Platform
The 1860 Republican party platform was recommended to the convention by a committee chaired by Judge William Jessup of Pennsylvania, and was adopted unanimously.
The platform contained seventeen declarations of principle, of which ten dealt directly with the issues of free soil principles, slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the preservation of the Union, while seven dealt with other issues. Clauses 12 through 16 of the platform called for a protective tariff, enactment of the Homestead Act, freedom of immigration into the United States and full rights to all immigrant citizens, internal improvements, and the construction of a Pacific railroad.
In addition to the preservation of the Union, all five of these additional promises were enacted by the Thirty-seventh Congress and implemented by Abraham Lincoln or the presidents who immediately succeeded him.
Few of the delegates to the 1860 Republican National Convention were Southerners, and few of these provisions were drawn up so as to appeal to voters of the South.
Read more about this topic: 1860 Republican National Convention
Famous quotes containing the word platform:
“I have rather a strange objection to talking from the back platform of a train.... It changes too often. It moves around and shifts its ground too often. I like a platform that stays put.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I have never yet spoken from a public platform about women in industry that someone has not said, “But things are far better than they used to be.” I confess to impatience with persons who are satisfied with a dangerously slow tempo of progress for half of society in an age which requires a much faster tempo than in the days that “used to be.” Let us use what might be instead of what has been as our yardstick!”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)