Reform Republicans in Arkansas

Annual Cyclopedia, 1872, p. 26. In each Southern state, between 1868 and 1872, the reform element in the radical party gradually separated from it. [1872]

And whereas, A large number of persons were indicted in the Federal courts in this State for a most flagrant violation of the election laws, and President Grant, upon the application, and in the interest of such indicted criminals and their accessories, suspended honest and efficient officers, for no other reason than that they would rigorously enforce the law, and allowed and permitted such indicted criminals to designate and name the marshal to select the jury by which they were to be tried, and the attorney to prosecute them for such offences, whereby the criminals were turned loose without punishment, and the law trampled under foot, and fraud and crime encouraged, and has seen fit to take sides with and support the corrupt State-house ring in their iniquities against the people: and whereas, it is now evident that President Grant will receive the nomination for President by the convention of office-holders to be held in Philadelphia: therefore, be it

Resolved, That we emphatically condemn the course of the President, in his intermeddling with Arkansas affairs, in the interest of crime and disorder, and decline to send delegates to the Philadelphia Convention. . .

Resolved, That we most cordially endorse the nomination. of Horace Greeley and B. Gratz Brown, and the platform upon which they stand,.. therefore, to the end that a free people may be disenthralled from the unjust and unlawful burdens and calamities which are imposed upon them, we cordially invite all the friends of free government, law, order, and justice, to co-operate with us in this fearful but determined conflict which a wronged and a robbed people are waging against corrupt and despotic rulers, under Greeley's rallying cry of "honest men for office, and thieves to the rear."

Anything to Defeat Grant

Annual Cyclopedia, 1872, p. 546. Resolutions of the Mississippi Conservatives.

[1872] RESOLVED, That, to defeat the Administration of President Grant, and restore the Government to the path of freedom, peace, honesty, and economy, we are prepared to lay down all prejudices upon the altar of our common country; and, in obedience to the promptings of duty and patriotism, to clasp hands with the friends of constitutional liberty in the North .. and help to the presidency of the United States Horace Greeley and B. Gratz Brown.

Resolved, That our policy should aim at local self-government and not at centralization; that the civil authority should be supreme over the military; that the writ of habeas corpus should be zealously upheld as the safeguard of personal freedom; that the individual citizen should enjoy the largest liberty consistent with public order, and that there shall be no Federal supervision of the internal policy of the several States and municipalities, but that each shall be left free to enforce the rights and promote the well-being of its inhabitants by such means as the judgment of its people shall prescribe.

Resolved, That it is our solemn conviction that the overthrow of the Administration of President Grant is the one vital necessity of the hour.

Liberal Republican Demands

McPherson, Handbook, 1872, pp. 207, 209. Extracts from the Cincinnati Platform.

[1872]

3. WE demand the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the rebellion, which was finally subdued seven years ago, believing that universal amnesty will result in complete pacification in all sections of the country.

4. Local self-government, with impartial suffrage, will guard the rights of all citizens, more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and the freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for

3.

the individual the largest liberty consistent with public order, for the State self-government, and for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the constitutional limitations of power.

Republican Platform, 1872

McPherson, Handbook, 1872, p. 204. Extracts relating to Reconstruction.

[1872] 2. THE recent amendments of the national Constitution should be cordially sustained because they are right, not merely tolerated because they are law, and should be carried out according to their spirit by appropriate legislation, the enforcement of which can safely be intrusted only to the party that secured those amendments.

3. Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate State and Federal Legislation. Neither the law nor its administration should admit any discrimination in respect of citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude.

12. We hold that Congress and the President have only fulfilled an imperative duty in their measures for the suppression of violent and treasonable organizations in certain lately rebellious regions, and for the protection of the ballot box; and therefore they are entitled to the thanks of the nation.

Politics in Alabama, 1874

Annual Cyclopedia, 1874, p. 15. Conservative platform. The Southern Conservative platforms were remarkably alike in 1874. [1874]

THAT the so-called civil rights bill recently passed by the Federal Senate, and now pending in the House, is a flagrant and dangerous invasion of the ancient and conservative principles of personal liberty and free government, and is a palpable violation of the Federal Constitution, and presents an issue of vital moment to the American people, and calls upon them to decide at the ballot-box whether they will or will not be

coerced to absolute, social as well as political, equality of the negro race with themselves. We view with abhorrence the attempt on the part of the Federal Government to take control of schools, colleges, hotels, railroads, steam-boats, theatres, and graveyards, for the purpose of establishing negro equality, and enforcing it under numerous penalties of fines, damages, and imprisonment.

4. Civil remedies for the protection of civil rights are adequately provided by the common law to all races of men in this State, and added to these are social remedies for social wrongs, which every race and class of men are perfectly left free by the laws to adopt for themselves; so that the negro race has the same means of protecting itself against the invasion of its civil rights under the law, and against intrusion upon its so-called rights and privileges by the white race, that we have to preserve and protect ourselves and families against the intrusion of the negro race. Under these laws, the race to which in the providence of God we belong has achieved an eminence among the people of the world, which is our proud inheritance, and has become to us a trust we cannot resign without dishonor. We therefore denounce as a violation of the letter and spirit of our Constitution, and as dishonoring to the genius of our race, all legislative enactments which attempt to convert into crimes the rules and maxims of our social intercourse, to which we are indebted for the excellence and glory of our civilization, or to punish with degrading penalties our refusal to admit an ignorant and barbarous race to equal participation with our families in our social institutions.

Democratic Views on the Southern Question, 1876 McPherson, Handbook, 1876, pp. 215, 218. Extracts from (1) National Democratic platform, and (2) Tilden's letter of acceptance.

[1876]

[1] 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 tyrannies, has honeycombed 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 industrious people in the paralysis of "hard times."

[2] An accessory cause enhancing the distress in business. is to be found in the systematic and insupportable misgovernment imposed upon the States of the South. Besides the ordinary effects of ignorant and dishonest administration, it has inflicted upon them enormous issues of fraudulent bonds, the scanty avails of which were wasted or stolen, and the existence of which is a public discredit, tending to bankruptcy or repudiation. Taxes, generally oppressive, in some instances have confiscated the entire income of property and totally destroyed its marketable value. It is impossible that these evils should not re-act upon the prosperity of the whole country. The nobler motives of humanity concur with the material interests of all in requiring that every obstacle be removed, to a complete and durable reconciliation between kindred populations once unnaturally estranged, on the basis recognized by the St. Louis platform, of the "Constitution of the United States, with its amendments universally accepted as a final settlement of controversies which engendered civil war."

The Republican Standpoint in 1876

McPherson, Handbook, 1876, p. 210. Extract from Republican platform.

[1876]

THE permanent pacification of the Southern section of the Union and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their rights, is a duty to which the Republican party stands sacredly pledged. The power to provide for the enforcement of the principles embodied in the recent constitutional amendments, is vested by those amend ments in the Congress of the United States, and we declare it to be the solemn obligation of the legislative and executive departments of the Government to put into immediate and vigorous exercise all their constitutional powers for removing