extension as a test of party loyalty. The conventions and conference at which Wilmot had been nominated were absolutely regular, as well as wholly unanimous; no reference whatever to controversial matters had been made in the resolutions or even the informal proceedings; but the hunker faction could not let the prestige of an uncontested election accrue to a man occupying such a position as Wilmot filled in the public eye. The same clique which had worked against him in the congressional campaign were busy again. William Elwell, of Susquehanna, was invited to run as an independent candidate; and, in spite of his formal written declination, a ticket bearing his name was put out, in his absence (and, it was said, without his authorization) a few days only before the election. It was asserted that his nominators "openly approached the leaders of the whig party with a proposition to sell and sacrifice the whole democratic ticket (in Bradford County, at least) in exchange for votes against Wilmot." In spite of this effort, Wilmot carried the county by a majority of 1,293 (4,076 votes, against 2,784 for Elwell), in contrast with a majority of only 38 for the democratic candidate for governor, and of an average of 540 for the judges of the supreme court. In the district his majority was nearly 2,400.

The judicial term to which Wilmot was thus elected was ten years, beginning with the first Monday of December following. His charge to the grand jury at the December term, his first official utterance from the bench, was a remarkable address for that day, so unusual in its scope and manner that the jury took the unusual course of addressing to the judge a note of thanks, with the request that the charge be made public. It is quoted in extenso in the Appendix.

David Wilmot's qualifications as a judge, as seen by his colleagues, are defined in extracts from the resolutions of the Bradford County bar and of his later associates in the United States Court of Claims, given in the final chapter of this book. Goodrich, of the Bradford Reporter, dwelt particularly upon his impartiality and ability which "disarmed the enmity

of his foes" (though not completely, as witness Chapter XXX). "The peculiar qualities of his mind found full play in deciding questions which arose, and his decisions were greatly respected and very rarely overruled by the Supreme Court." The Mauch Chunk Gazette, in an editorial written after Wilmot's retirement from the county bench to enter the United States Senate, declared that:

As a Judge, no one doubts his ability. His worst enemies are obliged to concede to him honesty of purpose and integrity of character. His legal acquirements are such as eminently fit him for the Bench, and although considered a leader of his party, no one ever accused him of allowing his political opinions or prejudices to influence his decisions. He carefully listens to the facts in each case which comes before him, and to those facts applies the rules of law, and gives his decision as he believes justice requires, regardless of personal likes or dislikes, without fear, favor or affection.

The most emphatic tribute comes from men who were Wilmot's colleagues or successors on the bench, or from lawyers whose experience runs back to the time when the traditions of Wilmot's service as president judge still pervaded the courts of the district. The resolutions of the Bradford County bar, adopted and filed May 19, 1868, dwell especially upon the "kindness, courtesy and ability, and above all, the high sense of professional integrity . . . the innate and all-pervading love of justice he exhibited on the Bench, and the . . . decision, promptness, firmness and manly independence of his course as a judge of the Courts." Mention is often made, in more intimate personal reminiscences, of the unhesitating promptness with which his rulings were made or his decisions rendered, and the infrequency of their reversal. “He was a much better judge than a lawyer," said his successor, Judge P. D. Morrow (according to the special correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, September 23, 1881); "I was his law

2

partner for quite a time, and knew him very well. He had one of the best analytical minds of any man I ever knew, also rare good judgment and great nerve. While upon the Bench, he virtually organized the republican party in this section of Pennsylvania. He would hold court in the day and make speeches at night, in the schoolhouses throughout the county. He was a man who feared nothing and did what he thought was right." A still more vivid characterization comes from the lips of Hon. David Cameron, who himself sat on the Bench in the Wilmot district and is one of the few men still vigorous physically and intellectually whose mature personal recollections of Wilmot as a jurist are now accessible. "David Wilmot," he says, "was one of those common-law, common-sense judges who looked upon the law as a science. He rarely quoted authorities in his decisions, but his decisions were almost always upheld. He was a man who, in type of judicial mind, reminded me above all of John Marshall.”

Or for a more detailed estimate, though made under special circumstances, quotation might be made from the eulogy delivered by Chief Justice Casey, of the United States Court of Claims, March 20, 1868. The speaker saw, as Judge Wilmot's salient qualities, "integrity, dignity, impartiality, love of justice, and strong common sense. His analysis was clear, his logic direct and cogent. His opinions, in the elegance and simplicity of their style and diction, their clear and perspicuous narrative, their concise and distinct statement of premises, the force and power of their logic, and their natural and almost irresistible conclusions," ranked Judge Wilmot "among the most gifted judicial writers the country has ever produced."

2 Beginning in 1862, and ending with Wilmot's appointment to the Court of Claims, in 1863. C. F. Heverly, History of the Towandas, p. 278.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA STRUGGLE

In the interval of temporary calm that followed the admission of California and preceded the new and more violent outbreak over Kansas and Nebraska, Wilmot, in common with others who had been in the forefront of the agitation, seems to have contributed little in the way of public expression on the questions at issue. The results of 1848 had proved that free soilism needed further stimulus before another national campaign could be hopefully undertaken; but the Compromises of 1850, however futile they were to prove as a permanent remedy, were acting for the time not as a stimulus, but as a sedative. In the Life of Galusha A. Grow,' Wilmot is quoted as saying at this juncture:

...

The Whigs are now substantially a free-soil party and would resist any further aggression of the slave power; but if they succeed in electing a President, they would be proslavery, as is the Democratic party. So long as they are out, they will be an antislavery party. Thus . . . they will be an organized political nucleus for the free-soil element of the Free States to fall back upon in this contest. We Free-Soilers of the northern counties will, therefore, probably vote for Pierce in this election, not because we believe in him, but because in our judgment it is the wisest course to prepare for the conflict which must come, upon the extension of slavery in the country.

It was a season of pause, waiting for a new tide of purpose to come in. By some, the fire was hopefully believed to be extinct. The free-soilers knew it was smoldering, but they did not move to fan it into a flame. It is perhaps significant

1 James T. Dubois and Gertrude S. Mathews, Galusha A. Grow, pp. 93, 94.

that to this epoch belong almost the only speeches David Wilmot ever made—or at least, the only ones that have been preserved-in which there is no reference to any political question; especially no reference to slavery extension. The most important of these, delivered at the laying of the cornerstone of the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute under Masonic auspices, July 4, 1853, is quoted in the Appendix.

In the main, he seems to have watched, intently but almost apart, the retarded but irresistibly persistent march of events toward their impending crisis. The emphasis with which the voters of his district had declared their unshaken loyalty to him, as soon as his canvass for the judgeship gave them their opportunity, must have been balm for the bitterness of the attacks which had finally unseated him from Congress. And yet one can well imagine that the courtrooms of the Pennsylvania county seats seemed an exile, and that he chafed at his lack of opportunity to carry forward, on the floor of the House, the front of the battle against slavery extension.

For a time, however, there was, as already remarked, a sort of general armistice after the adoption of the compromise measures of 1850. Perhaps it might better be said, in later borrowed phraseology, that the South rested after its advance and consolidated the positions it had taken. "The country was at peace. Business was good; evidences of smiling prosperity were everywhere to be seen. The spirit of enterprise was rampant; great works were in progress, others were projected. Political repose was a marked feature of the situation. The slavery question seemed settled, and the dream of the great compromisers seemed to be realized." 2

And then, as Wilmot and Lincoln had so significantly predicted, the compromise was taken as the starting point and encouragement for a new push. With the dawn of a new presidential campaign, in 1854, forces similar to those which had brought forth the Cass and Buchanan letters and the Proviso

2 James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, Vol. I, p. 428.