Eric Kleefeld dusts off the 1860 and 1864 GOP platforms:
[These] platforms inherited the Whig tradition of what were known at the time as "internal improvements" — government investment in infrastructure. For example, the platforms called for government to aid in the large project of constructing a transcontinental railroad, to improve rivers and harbors, and to have "a vigorous and just system of taxation" in order to ensure the payment of the national debt. The 1864 platform also declared: "Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy."
The Dish 