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257 APPeNDIX 2 first Republican platform Adopted “Under the Oaks,” on Morgan’s Forty, Jackson, Michigan, 6 July 1854. Published in under the oaks, 50th Anniversary History of the Republican Party, William Stocking, ed., Detroit, MI: Detroit Tribune, 1904. the freemen of Michigan, assembled in Convention in pursuance of a spontaneous call, emanating from various parts of the state, to consider upon the measures which duty demands of us as citizens of a free state, to take in reference to the late acts of Congress on the subject of slavery and its anticipated further extension, do resolve, that the institution of slavery, except in punishment of crime, is a great moral, social and political evil; that it was so regarded by the fathers of the Republic, the founders and best friends of the union, by the heroes and sages of the Revolution who contemplated and intended its gradual and peaceful extinction as an element hostile to the liberties for which they toiled; that its history in the united states, the experience of men best acquainted with its workings, the dispassionate confession of those who are interested in it; its tendency to relax the vigor of industry and enterprise inherited in the white man; the very surface of the earth where it subsists; the vices and immoralities which are its natural growth; the stringent police, often wanting in humanity and speaking to the sentiments of every generous heart, which it demands; the danger it has already wrought and the future danger which it portends to the security of the union and our Constitutional liberties—all incontestably prove it to be such evil. surely that institution is not to be strengthened against which Washington, the calmest and wisest of our Nation, bore unequivocal testimony ; as to which Jefferson, filled with a love of liberty, exclaimed: “Can the liberties of a Nation be ever thought secure when we have removed 258| Appendix 2 their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the gift of god? that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? indeed i tremble for my country when i reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering numbers, nature and National means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, and exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probably by supernatural interference. the Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.” And as to which another eminent patriot in Virginia, on the close of the revolution, also exclaimed: “Had we turned our eyes inwardly when we supplicated the father of Mercies to aid the injured and oppressed, when we invoked the Author of righteousness to attest the purity of our motives and the justice of our cause, and implored the God of battles to aid our exertions in its defense, would we not have stood more self-convicted than the contrite publican?” We believe these sentiments to be as true now as they were then. resolved, that slavery is a violation of the rights of man as man; that the law of nature, which is the law of liberty, gives to no man rights superior to those of another. that God and nature have secured to each individual the inalienable right of equality, and violation of which must be the result of superior force; and that slavery, therefore, is a perpetual war upon its victims ; that whether we regard the institution as first originating in captures made in war, or the subjection of the debtor as the slave of his creditor, or the forcible seizure and sale of children by their parents or subjects by their king, and whether it be viewed in this Country as a “necessary evil” or otherwise , we find it to be, like imprisonment for debt, but a relic of barbarism as well as an element of weakness in the midst of the state, inviting the attack of external enemies, and a ceaseless cause of internal apprehension and alarm. such are the lessons taught us, not only by the histories of other commonwealths, but by that of our own beloved country. resolved, that the history of the formation of the Constitution, and particularly the enactment of the ordinance of July 13, 1787, prohibiting slavery north of the ohio abundantly shows it to have been the purpose of our fathers not to promote but to prevent the spread of slavery. And, we...

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