Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

The nomination was promptly made unanimous. The following platform was unanimously adopted:

The Republican party in national convention assembled, at the end of twenty years since the Federal Government was first committed to its charge, submits to the people of the United States this brief report of its administration. It suppressed the Rebellion which had armed nearly a million of men to subvert the national authority. It reconstructed the Union of the States with freedom instead of slavery as its corner-stone. It transformed four millions of human beings from the likeness of things to the rank of citizens. It relieved Congress from the infamous work of hunting fugitive slaves, and charged it to see that slavery does not exist. It has raised the value of our paper currency from thirty-eight per cent. to the par of gold. It has restored upon a solid basis payment in coin for all the national obligations, and has given us a currency absolutely good and equal in every part of our extended country. It has lifted the credit of the nation from the point where six per cent. bonds sold at eighty-six per cent. to that where four per cent. bonds are eagerly sought at a premium. Under its administration railways have increased from thirty-one thousand miles in 1860 to more than eighty-two thousand miles in 1879. Our foreign trade has increased from seven hundred million dollars to one billion, one hundred and fifty million dollars in the same time, and our exports, which were twenty million dollars less than our imports in 1860, were two hundred and sixty-four million more than our imports in 1879. Without resorting to loans, it has, since the war closed, defrayed the ordinary expenses of government besides the accruing interest on the public debt, and has annually disbursed more than thirty million dollars for soldiers’ pensions. It has paid eight hundred and eighty-eight million dollars of the public debt, and, by refunding the balance at lower rates, has reduced the annual interest charge from nearly one hundred and fifty-one million dollars to less than eighty-nine million dollars. All the industries of the country have revived, labor is in demand, wages have increased, and throughout the entire country there is evidence of a coming prosperity greater than we have ever enjoyed.

Upon this record the Republican party asks for the continued confidence and support of the people, and this convention submits for their approval the following statement of the principles and purposes which will continue to guide and inspire its efforts:

1. We affirm that the work of the last twenty-one years has been such as to commend itself to the favor of the nation, and that the fruits of the costly victories which we have achieved through immense difficulties should be preserved; that the peace regained should be cherished; that the dissevered Union, now happily restored, should be perpetuated, and that the liberties secured to this generation should be transmitted undiminished to future generations; that the order established and the credit acquired should never be impaired; that the pensions promised should be extinguished by the full payment of every dollar thereof; that the reviving industries should be further promoted, and that the commerce, already so great, should be steadily encouraged.

2. The Constitution of the United States is a supreme law, and not a mere contract; out of confederated 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 tribunals.

3. The work of popular education is one left to the care of the several States, but it is the duty of the National Government to aid that work to the extent of its constitutional duty. The intelligence of the nation is but the aggregate of the intelligence in the several States, and the destiny of the nation must be guided, not by the genius of any one State, but by the average genius of all.

4. The Constitution wisely forbids Congress to make any law respecting an establishment of religion, but it is idle to hope that the nation can be protected against the influences of sectarianism while each State is exposed to its domination. We therefore recommend that the Constitution be so amended as to lay the same prohibition upon the Legislature of each State, and to forbid the appropriation of public funds to the support of sectarian schools.

5. We affirm 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; and that we esteem it the duty of Congress to develop and improve our watercourses 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 hour of battle are undiminished by the lapse of the 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.

6. Since the authority to regulate immigration and intercourse between the United States and foreign nations rests with Congress, or with the United States and its treaty-making powers, the Republican party, regarding the unrestricted immigration of the Chinese as an evil of great magnitude, invoke the exercise of those powers to restrain and limit that immigration by the enactment of such just, humane and reasonable provisions as will produce that result.

7. That the purity and patriotism which characterized the earlier career of Rutherford B. Hayes in peace and war, and which guided the thoughts of our immediate predecessors to him for a Presidential candidate, have continued to inspire him in his career as Chief Executive, and that history will accord to his administration the honors which are due to an efficient, just, and courteous discharge of the public business, and will honor his interposition between the people and proposed partisan laws.