of the Constitution. We appear to me to be rushing upon perils headlong and with our eyes all open. But I put my trust in Providence, and in that good sense and patriotism of the people which will yet, I hope, arouse themselves before it is too late.24

Webster's voice was that of Massachusetts-of the North. The closing words of the debate came from the South, from Senator William S. Archer, of Virginia.25 He opposed the bill on two grounds: the spoliation of a sister republic, and the introduction of the slave question, which would come up with new territory. Had the senators, he inquired, "become absolutely insane with this rabid appetite for territorial acquisition? . . . And did any man doubt that if they passed this appropriation, the struggle on the question of slavery would come?" . . . He had information that resolutions had passed one branch of the legislature of Virginia, and were expected to pass the other, in which language was used which showed that the people of his State were prepared for resistance to the determination of the free States.

It was la

mentable to think of the consequences to result, which would be either the overthrow of the Union, or the infusion into the

24 James G. Blaine, in his Twenty Years of Congress (Vol. I, p. 68), by a curious confusion cites this speech of Daniel Webster's as having been made at the first, instead of the second, session of the Twenty-ninth Congress, although later he correctly states that the Two Million Dollar Bill (to which the Wilmot Proviso was first attached as an amendment in the House) came before the Senate on the day fixed for final adjournment of this first session, and was deliberately talked to death by John Davis of Massachusetts, who was thus the sole speaker on the Senate floor. Blaine also finds a "singular disagreement" between the speech and the vote of Mr. Webster, the speech indicating his real position, while his vote was in deference to the position taken by his State legislature. The "disagreement" is not at all apparent. Webster voted against the appropriation; he had previously voted for the Proviso. That is, he wanted no acquisition of territory; but, foreseeing that the Senate were determined to favor the acquisition, he could not ally himself with those who sought not only new States, but new slave States. To vote against both the extension of slave soil and the extension of any soil at all was the only consistent position for a man of his views.

25 Cong. Globe, p. 556.

veins of the body politic of a poison that would make it unworthy of preservation.

The question was then taken, and it resulted thus: Yeas, 29; nays, 24. The bill was then read a third time and passed, and the Senate adjourned at twenty minutes past one o'clock, a. m., March 1, 1847.

The concluding history of the Three Million Bill was brief. In the form in which it had passed to the Senate—that is, without the Wilmot Proviso-it was taken up by the House in Committee of the Whole on March 3, 1847.20 Mr. Wilmot moved to add to the bill the clause generally known as the Wilmot Proviso, in the following words:

Provided, That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory on the continent of America which shall hereafter be acquired by or annexed to the United States, by virtue of this appropriation, or in any other manner whatever, except for crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That every person escaping into such territory from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully claimed and conveyed out of said territory to the power (sic) claiming his or her labor or service.

Mr. Graham (of North Carolina) moved to amend Mr. Wilmot's Proviso by striking out all after "provided” and inserting,

If any territory be acquired by the United States from Mexico, the Missouri Compromise line of 36°, 30' shall be extended direct to the Pacific Ocean; that is, slavery shall be prohibited north of that line and allowed south of it.

This was disagreed to-ayes, 64; noes, 96.

The question then recurred on the Proviso moved by Mr. Wilmot, and it was agreed to: Yeas, 90; noes, 80. The Committee then rose and reported the bill.

26 Cong. Globe, p. 573.

Mr. Rathbun (of New York) moved the previous question, which was seconded [this being a parliamentary move to shut out debate] and the main question was ordered and put, viz.: Will the House agree to the amendment reported by the Committee of the Whole? (The Wilmot Proviso.) It was decided in the negative by yeas and nays, as follows: . . . Yeas, 97; nays, 102.

So the amendment was rejected.

Mr. Wilmot moved to lay the bill upon the table; which motion was decided by yeas and nays: Yeas, 87; nays, 114.

The bill was then read a third time.

