jection, providing it could be kept free from slavery. A vote of eighty-three to sixty-four in favor of his amendment greatly cheered him and his Northern friends. A motion, by Mr. Tibbatts of Kentucky, that the bill lie on the table, made for the purpose of defeating the proviso, was lost by fourteen majority, all the Northern Whigs but Robert C. Schenck of Ohio, and all the Northern Democrats but John Pettit of Indiana, and Stephen A. Douglas and John A. McClernand of Illinois, voting against it. The bill was then passed by a vote of eighty-seven to sixty-four.

It was taken up in the Senate on the last day of the session, which was to close at noon, and a motion was made to strike out the proviso. John Davis of Massachusetts took the floor, and, he declining to yield it, the bill and proviso were lost. Mr. Davis was much censured at the time for not permitting a vote to be taken. But, whatever were his motives, it is probable that a vote could not have been reached on the motion to strike out the proviso; and, if it had been, it would have unquestionably prevailed, as there was a majority of slaveholders in that body, and the exigencies of the system would not have allowed them to see the purpose of the war thus defeated. It has indeed been since affirmed by Mr. Brinkerhoff that there was "a well-ascertained and unanimous determination on the part of the Democratic senators of the free States to stand by the proviso, and that those of Delaware and Maryland would have voted with them." But surely Mr. Brinkerhoff must have been mistaken. It is barely possible that Democratic senators from the free States would have voted for that measure, but their previous and subsequent conduct does not justify the belief that they would have done so. Mr. Pearce of Maryland and the two Delaware senators are not living to speak for themselves, but the subsequent course of Mr. Pearce and John M. Clayton gave no assurance that they would have voted for the proviso had it come to a vote. The probability is strong that they would have voted against it, and Reverdy Johnson, in a letter written in April, 1873, states in the most unequivocal language that he should not have voted for it.

CHAPTER III.

TREATY OF GUADALOUPE HIDALGO.

ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY.

CONTINUATION OF THE SLAVERY STRUGGLE.

Meeting of Congress. Message. - Speech of Mr. Wilmot.

- Remarks of Mr.

Brinkerhoff, Stephens, Bayly, Dowdell. - Mr. Hamlin's amend

- Berrien.

- Upham's amendment. Treaty of peace.

Wood. ment. Three-million bill reported. Mr. Webster's views. Wilmot's amendment lost. Declarations of Mr. Trist. Potency of slavery. - Meeting of XXXth Congress. - Mr. Winthrop elected Speaker. Mr. Putnam's resolution. — Root's bills for California and New Mexico. - Amendment excluding slavery. — Mr. Walker's amendment. Action of House. Defeat of measures for prohib iting slavery. Mr. Thompson's amendment. — Agreed to by the House. Rejected by the Senate. Victory of the Slave Power.

--

ON the assembling of Congress, in December, 1846, the President, in his Annual Message, reaffirmed his previous declaration, that Mexico had inaugurated hostilities, and that "American blood had been spilled on American soil." The language of Benton, in his "Thirty Years' View," affirming that "History is bound to pronounce her judgment upon these assumptions, and to say that they are unfounded," does not express the whole truth. They were unequivocally and historically false.

A bill appropriating three millions of dollars for the purpose of negotiations was introduced into the House. In the debate following Mr. Wilmot defined and defended his position. Alluding to the adoption of the proviso by a decisive majority, he expressed the opinion, which the facts by no means warranted, that."the entire South were even then willing to acquiesce." He said the friends of the administration of whom he was one- did not then charge upon him and those who voted with him the defeat of the Two-Million Bill by the introduction of the proviso. He admitted that "the South resisted it manfully, boldly resisted it; but," he added, "it was passed, and there was no cry that the Union was to be

severed." Disclaiming all sympathy for, or affiliation with, Abolitionists, Mr. Wilmot said: "I stand by every compromise of the Constitution. I was in favor of the annexation of Texas. The Democracy of the North was for it to a man, and is fighting the war cheerfully, not reluctantly, for Texas and the South." The declarations of the leaders and presses of the administration and the movements of the armies pointed, he said, to the acquisition of New Mexico and California; and he expressed the hope that the President would firmly adhere to his purpose. He desired fresh territory, but it must be preserved from the aggressions of slavery; and for that he contended. "When, in God's name," he asked, "will it be the time for the North to speak out, if not now? If the war is not for slavery, then I do not embarrass the administration with my amendment. If it is for slavery, I am deceived in its object."

