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may hesitate long as to which declaration of principles he should support.

It has been customary ever since the early days of the government for political parties, or those who desire to form parties, to set forth a platform of principles and appeal to all who believe in such principles to support the candidates representing them. The political wayside is strewn with the wrecks of platforms, candidates, and parties. Some organizations lived to fulfill their mission and died a natural death; some seemed to be stillborn; while others founded on good principles and supported by good and able men struggled long and hard only to go down at last, leaving their mission unaccomplished.

The Federalists, the earliest political party organized after the achievement of liberty, died in 1820 after their candidate for President, John Quincy Adams, received one electoral vote out of 235. Though this party had framed the federal constitution; elected Washington twice and John Adams once to the presidency, its glory and strength soon departed. Its opponent, the anti-Federalist party, changed its name to Republican in 1793, and then adopted the name of Democrat in 1805, under which name the party has continued to the present.

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Even in those early days party lines were closely drawn and the contests bitter. The main issues between the Federalists and their opponents may be briefly stated: The Federalists at first desired the adoption of a federal constitution while their opponents wished to retain the Articles of Confederation. insisted on a federal government while the anti-Federalists adhered to the rights of the states and local self-government. After the Constitution was adopted, one party aimed to extend and the other to limit its powers and this controversy has been more or less prominent all down through the hundred years of our constitutional government, the Democratic party holding with greater or less tenacity to the early anti-Federal idea of restricting the powers of the general government, while some of its opponents have favored the more liberal exercise of its authority. The Federalists, though construing the Constitution as having greater powers than admitted by the Republicans,

claimed that it conferred no right to acquire new territory, and they opposed the purchase of Louisiana on the ground that it would give the South a preponderance of territory, and that states constructed west of the Mississippi would injure New England's commerce, so that the admission of the West into the Union would compel the Eastern States to establish an empire of their own. The purchase, however, proved popular and none of the dangers predicted ever followed. The Federalists were charged with being in sympathy with England in the War of 1812, and, whether the insinuation was true or false, it hastened the downfall of the party.

Lack of space forbids giving even a sketch of the many parties that have set sail on the ocean of politics, but it may be interesting to notice briefly some of the principles set forth in the platforms on which they asked the suffrage of the people.

The first platform, or resolutions, as they are called, that attracted general attention was the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 drawn by James Madison, and declaring the "alien and sedition laws" unconstitutional and defining the rights of the states. The principles set forth in these resolutions were made part of many political platforms up to the close of our Civil War.

In 1800 the Federalists had no platform but a Republican platform was adopted in Congressional caucus, the plan at that time being to put Presidential candidates into the field by such a caucus instead of selecting them by a convention of delegates chosen for the purpose. This platform among other things declares in favor of free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. It also favors freedom of speech and press and religion, just as some of the last platforms placed before us.

From 1800 to 1812 no caucuses or conventions were held and no platforms adopted. In 1812 neither the Federalists nor Republicans presented any formal declaration of principles, but the New York wing of the Republican party, dissatisfied with the regular nominee of their party, James Madison, nominated De Witt Clinton on a platform in which opposition is declared against nominating candidates for the presidency by Con

gressional caucuses. A very peculiar resolution for a national political platform is a sarcastic one in this declaration relating to Virginia's monopolizing the business of furnishing the country with presidents. Resolution 3 reads as follows:

"We declare our opposition to all efforts on the part of particular states to monopolize the principal offices of the government, as well because of their certainty to destroy the harmony which ought to prevail among all the constituent parts of the Union, as of their leanings toward a form of oligarchy entirely at variance with the theory of republican government; and, consequently, particular opposition to continuing a citizen of Virginia in the executive office another term, unless she can show that she enjoys a corresponding monopoly of talents and patriotism, after she has been honored with the presidency for twenty out of twenty-four years of our constitutional existence, and when it is obvious that the practice has arrayed the agricultural against the commercial interests of the country."

It further advocated the election of De Witt Clinton as the surest method of relieving the country from all the evils existing and prospective.

The only platform promulgated between 1813 and 1830 was that of the Federalists at Hartford in January, 1815, and which no doubt hastened the downfall of the party, owing to the stand taken in opposition to the war. Among the resolutions was one declaring that no person thereafter naturalized should be eligible as a member of the Senate or House of Representatives of the United States or capable of holding any civil office under the authority of the United States, and another, resolving that the same person shall not be elected President of the United States a second time, and that the President shall not be elected from the same state two terms in succession.

The anti-Masonic party held a meeting at Philadelphia in 1830 for the purpose of calling a national convention, at which a platform was set forth with the single resolution opposing secret societies.

The Democratic national platform for 1832 was adopted at a ratification meeting held at Washington, and is a rather remarkable platform throughout, and would hardly be recognized to-day as having any of the earmarks of a Democratic platform. It resolves that an adequate protection to American

industry is indispensable to the prosperity of the country; and that an abandonment of the policy at this period would be attended with consequences ruinous to the best interests of the nation. It further sets forth that a uniform system of internal improvements, sustained and supported by the general government, is calculated in the highest degree to secure the harmony, the strength, and the permanency of the republic. A very creditable resolution of this same platform, one that has been often repeated but never respected, is the following:

"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."

A review of political platforms discloses the fact that the much condemned monopolies are not new in American politics. In the Locofoco platform adopted in New York in 1836 we find the following:

"We declare unqualified hostility to bank notes and paper money as a circulating medium, because gold and silver are the only safe and constitutional currency; hostility to any and all monopolies by legislation, because they are the usurpations of the people's sovereign rights." In 1839 at Warsaw, N. Y., the Abolitionists held a convention at which they passed the following resolution :

"In our judgment every consideration of duty and expediency which ought to control the action of Christian freemen, requires of the Abolitionists of the United States to organize a distinct and independent political party, embracing all the necessary means for nominating candidates for office and sustaining them by popular suffrage."

The first national platform of the Abolition party was enunciated in 1840. It favored the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and territories, the abolition of the interstate slave trade, and a general opposition to slavery to the full extent of constitutional power.

The Democratic party of 1840, losing sight of the position taken in 1832, declares that the Constitution does not confer upon the general government the power to commence and carry on a system of internal improvements. It also declares that no

more revenue ought to be raised than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government. It contains the two fol

lowing resolutions which, viewed in the stronger light that three decades of experience have furnished, seem inconsistent and ridiculous.

"Resolved, That Congress has no power under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states; and that such states are the sole and proper judges of everything pertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts of Abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our institutions.

Resolved, 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 present privilege of becoming citizens and the owners of soil among us ought to be resisted with the same spirit that swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute book."

The first national platform of the Free Soil party was adopted at Buffalo in 1843. It was made up of twenty-one resolutions and several "whereases," and though the platform declares that the party was not organized for the accomplishment of a single purpose, nineteen of the twenty-one resolutions bear specifically on the question of slavery, and one on the inviolability and sacredness of the freedom of speech and the press-a principle that the early Abolitionists found of rather uncertain sacredness in practice.

The Whig platform of 1844 was summed up as follows:

“Resolved, That these principles may be summed up as comprising a well-regulated national currency; a tariff for revenue to defray the necessary expenses of government, and discriminating with special reference to the protection of the domestic labor of the country; the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of public lands; a single term for the presidency, and a reform of executive usurpations."

In '44 the Democrats reaffirmed nine of the resolutions of '40 and added that the proceeds of the sale of public lands ought to be sacredly applied to the national objects specified in the Con

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