with slavery in the States where slavery exists. Even great men, when writing or speaking upon the subject, persist in talking about the abolition of slavery, and the right of the slave States; as if the Proviso proposed the one or in any respect interfered with the other. It does not propose, either to abolish, restrict, or in any manner to interfere with slavery in any of the States of this Union. Its sole object is, to secure from the unlawful aggressions of slavery, that territory which is now free. In opposing it, continual use is made of the words, "Constitution," "compromises of the Constitution," as if the former was violated and the latter assailed by the Proviso. If this be so, I pledge myself to abandon it.

The Constitution was adopted as the fundamental law of the Republic. It prescribes the duties and defines the powers of the general Government. At the time of its formation and adoption, slavery existed in some of the States, and in others it was prohibited. The slave States, before entering the Union, desired certain concessions or compromises touching their peculiar institution. They insisted upon guards for its security, against any interference with it, on the part of the general Government. Accordingly, the whole question of slavery, in the States wherein it existed, was, by the Constitution, left to those States respectively. Each slave State, individually and for itself, within the limits of its own boundaries, had the sole and exclusive control over the whole question of slavery-to regulate it, and abolish it, at the time and in the manner, it should, in the exercise of its sovereign power, see fit. Other concessions were also made by which slaves were enumerated in fixing the representation of the States. To the master was also given the right to pursue into the free States his fugitive slave, and reclaim him. I have here embraced everything upon the subject of slavery comprehended within the spirit or letter of the Constitution. From what I have said, it will be seen that I agree with Mr. Buchanan, when he says in his letter to the democracy of Berks County "that the subject by the Constitution is left to the States wherein slavery exists"; but I cannot follow him in his conclusion, that, therefore, the subject of slavery in the Territories of the Union where it does not exist, is beyond our control. HERE we may lawfully erect barriers against its encroachment; and this is all that the Proviso professes to do.

The point was emphasized by iteration and paraphrase. What the Constitution had left to the "States wherein it existed" was "slavery in the States." By that solemn compact he would cheerfully abide. But "when the question was presented of the extension and propagation of slavery over the TERRITORIES of the Union, especially free territory," he claimed "the right for all the States and the whole American people, to be heard." If this was unconstitutional, the democracy should be warned against it; but on this point he turned again to the authorities:

Sir, we are not without examples and precedents for our guide. Our fathers at an early day, had this same question in hand. It may be profitable in these days of "compromises" to see what compromise they made with slavery. In 1787, an Ordinance was passed by which slavery was forever excluded from the territory north and west of the Ohio. . . . The Northwestern Territory had been ceded to the general Government by Virginia, a slave State. The law of slavery extended over it at the time of the cession, and in some parts of it actually existed. Yet upon every inch, did our fathers impose the seal of Freedom. . . . The language of the Proviso, is substantially the language of the Ordinance of 1784, as drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

Sir, the Ordinance of 1787, when contrasted with the opposition made to the Proviso, exhibits a melancholy and alarming change in the public opinion of the South, between that day and the present, upon the subject of slavery. The fathers of the Republic, saw and acknowledged the evils and dangers of this institution. They covenanted not to interfere with it, in States where it existed; but in Territories, its existence even did not stay their hands. They looked forward with anxious solicitude to the day, when slavery, left unmolested in its early limits, would wear itself out by the laws of population, and the force of natural causes, then in active operation. They made no effort to weaken the force of this law or to postpone the result of these causes, by widening the field in which they were to operate, and thus putting off to a more distant day, our final redemption from the curse of Negro slavery. Now, the eternal perpetuation and unlimited extension

