Walter Raleigh Houghton

“ 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.” ”

“ The civil service of the government has become a mere instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition, and an object of selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government. We, therefore, regard a thorough reform of the civil service as one of the most pressing necessities of the hour; that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only valid claims to public employment ”

“ We demand absolute democratic rules for the government of Congress, placing all representatives of the people upon an equal footing, and taking away from committees a veto power greater than that of the President.
Thirteenth. We demand a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, instead of a government of the bondholder, by the bondholder, and for the bondholder; and we denounce every attempt to stir up sectional strife as an effort to conceal monstrous crimes against the people. ”

“ Resolved, That a uniform system of internal improvements, sustained and supported by the general government, is calculated to secure, in the highest degree, the harmony, the strength and permanency of the republic.
Resolved, That the indiscriminate removal of public officers for a mere difference of political opinion, is a gross abuse of power; and that the doctrine lately boldly preached in the United States Senate, that “to the victors belong the spoils of the vanquished,” is detrimental to the interests, corrupting to the morals, and dangerous to the liberties of the country. ”

“ We have no quarrel with individuals, wage no war on classes, but only against vicious institutions. We are not content to endure further discipline from our present actual rulers, who, having dominion over money, over transportation, over land and labor, over the press and the machinery of government, wield unwarrantable power over our institutions and over life and property. ”

“ That the constitution, in giving Congress the power to borrow money, to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, never intended that the men who loaned their money for an interest-consideration should be preferred to the soldiers and sailors who periled their lives and shed their blood on land and sea in defense of their country; and we condemn the cruel class legislation of the Republican party, which, while professing great gratitude to the soldier, has most unjustly discriminated against him and in favor of the bondholder. ”

“ Resolved, That standing, as the Whig party does, on the broad and firm platform of the constitution, braced up by all its inviolable and sacred guarantees and compromises, and cherished in the affections, because protective of the interests of the people, we are proud to have as the exponent of our opinions, one who is pledged to construe it by the wise and generous rules which Washington applied to it, and who has said—and no Whig desires any other assurance—that he will make Washington’s administration the model of his own. ”

“ Fillmore as a candidate, we look to him as a well tried and faithful friend of the constitution and the Union, eminent alike for his wisdom and firmness—for his justice and moderation in our foreign relations—for his calm and pacific temperament, so well becoming the head of a great nation—for his devotion to the constitution in its true spirit—his inflexibility in executing the laws ”

“ Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none; the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administration for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwark against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people ”

“ The administration of the government and the execution of the laws are through political parties; and we arraign the Republican party, which has been in continuous power in the nation for twenty years, as being false to duty, as false to loudly-proclaimed principles of equal justice to all and special favors to none, and of protection to the weak and dependent, insensible to the mischief which the trade in liquor has constantly inflicted upon industry, trade, commerce, and the social happiness of the people ”

“ We reaffirm the belief, avowed in 1876, that the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should so discriminate as to favor American labor; that no further grant of the public domain should be made to any railway or other corporation; that slavery having perished in the states, its twin barbarity—polygamy—must die in the territories; that everywhere the protection accorded to citizens of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption. ”

“ That we esteem it the duty of Congress to develop and improve our water-courses and harbors, but insist that further subsidies to private persons or corporations must cease. That the obligations of the republic to the men who preserved its integrity in the day of battle are undiminished by the lapse of fifteen years since their final victory—to do them perpetual honor is, and shall forever be, the grateful privilege and sacred duty of the American people. ”

“ All these abuses, wrongs, and crimes—the product of sixteen years’ ascendency of the Republican party—create a necessity for reform, confessed by the Republicans themselves; but their reformers are voted down in convention and displaced from the cabinet. The party’s mass of honest voters is powerless to resist the 80,000 office-holders, its leaders and guides.
Reform can only be had by a peaceful civic revolution. We demand a change of system, a change of administration, a change of parties, that we may have a change of measures and of men. ”

“ Equal, steady, and complete enforcement of the laws, and protection of all our citizens in the enjoyment of all privileges and immunities guaranteed by the constitution, are the first duties of the nation. The danger of a solid south can only be averted by the faithful performance of every promise which the nation made to the citizen. The execution of the laws, and the punishment of all those who violate them, are the only safe methods by which an enduring peace can be secured, and genuine prosperity established throughout the south. Whatever promises the nation makes, the nation must perform ”

“ We profoundly deplore the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln, and regret the accession to the presidency of Andrew Johnson, who has acted treacherously to the people who elected him and the cause he was pledged to support; who has usurped high legislative and judicial functions; who has refused to execute the laws; who has used his high office to induce other officers to ignore and violate the laws; who has employed his executive powers to render insecure the property, the peace, liberty, and life of the citizen ”

