12th. The maintenance and enforcement of all laws constitutionally enacted, until said laws shall be repealed, or shall be declared null and void by competent judicial authority.
13th. Opposition to the reckless and unwise policy of the present administration in the general management of our national affairs, and more especially as shown in removing "Americans" (by designation) and conservatives in principle, from office, and placing foreigners and ultraists in their places: as shown in a truckling subserviency to the stronger, and an insolent and cowardly bravado toward the weaker powers: as shown in reöpening sectional agitation, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise: as shown in granting to unnaturalized foreigners the right of suffrage in Kansas and Nebraska: as shown in its vacillating course on the Kansas and Nebraska question: as shown in the corruptions which pervade some of the departments of the government: as shown in disgracing meritorious naval officers through prejudice or caprice; and as shown in the blundering mismanagement of our foreign relations.
14th. Therefore, to remedy existing evils, and prevent the disastrous consequences otherwise resulting therefrom, we would build up the "American party" upon the principles hereinbefore stated.
15th. That each State Council shall have authority to amend their several constitutions, so as to abolish the several degrees, and institute a pledge of honor, instead of other obligations, for fellowship and admission into the party.
16th. A free and open discussion of all political principles embraced in our platform.
The Hon. Mr. Watkins, a renegade from the American ranks, in East Tennessee, delivered a speech in Congress on the 6th of May, 1856; which speech we find reported in the Washington Union—a speech which betrays an utter ignorance of the point he undertook to discuss. It is due to his betrayed constituents that we should expose his ignorance, and the blundering fallacy of his attempts to justify his turning Locofoco Cataline Judas Sag-Nicht! He says, as reported by his political organ-grinder:
"But, sir, the platform recently adopted by the Philadelphia Convention cannot receive my approbation. I cannot support Mr. Fillmore, or any other distinguished Whig, upon that platform. The only solitary plank in the Philadelphia platform of June, 1855, was the twelfth section—that section which denied to Congress the right to interfere with slavery in the Territories, declaring the doctrine of non-intervention, and of popular sovereignty in the Territories. But, sir, that plank in the platform was stricken out by the convention recently held, and the sixth resolution of the platform then adopted substituted in its place. And what does that resolution endorse? Is there any non-intervention in the sixth resolution of the Philadelphia platform? Is there any denial of the right of Congress to interfere upon the subject of slavery in the sixth resolution of the Philadelphia platform? Certainly not."
In lieu of the June platform, we have this February platform. The June platform contained no such denial to Congress, as is here alleged by Mr. Watkins, of the right to interfere with slavery in the Territories! And it is marvellous, indeed, that a grave Member of Congress should undertake to discuss Platforms, which he had either never read, or the purport of which, if he had ever read them, he had either wholly forgotten, or lacked the sense to comprehend! The twelfth section of the June Platform says:
"And expressly pretermitting any expression of opinion upon the power of Congress to establish or prohibit slavery in any Territory, it is the sense of this National Council, that Congress ought not to legislate upon the subject of slavery within the Territories of the United States."
Thus, instead of denying to Congress the right to interfere with slavery in the Territories, as erroneously and recklessly charged by this new-born Democrat, all opinion on that subject was "expressly pretermitted" in the June Platform! Mr. Watkins was in such a hurry to join the Forney, Pierce, and Catholic Democracy, that he did not stop to examine even the Platform which most disgusted him! But this is not the worst blunder which he committed in that speech. He turned to the new Platform, and asked, with an air of triumph: