coneffect; murders, rob-gress to prosecute the beries, and arsons war exclusively for have been instigated the maintenance of and encouraged, the Government and and the offenders the preservation of have been allowed the Union under the to go unpunished; Constitution, it [the that all these things Republican party] have been donel has repeatedly vio

REPUBLICAN.

with the knowledge, sanction, and procurement of the present Administration, and that for this high crime against the Consti`tution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign the Administration, the President, his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accessories, either before or after the fact, before the country and before the world; and that it is our fixed purpose to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocious outrages and their accoraplices to a sure and condign punishment. [Plank 3.

1860-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 our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

[Plank 4.

18641868-We congratulate the country on the assured success of the reconstruction policy of Congress, as evinced by the adoption, in the majority of the States lately in rebellion, of constitutions securing equal civil and political rights to all; and it

DEMOCRATIC. lated that most sacred pledge under which alone was rallied that noble volunteer army which carried our flag to victory. Instead of restoring the Union, it has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten States, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and negro supremacy. It has nullified there the right of trial by jury; it has abolished the habeas corpus, that most sacred writ of liberty; it has overthrown the freedom of speech and the press; it has substituted arbitrary seizures and arrests, and military trials and secret star-chamber inquisitions for the constitutional tribunals; it has disregarded in time. of peace the right of the people to be free from searches and seizures; it has entered the post and telegraph offices, and even the private rooms of individuals, and seized their private papers and letters without any spe cific charge or notice of affidavit, as required by the organic law; it has converted the Amercan Capitol into a bastile; it has established a system of spies and official espionage to which no constitutional monarchy of Europe would now dare to resort; it has abolished the right of appeal on important constitutional questions to the supreme judicial tribunals, and threatens to curtail or destroy its original jurisdiction, which is irrevocably

*

is the duty of the vested by the ConGovernment to sus-stitution, while the tain those institu- learned Chief Justions and prevent tice has been subthe people of such jected to the most States from being atrocious calumnies, remitted to a state merely because he of anarchy. would not prostitute his high office to the support of the false and partisan charges preferred against the President. * * Under its repeated assaults the pillars of the Government are rocking on their base, and should it succeed in November next and inaugurate its President, we will meet as a subjected and conquered people, amid the ruins of liberty and the scattered fragments of the Constitution.

1872-Local selfgovernment, with impartial suffrage, vill guard the rights f all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and freedom of persons under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual the largest liberty consistent with public order; for the State selfgovernment, and for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the constitutional limitations of power. Plank 4. 1880-**❝ Home Rule." [Plank 3.