CHAPTER III

THE RACE FOR CONGRESS

WILMOT'S nomination to the House of Representatives of the Twenty-ninth Congress was no surprise. He had been urged to take (and indeed had sought) the honor two years before, as Bradford County's first choice; but as the other counties of the district were unready to assent, he had thrown his influence toward the selection of Mr. Read. Now that his turn had come, however, it had unusual features which attracted notice far outside his political neighborhood.

The first was the unprecedented feature of a unanimous vote in his favor, both in the county convention and in the congressional conference of the three counties (Susquehanna, Bradford and Tioga) which made up his future constituency. The second (which made the first even more surprising) was pointed out by the Washington correspondent of a Harrisburg paper, in the remark that "it was unusual to send a man to Congress without previous service in the State legislature. Wilmot's prominence in the courts, in political gatherings, and in personal contact with his people had led to the exception." It was further discussed in the Wilkes-Barre Farmer, a journal quite removed from the partisan excitement, whether friendly or unfriendly, of the northern counties:

This rapid promotion of so young a man has not been the result in Mr. Wilmot's case of accident, for he is personally known to a large majority of his constituency. It has not been the result of intrigue, for he is known to be above and beyond the practice of the low expedients of the demagogue and political trickster. Nor has his rise been the offspring of family influence and family combinations pushing, as is too often the case, mediocrity into places; for, within our knowledge, Mr. Wilmot has not a relative

within the district he represents. . . . To abilities the most brilliant and solid, there is added in Mr. Wilmot's character a thorough, straightforward fixedness of principle that never swerves or falters that abides the issue whether for good or ill-whether in prosperity or defeat. It is these qualities It is these qualities. . . that have endeared Mr. W. to his constituents, and recommended him, while comparatively so young, to their affection and confidence.

This vaulting over the phase of experience he would have had in Harrisburg had a mixed effect on Wilmot's career. It was undoubtedly a disadvantage practically, in that it kept him a comparative stranger to the operations and the men of the State machinery-a sort of outsider, respected and even feared for his undoubted power, but little known personally in other parts of the State, and imperfectly understood, unappreciated, or even distrusted and opposed because of this lack of acquaintance. On the other hand, this very want of practical contact with the very "practical" politics of the State House left him undisturbed in his own mood of devotion to principles, and his faith that the earnest preaching of principles, and the conviction of the masses by such preaching, was the great converting and driving force in any campaign.

The prelude to the nomination to Congress was sounded in a letter published in the Bradford Reporter, August 21, and again, August 28, 1844, on the latter occasion with the signatures of sixty-three of the men most prominent and most active politically in the borough:

Towanda, August 17, 1844.

D. Wilmot, Esq.-Dear Sir: The undersigned take the liberty of addressing you to permit your name to be publicly presented as a candidate for Congress through the democratic organ for this. county. We are aware that at home the spontaneous voice of the democracy has already made your name familiar with our democratic friends in connexion with that office. Indeed, for a long time past, we have heard no other person mentioned, as likely to be a candidate, except yourself; but the true posture of affairs may

not be so well understood in other counties of this Congressional district. We take great pleasure in expressing to you our firm conviction, that in our judgment, the democratic party will be found as unanimous in every election district in your favor, as this letter shows them to be in your own.

Wilmot's reply to this, his first popular invitation to public office, bearing the same date as the letter above, ran thus:

Gentlemen-Your note of this date, signed by nearly every democratic voter of the borough of Towanda, requesting me "to permit my name to be publicly announced as a candidate for Congress," has just been handed to me.

I am deeply grateful for your kind expressions towards me and the very honorable use which you propose to make of my name. A nomination, made in accordance with the usages of the party, is an indispensable prerequisite, in the mind of every good democrat, before allowing his name to be used as a candidate. Should I be nominated, I frankly confess, that I would be proud to be the candidate of a party which inscribes its principles upon its banners, and boldly appeals to the patriotism, intelligence, and virtue of the people. Such an event, would doubtless subject me to the ruthless assaults of a vindictive and malignant opposition.

