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THE

REPUBLICAN PARTY

AND ITS

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES:

COMPRISING

AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTIVE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE UNI
TED STATES; FROM ITS ORIGIN IN 1796 TO ITS DISSOLUTION IN 1832; OF

THE WHIG AND DEMOCRATIC PARTIES DURING THE INTERREGNUM;
AND OF ITS RE-FORMATION IN 1856, TO DEFEND FREEDOM

OF SPEECH AND OF THE PRESS AND TO RESIST THE AG-
GRESSIONS OF THE SLAVE POWER.

WITH

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES AND PORTRAITS

OF

FREMONT AND DAYTON.

BY BENJAMIN F. HALL:

I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just..

JEFFERSON.

NEW YORK AND AUBURN:

MILLER, ORTON & MULLIGAN.

New York: 25 Park Row-Auburn: 107 Genesee-st.

Checked
May 1913

1856.

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

150579

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1899

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six,

BY MILLER, ORTON & MULLIGAN,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Northern District of New York.

AUBURN:

MILLER, ORTON & MULLIGAN,
STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS.

PREFACE.

THE high public necessity which required the re-formation of the Republican party in the United States, suggested the want of such a descriptive history of Republicanism as would remind the old and inform the young men of the country, of the principles and policy of the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and the younger Adams, and indicate when, under what pretexts and disguises, and by what processes, the slave power, which was left in certain states in the form of a local despotism by the framers of the constitution, assailed the original theory of the republic, and arose by consecutive steps during subsequent administrations, into its present ascendency in the government, where it now controls its purse, its sword, and its national flag. Whilst the circulation of congressional documents, and current newspapers and periodicals are contributing greatly to relieve this want, such publications are, from their nature, so exclusively devoted to matters of present interest, as, in general, to leave untraced their connection with their antecedents. Something more historical, and reaching further into the past, where the usurpations and aggressions of the slave power began, appeared to be needed for the masses in the present emergency.

Not without the deepest consciousness that there were many others who could perform the duty better, but in the hope that such a work as he might prepare would be of some service to the cause of civil liberty, the author consented to write the following chapters. In them he has endeavered to indicate, but with necessary brevity, the attempts of the Federalists, during the administrations of Washington and the elder Adams, to monarchize the constitution by the forms of its administration, and by their alien, sedition, and franchise laws, to invade the natural rights of the people; the high public necessity which called into existence, under the guidance of Jefferson, a Republican party in the country, with a dis

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