Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/64

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William D. Fenton.

the reconstruction and Ku Klux laws, and the fraud and corruption in the administration, and declares that the freedom, welfare, and rights of the people are superior to the interests of incorporations, and should be protected against the exactions of oppressive monopolies. It favors the appropriation of swamp land funds to internal improvement and common schools, and indorses the construction of the locks at Oregon City, and favors like improvement of the Columbia River; indorses the state administration in securing land grants that otherwise would have gone to corporations.

The union republican state convention which convened March 20, 1872, adopted a platform consisting of fourteen resolutions. The first declares its fidelity to the constitution and its amendments; commended the administration of President Grant, and denounces all forms and degrees of repudiation of the national debt as affirmed by the democratic party and its sympathizers as not only national calamities, but positive crimes, and declared that its party would never consent to a suspicion of lack of honor or justice in the complete satisfaction of that debt. It recognized no distinction between native and foreign born citizens, and favored complete amnesty to all people of the states lately in rebellion; favored the encouragement of railroads by the general government of the United States and the disposal of the public domain so as to secure the same to actual settlers; favored a revenue tariff with such adjustment of duties as gives liberal wages to labor and remunerative prices to agriculture; condemns the expenditure of $200,000 of the common school fund on the locks at Oregon City; condemns the last legislature in respect to the disposal of swamp lands, the increase of salaries of state and county officers, and the Portland charter bill; favored a bounty of one hundred and sixty acres for each soldier; demanded the