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 President 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 intrust the administration of their public affairs to Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler.
1876.—Democratic Platform.
St. Louis, Mo., June 27.
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 engendered civil war, and do here record our steadfast confidence in the perpetuity of republican self-government.
In absolute acquiescence in the will of the 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 hope—we 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 honey-combed 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.