[Illustration: THE FIRST REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION.
"UNDER THE OAKS," JACKSON, MICH., JULY 6, 1854.]
That one of its principal aims is to give to the slave States such a decided and practical preponderance in all the measures of government as shall reduce the North, with all her industry, wealth and enterprise, to be the mere province of a few slaveholding oligarchs of the South--a condition too shameful to be contemplated.
Because, as openly avowed by its Southern friends, it is intended as an entering wedge to the still further augmentation of the slave power by the acquisition of the other Territories, cursed with the same "leprosy."
_Resolved_, That the obnoxious measure to which we have alluded ought to be _repealed_, and a provision substituted for it, prohibiting slavery in said Territories, and each of them.
_Resolved_, That after this gross breach of faith and wanton affront to us as Northern men, we hold ourselves absolved from all "_compromises_" (except those expressed in the constitution) for the protection of slavery and slave-owners; that we now demand measures of protection and immunity for ourselves; and among them we demand the _repeal of the fugitive slave law_, and an act to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
_Resolved_, That we notice without dismay certain popular indications by slaveholders on the frontier of said Territories of a purpose on their part to prevent by violence the settlement of the country by non-slaveholding men. To the latter we say: Be of good cheer, persevere in the right, remember the Republican motto, "THE NORTH WILL DEFEND YOU."
_Resolved_, That postponing and suspending all differences with regard to political economy or administrative policy, in view of the imminent danger that Kansas and Nebraska will be grasped by slavery, and a thousand miles of slave soil be thus interposed between the free States of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, we will act cordially and faithfully in unison to avert and repeal this gigantic wrong and shame.
_Resolved_, That in view of the necessity of battling for the first principles of republican government, and against the schemes of an aristocracy, the most revolting and oppressive with which the earth was ever cursed, or man debased, we will co-operate and be known as REPUBLICANS until the contest be terminated.