People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1895 — Single Issue Platforms. [ARTICLE]

Single Issue Platforms.

We hear a great deal about the campaigns of Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln being fought and won on single issue platforms. Mr. Jefferson stood on the first national platform ever written for a presidential canvass. It contained eleven planks—including eleven distinct issues. On this long platform he overthrew federalism for a quarter of a century. Jackson had no platform, but he got there just the same. Mr. Lincoln’s platform had seventeen planks, covering divers issues from state’s rights to building the Pacific railroads. Lincoln was elected. The constitutional union party, with John Bell at its head, had a one-plank platform, and the party has never been heard from since. The first democratic platform since the war to win (1884) contained over 3,000 words, and embodied at least twelve distinct issues. So you see it is not the “one-gal-lused” platform that wins. Victory is won by hard fighting, close organization, good generalship and unity of action. The sooner our leaders drop this oneplank discussion and buckle down to business the better for the party and the whole country.—Kentucky Populist.