Financial Intergity
The Republican convention met at Chicago on May 20th and, on the first roll call for the purpose, unanimously nominated for the Presidency General Ulysses S. Grant. For Vice-President, on the fifth ballot. it named Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, Speaker of the House of Representatives and one of the original members of the Republican party. The platform approved the reconstruction policy of Congress and the constitutional amendments, condemned the Johnson administration and congratulated the South upon the readiness and loyalty with which its leaders were accepting the verdict of the war and were resuming their places in the life of the Republic. It then specially emphasized the need of keeping scrupulously all national obligations and paying all national indebtedness in good faith, in the spirit of the laws under which it was contracted. It urged the gradual discharge of the great war debt to be extended over a considerable period of time, with such reductions of interest from time to time as might be made possible by the willingness of capitalists, in an era of increasing prosperity, to lend money at lower rates. Another important plank declared that the doctrine of some European powers that a person once a subject must always remain so must be resisted at every hazard by the United States as a relic of feudal times” and that our naturalized citizens must be as fully protected in their rights as the native citizens. The assertion and maintenance of this great principle by the Republican party effected a most salutary change in international law under which all powers were constrained to recognize the right of expatriation.
The ensuing campaign was an animated one, but the
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