The previous question was moved and seconded, and the main question ordered to be put, viz.: Shall the bill pass? It was decided in the affirmative by yeas and nays as follows: . . . Yeas, 115; nays, 81.

So the Three Million Bill was passed-without the Wilmot Proviso. The majority of nine in favor of the restriction when the measure passed the House on its way to the Senate less than three weeks before, had disappeared and given place to a majority of five in opposition-a change which Blaine, in his Twenty Years of Congress, ascribes to the fact that the Administration had been "strong enough with the persuasions of its patronage to defeat the antislavery amendment in both branches." Horace Greeley's prediction had been fulfilled; "Power had prostrated Freedom," and the Proviso had been smothered, as a section of the Three Million Bill. "But the battle is only not gained," he wrote, March 4, commenting on this recantation by the House; "lost it cannot be while hearts are still warmed by the fire of Liberty." The principle would not down, and was destined to grow and spread until it was written into the Constitution of the United States.

CHAPTER XIV

REVERBERATIONS AND REACTIONS

WHEN Wilmot returned to Washington after the canvass of 1846, he left a district still vibrating with the tension of a tariff campaign, its attention fixed on the issues of revenue or protection as the basis for import duties. He came home, in March, 1847, to find the tariff almost ignored, and a new question-the Proviso occupying and engrossing press and public; destined, indeed, to develop consequences of the first magnitude.

Tariff argument had died out in the prosperity which the country was enjoying in place of the ruin the protectionists had prophesied. Doubtless that prosperity was due in part to conditions abroad and to large economic influences which would have operated favorably to America in any case; but those who had taught, or believed, that Congress could bring general riches or general ruin by shifting the schedules on imports, continued to construe the sequences of the tariff bill of 1846 as consequences. There was no longer to be found, declared the Bradford Reporter, December 29, 1847, of all the host of the democratic press in Pennsylvania, "one so poor as to do the defunct tariff of 1842 reverence. This very press cannot now be outdone in homage to the tariff of 1846." And it had reason for this exultation. It had previously (April 22) quoted the Lycoming Gazette, originally an uncompromising 1842-tariff organ, as saying:

The apprehended destruction to the coal and iron interests of Penn. has not been consummated. . . . Instead of a limited market and low prices, the reverse has occurred. The home market has been immeasurably extended. For our own part, we plead

guilty of an error, for who that predicted ruin, distress and bankruptcy to follow the repeal of the tariff of 1842, was not in error?

Or, to paint the picture as it was presented to the voters of the Wilmot district by the Reporter:

Instead of the gloom and depression proclaimed by the political seers of Federalism, such as ruined agriculture, induced by ruined manufacturers and a consequently ruined commerce, agricultural and commercial business and profits have been doubled, and every department of manufacturing business greatly augmented. Instead of the fires of Pennsylvania's furnaces being extinguished, and her coal mines becoming places of inactivity and solitude, the products of both have increased in quantity and price. Every seaport in the Union is crowded with vessels from all quarters of the globe, seeking cargos in exchange for millions of specie. Every canal and railroad is covered with conveyances of produce, commanding high prices, making the revenue from our public works a source of revenue to the State, and their utilitarian effects a blessing to consumers. This state of prosperity . . . is gratifying to the advocates of liberal and republican legislation, and if persevered in, will give us a power over all other governments more effective and more beneficial than military conquests.

The federalists' rage against the tariff of 1846 in futuro, which had led them to burn the Vice President, Dallas, in effigy for his casting vote in favor of the bill, found no fuel to sustain it in that tariff in esse; and Wilmot's opponents in his own party could not prolong the offensive against his vote for the bill when their party in the State was preparing to shift its ground and plume itself on the tariff of 1846 as a splendid democratic achievement. There was a general shuffling of positions and objectives, but no let-up of hostilities. "I have thought sometimes," wrote the Washington correspondent of the Reporter February 13, 1847-just before the close of the Twenty-ninth Congress-"Mr. Wilmot had more to apprehend from the hostility of his colleagues than from any other cause. A malign disposition is at work to