of slavery has become the leading, if not the "one idea," of the South. In order to perpetuate slavery for all coming time, its limits must be extended as the slave population increases. The old lands, exhausted and made barren by slave labor, must be abandoned for new and virgin soil; otherwise, the slave becomes valueless, and emancipation of necessity follows. The value given to slave labor, by the new and fertile regions opened for it, serves also to give value to the slave in the old States-thus retarding the progress of gradual emancipation in them. . . . Slavery is a question of interest. It will exist so long as it is a source of profit to the master, and no longer. Keep it within given limits, and in time there will be such an abundance of slave labor from the increase of slave population, and the field of its profitable labor will, at the same time, become so narrowed and circumscribed, that the slave ceases to be of value to his master and he is glad to get rid of him upon any terms. It was to such results that the "great men of the South in the great day of the South" looked with anxiety and hope. That slavery should not escape its early doom, by an extension of its borders, they sealed up against it by the Ordinance of 1787 the entire territories of the Nation. We have made a wide departure from the direction in which our fathers set out. Since we started in our national career, we have added to the dominion of slavery threefold, and postponed for a century the day of our deliverance. I take no exceptions to the additions that slavery has heretofore made. Territories were purchased, and annexed, in which it existed, at the time of such purchase and annexation. To have abolished it in such territories, might seem like a departure from that strict neutrality which the General Government was bound to maintain upon the subject; though the constitutional right to do so I cannot doubt. The South, notwithstanding its vast accession of slave territory-not content to leave the question where the Constitution has left it, to the "States in which it exists," seeks its further extension over new and fertile regions where as yet, there are no States, and where slavery as yet has no existence. . . .

He condemned the growing practice among a certain class of politicians to make everything a party issue. It had been

done in the case of Texas. He had favored the annexation, had spoken and voted for it, and had no regrets for what he had done; but it should not have been made a partisan question. The principles dividing democracy from federalism long antedated this matter, and were changeless; yet because Mr. Van Buren would not "square himself by this rule of party discipline, he was struck down at the Baltimore Convention." Wilmot concluded with these words:

I entertain no hostility to the South. I have been taught in her school; I have learned my political faith from the lessons of her great statesmen. Upon most of the great questions that have divided parties-particularly those affecting the powers of the General Government, and the rights of the States-I believe the South has been right. I claim to be a democrat of the Jefferson school!-a States-rights republican-a strict constructionist, and am of the strictest of the sect. . . . But, sir, because the South has been eminently correct on most great questions, that gives her no right to force NEW ISSUES upon the party. If the South can succeed in making the "extension of slavery over free territory" a party question, as she did the reannexation of Texas, it will make something of a change in the party relations of men. ... I trust ever to be found standing firm upon my principles as a democrat. I value them, and have thus far maintained them through life; but I will adopt no such issues, as that now attempted to be imposed upon the democracy of this State. I will submit to no such test. Let those take the yoke who choose to wear it. It shall never gall my neck.

This declaration preceded by only three or four months the anticipatory moves in Wilmot's campaign for a third term in Congress, and defined an attitude which was unchanged when that campaign actually began.

The opening strategy of Wilmot's enemies was to use the controlled press in persistent circulation of reports that his district had repudiated him on account of "his Proviso notions." A democratic mass meeting in Towanda, February 8, 1848,

(the same which sent Wilmot as a delegate to the State convention of March 4, at Harrisburg) rebutted these publications by resolutions of confidence in their representative's "true hearted devotion to democratic principles and the rights of man," declaring that they "could not and would not be driven from his support, so long as he continued on the side of justice and humanity," and denouncing the "abusive, false and proscriptive attacks in the Union and the Pennsylvanian.' The Montrose Democrat quoted the resolutions in full, asserting emphatically that they reflected the feelings of Wilmot's constituents in Susquehanna County, also, and if the attacks had been made before their own county convention met, "resolutions equally strong, if not stronger, relative to the matter, would have been adopted by that body."

5

In Tioga County, there were some signs of the activity of the hostile group clustered about the camp fire of the Eagle, which had just transferred its allegiance and entered into the enjoyment of Administration patronage. A resolution was offered at the county democratic annual meeting, May 16, 1848, "that the manly stand taken by our representative in Congress, the Hon. David Wilmot, in his defense of the true interests of the people [and his noble efforts to preserve the integrity of free soil from the blighting influence of slavery, thereby saving to the free laborer of the North his just and lawful inheritance] has endeared him to the people of Tioga County and as democrats we offer him our warmest support"; but this was amended by striking out the bracketed portion— "mainly (it was explained) on the ground of the impolicy of introducing slavery into our politics."

The county convention of the democracy in the preceding September had "fully approved of the Wilmot Proviso restricting slavery from any territory hereafter acquired, which

4 Tioga Banner, February 15, 1848. The whole editorial page is given over to leaders in support of Wilmot, extracts from his speeches, press comments on his record in Congress, etc.

Montrose Democrat, February 16, 1848.