Conspectus of the History of Political Parties and the Federal Government/1856 Whig Party Platform
Whig Platform, Baltimore, September 13.
Resolved, That the Whigs of the United States, now here assembled, hereby declare their reverence for the constitution of the United States, their unalterable attachment to the National Union, and a fixed determination to do all in their power to preserve them for themselves and their posterity. They have no new principles to announce; no new platform to establish; but are content to broadly rest—where their fathers rested—upon the constitution of the United States, wishing no safer guide, no higher law.
Resolved, That we regard with the deepest interest and anxiety the present disordered condition of our national affairs—a portion of the country ravaged by civil war, large sections of our population embittered by mutual recriminations; and we distinctly trace these calamities to the culpable neglect of duty by the present national administration.
Resolved, That the government of the United States was formed by the conjunction in political unity of wide-spread geographical sections, materially differing, not only in climate and products, but in social and domestic institutions; and that any cause that shall permanently array the different sections of the Union in political hostility and organize parties founded only on geographical distinctions, must inevitably prove fatal to a continuance of the National Union.
Resolved, That the Whigs of the United States declare, as a fundamental article of political faith, an absolute necessity for avoiding geographical parties. The danger, so clearly discerned by the Father of his Country, has now become fearfully apparent in the agitation now convulsing the nation, and must be arrested at once if we would preserve our constitution and our Union from dismemberment, and the name of America from being blotted out from the family of civilized nations.
Resolved, That all who revere the constitution and the Union, must look with alarm at the parties in the field in the present presidential campaign—one claiming only to represent sixteen northern states, and the other appealing mainly to the passions and prejudices of the southern states; that the success of either faction must add fuel to the flame which now threatens to wrap our dearest interests in a common ruin.
Resolved, That the only remedy for an evil so appalling is to support a candidate pledged to neither of the geographical sections nor arrayed in political antagonism, but holding both in a just and equal regard. We congratulate the friends of the Union that such a candidate exists in Millard Fillmore.
Resolved, That, without adopting or referring to the peculiar doctrines of the party which has already selected Mr. Fillmore as a candidate, we look to him as a well tried and faithful friend of the constitution and the Union, eminent alike for his wisdom and firmness—for his justice and moderation in our foreign relations—for his calm and pacific temperament, so well becoming the head of a great nation—for his devotion to the constitution in its true spirit—his inflexibility in executing the laws; but, beyond all these attributes, in possessing the one transcendent merit of being a representative of neither of the two sectional parties now struggling for political supremacy.
Resolved, That, in the present exigency of political affairs, we are not called upon to discuss the subordinate questions of administration in the exercising of the constitutional powers of the government. It is enough to know that civil war is raging, and that the Union is in peril; and we proclaim the conviction that the restoration of Mr. Fillmore to the presidency will furnish the best if not the only means of restoring peace.