nouncing the annexation of a war with Mexico. Mr. Polk had previously been a warm defender of a claim-existing from the days of French and Spanish occupancy of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and from treaties made with those powers by the United States-that the region called Texas, if its boundaries could be discovered, had never been fairly Mexican, but had almost, if not quite, been American land. Mr. Clay had eloquently opposed this theory, and all the Whig stump orators and journalists now followed his leadership. Mr. Lincoln distinguished himself by the fervor and force of the speeches which he made before great Whig mass meetings in Illinois and Indiana. One of these was made at Gentryville, a short walk only from the log cabin where he had lived in his boyhood. Half way in his speech he stopped short to get down and shoulder his way through the crowd for a hand-shake with Nat Grigsby, brother of the Aaron Grigsby who married Sally Lincoln. Something very marvelous appears the change which had taken place in one of the men whose hands were meeting, but the other had not risen from the level upon which he had been born.

There were Democratic advocates who declared that the future agitation of the slavery question could only be prevented by increasing the political strength of the South.

There were Whig advocates who plainly saw and declared that the annexation of Texas would open a wide gate for the admission of dangerous questions relating to slavery.

So

Both parties avowed their horror of agitation, and both pleaded so well that the nation found a choice between them somewhat difficult. Mr. Polk received only thirty-eight thousand one hundred and seventy-five more votes than did Mr. Clay, but he had one hundred and seventy electors against only one hundred and five obtained by Mr. Clay. If, however, the thirty-six votes of the State of New York had been taken from Mr. Polk and given to Mr. Clay, the result would have been reversed. it would have been but for the blind wisdom of the extreme Abolitionist Whigs of New York, aided by a few Free-soil Democrats. They nominated a candidate of their own, Mr. James G. Birney, gave him over sixty-two thousand votes, and enabled Mr. Polk to carry New York. By their action, therefore, the Texas gate was thrown wide open for the admission of the slavery question, and a joint effort of the Whig and Democratic parties to shut it again, in 1850, failed miserably.

The last act of the Tyler Administration and of its now triumphant supporters in Congress was the passage of the bill providing for the admission of Texas as a State of the Union, to be subdivided into four States as rapidly as its expected increase in population might permit. The inauguration of President James K. Polk, March 4th, 1845, was accompanied and followed by angry declarations on the part of Mexico that the annexation of Texas would be regarded by her as an act of open hostility and a sufficient cause of war. The Texan Congress expressed its formal assent to the act of an

nexation June 18th, 1845, and summoned a convention of the people, which unanimously ratified and confirmed the annexation treaty, transferring to the United States whatever rights the short-lived Republic of Texas might possess to any lands which American, politicians could claim or American armies could occupy.

The latter were in almost feverishly energetic preparation from the day in which President Polk named his Cabinet, and a force under General Taylor was gathered within a few miles of the Texas border in the Spring of 1845. It remained there, as an army of observation, until December, 1845, when it was re-enforced and transferred to Corpus Christi, at the mouth of the Nueces River, on the coast of Texas, to serve as a notification to Mexico that the main question remaining to be settled between the two nations was one of a boundary line. That also was decided upon at Washington before the Spring of 1846, and in April the army, under General Taylor, advanced to the Rio Grande, while other American forces proceeded to seize and occupy the remaining territory, New Mexico and California, which, with intervening wastes and mountains, the party of territorial expansion and slavery extension had determined to acquire for the United States. It was bold and vigorous statesmanship, which the Whig orators and writers characterized freely by much less pleasant and even more sonorous epithets. Mexico lost nothing of which she was making or could make any use. The slavery extensionists gained nothing. The best interests were served of

all the human beings affected, omitting any sufferers by the direct operation of the war. The questions of right and wrong between Mexico and the United States were about as nearly balanced as were the votes of the Whig and Democratic parties of 1844, and speedily ceased to be more than matters of historical inquiry.

The Birney abolitionists were not the only Northern politicians who took ground openly in 1844 upon the subject of slavery extension. The course of events was watched by a large and intelligent body of men, who but waited a suitable opportunity for action. One was given them by President Polk in August, 1846. The successes won by General Taylor and the apparently helpless condition of Mexico encouraged him to prepare at once for the peace negotiations and the land purchases which he hoped might soon be within his grasp. He asked Congress for authority and for money, and both were voted to him by the House of Representatives, but the act appropriating thirty thousand dollars for expenses and three millions to use as the President might see fit was accompanied by the startling announcement that the great plan for manufacturing new slave States beyond the boundaries of Texas itself had failed. On the motion of a Pennsylvania Whig, named David Wilmot, after consultation with other members of his own party, the following proviso was added to the bill :

"Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico, by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated

between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said Territory, except for crime whereof the party shall be duly convicted."

The already existing Mexican law prohibited slavery in all the domain of that Republic, and the great mass of the Whig Party, re-enforced by a strong detachment of Free-soil Democrats, came into line behind the Wilmot Proviso with a round assertion that the Constitution of the United States did not contain any provision overruling that old law. Whatever else was afterward done or not done with the Wilmot Proviso itself was of little consequence after fully half of the nation had declared some kind of assent to the idea and doctrine which it contained, and a new era opened in American politics.