New York Times, March 1, 1860
The Opposition State Convention of Kentucky, which was in session at Frankfort last week, adopted a platform denouncing the House of Representatives and the National Administration, and urging the necessity of the organization of a National Union Party. The resolutions appended to the platform declare the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, the necessity of observing the precepts inculcated in the Farewell Address of Washington, and of enforcing the Fugitive Slave law. In addition to these, the following were of the resolutions which were unanimously adopted:
- No interference of any character with Slavery, or the rights of slaveholders in the Slaveholding States in the Union, and the suppression of any such interference by the requisite means, moral, legal or physical.
- Opposition to any Presidential candidate who will indorse, or be likely to follow the proscriptive, wasteful, disorganizing and downward course which has lately characterized the Federal Administration.The rights of the citizens of the United States, resident in the Territories, when authorized to form a State constitution, to admit or reject by it the institution of Slavery.
- Opposition to the reopening of the African Slave trade.
- We deny the power of the people of the Territories, prior to the formation of their State Constitution, by legislation or otherwise, to impair any right which any citizen of the United States possesses under the Federal Constitution in the Territories. We stand by the principles of the compromise measures of 1850, which were subsequently indorsed by almost the entire population of the Union.
- That, as far as depends upon us, we will stand by, support, and uphold the Union, against all attacks from without or within, and against all ultraism, whether at the North or the South.
- We invite our fellow-citizens, of all party names, to unite with us in our internal struggle in the common cause of the Constitution and the Union, and in the election of a President of ability, integrity, and patriotism, not identified with a sectional party, who will be the President of the Nation, of the whole people, and not of a faction; and who will strictly enforce the laws, and sustain alike, under the Constitution, the rights and interests of every section of the country.
- Such a President we should recognize in our distinguished fellow-citizen, Hon. John J. Crittendon, whom we recommend to the favorable consideration of a National Union Convention, as worthy of that exalted position. His whole life gives ample assurance that if elevated to the Chief Magistracy of this nation, he will, in the administration of the Government, know nothing but his common country.