But a magnanimous and chivalrous party deserts not those whom federalism unjustly assails, but, shields and defends them as with a wall of fire, from the bolts and shafts of those who seek power at the expense of truth, of justice, and the rights of the people.

Your obliged fellow citizen,

D. WILMOT.

The declarations of confidence that marked the invitation were naturally redoubled in the expressions called out by the nomination, which followed, September 10. The resolutions of both the county convention and the congressional conference were more than usually eulogistic; they italicized their assurance that their candidate "would be triumphantly sustained at the ballot box notwithstanding the open efforts of the

whigs or the secret efforts of disorganizing democrats," but the very emphasis hinted at an undercurrent of opposition, which shortly swirled to the surface. Wilmot's own apprehensions of "the ruthless assaults of a vindictive and malignant opposition" were realized. The campaign burst into a fury extraordinary even for a presidential year in which a governor was to be elected with the general ticket, and Wilmot's race for Congress was the central path of the storm. The peculiar feature was the entry of another democrat, David M. Bull, who, after announcing himself as an independent candidate on a protectivetariff issue of his own raising, and then publicly withdrawing "to avoid dividing the party," suddenly reappeared. He came back riding on a flood of handbills describing an alleged mass meeting of protesting democrats, whose unexpected call he had been prevailed upon to accept, "from a sense of duty rather than personal ambition." But four individual names were given the chairman, the secretary, and two members of a committee of notification. The first was Bull's partner; the second, a whig with a reputation for political trickery; the last two promptly repudiated any connection with the resolutions or any knowledge of the meeting. There was strong testimony that no such meeting had, in fact, occurred, and that the whole thing was a scheme to defeat Wilmot by indirection. Simultaneously came a body of charges against his political record and his private character; the former immediately and conclusively refuted by men who spoke with final authority, the latter so outrageous that they were too much even for the strong stomachs of that day.

Bull does not seem to have been officially indorsed by the whigs, though they made no other nomination; he ran as an independent candidate. The tariff issue, however, brought him a large fraction of the whig vote and a small following of high-tariff democrats who had been offended by Wilmot's repeated and public denunciations of the existing protective tariff of 1842 "in principle and in detail." Revulsion against the over-violence of his assailants, on the other hand, so far offset

this by rallying to his support the better element of both parties that he received the largest vote in the county. It gave him a majority over Bull of 826, as compared with 558 for the governor (Shunk) and only 333 for Polk in the presidential election the following month. He carried the district by nearly 3,000; this was 500 more than the majority given the State electoral ticket and 700 more than that given to Polk.

Borne along by the enthusiasm of the victory, Wilmot's allies suggested and even urged his candidacy for the United States Senate, in succession to James Buchanan when the latter should retire. The proposal had certain arguments in its favor, in the claims of northern Pennsylvania to the office, and in Wilmot's outstanding importance in that section. It was

strongly seconded by many of his friends and was well received in some quarters outside.1 But it was too soon for such an agitation within the district to affect the great central forces and machinery controlling politics at Harrisburg. Wilmot himself does not seem to have taken it seriously.

The vacancy in Pennsylvania's representation in the Senate came with Buchanan's resignation, March 5, 1845, to accept the Secretaryship of State in Polk's Cabinet. George W. Woodward, Wilmot's old preceptor in the student days in WilkesBarre, was chosen for the office by a caucus of more than twothirds of the democratic members of the legislature. The party had a majority of twelve, and his election should have been assured. A faction, however, refused to abide by the result of the caucus; fifteen of the democrats joined with the native Americans and whigs to elect Simon Cameron-a democrat of a very different stamp from either Woodward or Wilmot.

David Wilmot believed that Buchanan connived at, if he

1 The Bradford Reporter, of Nov. 27, 1844, in a leading editorial, presented "with great confidence" the name of David Wilmot for the United States Senate in succession to James Buchanan, and published a number of enthusiastic letters and approving comments from papers throughout the State. The Wayne County Herald, of December 4, spoke most respectfully of the proposal, intimating that had they known of it sooner they would have hesitated to come out for Woodward; but having done so, they would "stand neutral between the two men."