“ 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 labor—and renew, in all its natural sources, the prosperity of the people. ”

“ That the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the Constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the democratic faith; and every attempt to abridge the privilege of becoming citizens and owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute books. ”

“ We declare unqualified hostility to bank notes and paper money as a circulating medium, because gold and silver is the only safe and constitutional currency; hostility to any and all monopolies by legislation, because they are violations of equal rights of the people; hostility to the dangerous and unconstitutional creation of vested rights or prerogatives by legislation, because they are usurpations of the people’s sovereign rights ”

“ After the most solemn and unanimous pledge of both Houses of Congress to prosecute the war exclusively for the maintenance of the government and the preservation of the Union under the constitution, it has repeatedly violated that most sacred pledge under which alone was rallied that noble volunteer army which carried our flag to victory. ”

“ That justice and sound policy forbid the Federal government to foster one branch of industry to the detriment of another, or to cherish the interests of one portion of our common country; that every citizen and every section of the country has a right to demand and insist upon an equality of rights and privileges, and a complete and ample protection of persons and property from domestic violence and foreign aggression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That by the uniform application of the Democratic principles to the organization of territories and the admission of new states, with or without domestic slavery, as they may elect, the equal rights of all the states will be preserved intact, the original compacts of the constitution maintained inviolate, and the perpetuity and expansion of the Union insured to its utmost capacity of embracing, in peace and harmony, every future American state that may be constituted or annexed with a republican form of government. ”

“ Whereas, We have assembled in convention, as a union of freemen, for the sake of freedom, forgetting all past political difference, in a common resolve to maintain the rights of free labor against the aggression of the slave power, and to secure free soil to a free people ”

“ 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. ”

“ We charge upon the Democratic party the habitual sacrifice of patriotism and justice to a supreme and insatiable lust for office and patronage. That to obtain possession of the national and state governments, and the control of place and position, they have obstructed all efforts to promote the purity and to conserve the freedom of suffrage; have devised fraudulent certifications and returns; have labored to unseat lawfully-elected members of Congress, to secure, at all hazards, the vote of a majority of the states in the House of Representatives ”

“ That we recognize the great principles laid down in the immortal Declaration of Independence, as the true foundation of democratic government; and we hail with gladness every effort toward making these principles a living reality on every inch of American soil. ”

“ That as both history and experience teach us that power ever seeks to perpetuate itself by every and all means, and that its prolonged possession in the hands of one person is always dangerous to the interests of a free people, and believing that the spirit of our organic laws and the stability and safety of our free institutions are best obeyed on the one hand, and secured on the other, by a regular constitutional change in the chief of the country at each election ”

“ We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States, in national convention assembled at Cincinnati, proclaim the following principles as essential to just government:
1. We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political. ”

“ That it is the duty of every branch of the government to enforce and practice the most rigid economy in conducting our public affairs, and that no more revenue ought to be raised than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government and gradual but certain extinction of the public debt. ”

“ Reform is necessary in the sum 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 pretence. It yields a dwindling, not a yearly rising, revenue. It has impoverished many industries to subsidize a few. It prohibits imports that might purchase the products of American labor. It has degraded American commerce from the first to an inferior rank on the high seas. ”

“ That while we acknowledge the pure patriotism and profound statesmanship of those patriots who laid the foundation of this government, securing at once the rights of the states severally and their inseparable union by the federal constitution, we would not merely garnish the sepulchres of our republican fathers, but we do hereby renew our pledges of solemn fealty to the imperishable principles of civil and religious liberty embodied in the Declaration of Independence and our federal constitution. ”

“ Reform is necessary in the civil service. Experience proves that efficient, economical conduct of the governmental business is not possible if its civil service be subject to change at every election, be a prize fought for at the ballot-box, be a brief reward of party zeal, instead of posts of honor assigned for proved competency, and held for fidelity in the public employ; that the dispensing of patronage should neither be a tax upon the time of all our public men, nor the instrument of their ambition. ”

“ The state governments should be held secure to their reserved rights, and the General Government sustained in its constitutional powers, and that the Union should be revered and watched over as the palladium of our liberties. ”

“ If a politician wants to know whether an opposing party has changed ground, he will find every authorized declaration of opinions and politics ready at hand. If he desires to know the status of parties in Congress at any given time he can find it as easily as a word in a dictionary. In short, not to multiply illustrations, the work will be found to be a perfect “hand-book” of political history, as handy as a cyclopædia, and as complete within its province. ”