Of course Mr. Wilmot was deceived. His declarations and his prompt disclaimer of all sympathy and affiliation with abolition revealed that fact, as also his want of acquaintance with slavery and the designs of the Slave Power. His ignorance, however, was speedily dispelled in the path on which he had so bravely entered; and his subsequent career showed that in the new school he had entered he became thoroughly, rapidly proficient. But at that time he evidently failed to comprehend the real facts of the case, or the true philosophy of those facts. The seeming acquiescence of the South in the vote on his proviso resulted not so much from a disposition to abide by it as from a settled purpose to reverse it as soon as possible, and from the conviction that such reversal could be obtained. He soon learned, however, the strength and tenacity of the Southern purpose to guard with sleepless vigilance the system of slavery, and to keep it from all possible or conceivable danger; but he never failed to render good service in the struggle on which he then entered.

There were other examples, in the same party, of like resistance to the exacting demands of slavery. Among them was that of Bradford R. Wood of New York, subsequently a Republican, and Minister to Denmark during the Rebellion.

He proclaimed it his purpose that, come what might, so far as he was concerned, slavery should go no further. He combated the idea that, from the nature of the soil and climate, slavery could not exist in the territory to be acquired. "Slavery will go," he said, "wherever man, in his cupidity and lust of power, can carry it." Mr. McClelland, also a Democratic representative from Michigan, afterward Secretary of the Interior under President Pierce, advocated the Wilmot proviso, announcing it "folly to think that our Northern men will emigrate to the most inviting territory in the world where they know they will be compelled to labor side by side with the slave."

Mr. Brinkerhoff, who had drafted the amendment presented by Mr. Wilmot, made an earnest appeal to Northern representatives. They were required, he said, not only to keep open, but to multiply the markets where men were to be sold, to multiply human shambles. "Is this act," he inquired, "the nameless infamy of which no color is dark enough to paint, no word has language strong enough adequately to characterize, — at which posterity will blush, which Christianity must abhor, shall this be our act? The act of freemen and the representatives of freemen? Almighty God, forbid it."

Southern Whigs, like Mr. Stephens, opposed the aequisition of territory only on political grounds. They would dispose of the troublesome proviso by bringing in no new territory to become the occasion of such contest between conflicting parties and sections. Mr. Stephens expressed the conviction that, if the policy of the administration was to be carried out, if the forbidden fruit of Mexican territory was to be seized at every hazard, those who controlled public affairs, instead of revelling in the halls of the Montezumas, or gloating over the ancient cities of the Aztecs, might be compelled to turn, and behold in their rear another and a wider prospect of desolation, carnage, and blood. He was careful, however, to state that his objections originated from no scruples in regard to slavery. That stood, he contended, on a basis as firm as the Bible. "Until Christianity be overthrown," he said, "and

some other system of ethics be substituted, the relation of master and slave can never be regarded as an offence against the divine laws."

But the Southern advocates of both the war and slavery naturally opposed a policy that would despoil their section of the animating purpose and motive of the war. In the face of facts patent to all, and with an effrontery that slavery alone could generate, they put in the plea of injured innocence, and were loud in their complaints of Northern aggression. Thomas H. Bayly, a Democratic representative from the eastern shore of Virginia, said that the boldness and strength of the Abolitionists had increased with great rapidity, and he was amazed to see how quiet Southern men were. As a sentinel on the watch-tower, he warned his countrymen against rapidly approaching danger, declaring that they had arrived at a point "when further concessions to the Abolitionists would be alike dishonorable and fatal.” Mr. Dowdell of Alabama, alluding to the fact that they were engaged in a foreign war, expressed his surprise that, instead of devising ways and means of replenishing an exhausted treasury, they were engaged in a heated discussion of the question of slavery. "Discord," he said, "reigns where union and harmony should prevail. What has produced this deplorable state of things? Who are the authors of the illstarred agitation which has so much disturbed our deliberations? In every stage of the history of this proceeding the North has tendered the issue, while the South has reluctantly occupied the position of defendant. . . . The question

is, as to the locality and condition of those who are slaves. True philanthropy would diffuse, not congregate them into a narrow compass, or make them fixtures on the soil. More horrible still is the purpose, scarcely disguised, of breaking the fetters of the slave by rendering his labor unprofitable, thus substituting for peaceful subjection a bloody contest of rival races. This wholesale proscription of a large section of the Union will never be tolerated until the degeneracy of the South shall invite the chains which reckless power would rivet upon her limbs."