Congress has no more power to make a slave, than to make a king. We have assembled in conventions as a union of freemen, for the sake of freedom, forgetting all past political differences in a common resolve to maintain the rights of free labor, against the aggressions of the slave power, and to secure free soil for a free people.
The free grant to actual settlers of reasonable portions of the public lands, under suitable limitations, is a wise and just public policy. Let the soil of our extensive domains be ever kept free for the hardy pioneers of our own land, and the oppressed and banished of other lands, seeking homes of comfort and fields of enterprise in the new world.
We the people, here assembled, remembering the example of our fathers in the days of the first declaration of independence, do now plant ourselves on the national platform of freedom. We will inscribe on our banner ''Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men", and under it will fight on, and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.