III. Independent Republicans assert that a political party is a co-operation of voters to secure the practical enactment into legislation of political convictions set forth as its platform. Every voter accepting that platform is a member of that party; any representative of that party opposing the principles or evading the promises of its platform forfeits the support of its voters. No voter should be held by the action or nomination of any caucus or convention of his party against his private judgment. It is his duty to vote against bad measures and unfit men, as the only means of obtaining good ones; and if his party no longer represents its professed principles in its practical workings, it is his duty to vote against it.
IV. Independent Republicans seek good nominations through participation in the primaries and through the defeat of bad nominees; they will labor for the defeat of any local Republican candidate, and, in co-operation with those holding like views elsewhere, for the defeat of any general Republican candidate whom they do not deem fit.
1880. Republican Platform.
Chicago, Illinois, June 2.
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 its brief report of its administration:
It suppressed a 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 million 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 to that where four per cent. bonds are eagerly sought at a premium.
Under its administration railways have increased from 31,000 miles in 1860, to more than 82,000 miles in 1879.
Our foreign trade has increased from $700,000,000 to $1,150,000,000 in the same time; and our exports, which were $20,000,000 less than our imports in 1860, were $264,000,000 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 disbursed, annually, over $30,000,000 for soldiers’ pensions. It has paid $888,000,000 of the public debt, and, by refunding the balance at lower rates, has reduced the annual interest charge from nearly $151,000,000 to less than $89,000,000.