The Texas Declaration ended: "We, therefore, the delegates, with plenary powers, of the people of Texas ... DECLARE, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas, do now constitute a FREE, SOVEREIGN, and INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC ... Conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations."
Harvard Professor George Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense (Vol. I of The Life of Reason, 1905): "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
In 1862, the London Jewish Chronicle reported: "We now have a few words of the Jewsof the United States in general ... The Constitution having established perfect religious liberty, Jews were free in America ... They ... in a comparatively short time, prospered and throve there in a degree unexampled in Europe."
On February 3, 1790, less than three months before he died, Franklin petitioned Congress to ban slavery:
"For promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, & the Improvement of the Condition of the African Races ...
A just and accurate conception of the true principles of liberty ... by the blessing of Divine Providence, have been successfully directed to the relieving from bondage a large number of their fellow Creatures of the African Race ...
That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of His care and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness ...
The original 1856 Republican platform was: "Resolved ... it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism -- Polygamy and Slavery."
