as a whole, and false in each of its recitals, and the war itself was "a crime of deepest dye." He warned those in power to look well to it that "public execration did not fall upon their heads, and to remember that blood shed for unrighteous purposes will cry from the ground to Him who bringeth the princes to nothing, and taketh up the isles as a very little thing.""

Though the war was prosecuted with considerable vigor, its progress and results did not keep pace with the wishes of those who had urged it upon the nation, or with the general expectation of its advocates. It was also consuming more time, costing more money, and giving the people more opportunity to study its character, purposes, and prospective results, which, under the teachings of the opponents of slavery, they were improving, than had been anticipated. Accordingly, on the 8th of August, ten days before the close of the session, the President sent a special message to Congress asking an appropriation of two million of dollars, " for the purpose of settling our differences with Mexico." He expressed the opinion that the chief obstacle would be the adjustment of boundaries between the two countries.

A bill being introduced by Mr. McKay, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, to carry into effect the President's recommendation, a brief and sharp debate followed. Hugh White of New York avowed his unwillingness to give his sanction to the bill unless amended so as to forever preclude the possibility of extending slavery. Mr. Winthrop of Massachusetts arraigned the supporters of the administration for their attempts to place their opponents in a false position.

Several Democratic members, who had been cajoled into a vote for annexation by the shallow device of the Walker amendment, on the pretence that the choice proposed by that amendment would be left to the new administration, had been greatly chagrined, besides being made the subjects of much censorious remark, when they saw the measure actually consummated by the 'hasty action of Tyler and Calhoun, which they had supposed would be left to the more deliberate and carefully considered movements of Mr. Polk and Mr. Buchanan. They saw now not only evidences of a similar policy, but

themselves summoned to the ignoble task of carrying forward and helping to consummate a fraud, of which they had already unwittingly been made the agents and the victims.

If, therefore, they could not retrieve the past, they were anxious to save the future. They saw that the war was prosecuted by men intent on the acquisition of territory, which, though free by Mexican law, would be made slave by the new theory of Mr. Calhoun, that the Constitution carried slavery into all national territory, acquired or to be acquired, unless prohibited by positive law. They believed that President Polk was seeking territory, not to extend freedom and free institutions, but slavery and those peculiar to the South. Something they saw must be done in that supreme moment of the crisis to retrieve the false step they had taken and to avert the impending evil.

In the haste of the moment Jacob Brinkerhoff, a Democratic member from Ohio, afterward a member of the Republican party, a jurist of capacity and high character, drew up an amendment to the bill, which has become famous in the history of the times now passing in review. It 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 to be negotiated between them, and to the use by the executive, of the moneys herein apropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall be first duly convicted."

To secure the floor for such an amendment, and to give it as fair a chance as possible of success, he sought the aid of a member of the Democratic party who stood well with the South, and who yet was friendly to the principle embodied in the amendment he had prepared. David Wilmot of Pennsylvania answered that description. A Northern Democrat, he had commended himself to Southern favor by voting for the tariff of 1846. The result proved the wisdom of the strategy. Gaining the floor, Mr. Wilmot accompanied his amendment with an earnest speech. To the manifest purpose of the administration to acquire territory he had no ob

jection, providing it could be kept free from slavery. A vote of eighty-three to sixty-four in favor of his amendment greatly cheered him and his Northern friends. A motion, by Mr. Tibbatts of Kentucky, that the bill lie on the table, made for the purpose of defeating the proviso, was lost by fourteen majority, all the Northern Whigs but Robert C. Schenck of Ohio, and all the Northern Democrats but John Pettit of Indiana, and Stephen A. Douglas and John A. McClernand of Illinois, voting against it. The bill was then passed by a vote of eighty-seven to sixty-four.

It was taken up in the Senate on the last day of the session, which was to close at noon, and a motion was made to strike out the proviso. John Davis of Massachusetts took the floor, and, he declining to yield it, the bill and proviso were lost. Mr. Davis was much censured at the time for not permitting a vote to be taken. But, whatever were his motives, it is probable that a vote could not have been reached on the motion to strike out the proviso; and, if it had been, it would have unquestionably prevailed, as there was a majority of slaveholders in that body, and the exigencies of the system would not have allowed them to see the purpose of the war thus defeated. It has indeed been since affirmed by Mr. Brinkerhoff that there was "a well-ascertained and unanimous determination on the part of the Democratic senators of the free States. to stand by the proviso, and that those of Delaware and Maryland would have voted with them." But surely Mr. Brinkerhoff must have been mistaken. It is barely possible that Democratic senators from the free States would have voted for that measure, but their previous and subsequent conduct does not justify the belief that they would have done so. Mr. Pearce of Maryland and the two Delaware senators are not living to speak for themselves, but the subsequent course of Mr. Pearce and John M. Clayton gave no assurance that they would have voted for the proviso had it come to a vote. The probability is strong that they would have voted against it, and Reverdy Johnson, in a letter written in April, 1873, states in the most unequivocal language that he should not have voted for it.

Message. Speech of Mr. Wilmot.

- Remarks of Mr.

-

Berrien.

Wood. Brinkerhoff, Stephens, Bayly, Dowdell. - Mr. Hamlin's amendment. Three-million bill reported. Upham's amendment. Mr. Webster's views. Wilmot's amendment lost. Treaty of peace. Declarations of Mr. Trist. Potency of slavery. - Meeting of XXXth Congress. - Mr. Winthrop elected Speaker. - Mr. Putnam's resolution. - Root's bills for California and New Mexico. - Amendment excluding slavery. — Mr. Walker's amendment. Action of House. - Defeat of measures for prohibiting slavery. — Mr. Thompson's amendment. — Agreed to by the House. Rejected by the Senate. - Victory of the Slave Power.

ON the assembling of Congress, in December, 1846, the President, in his Annual Message, reaffirmed his previous declaration, that Mexico had inaugurated hostilities, and that "American blood had been spilled on American soil." The language of Benton, in his "Thirty Years' View," affirming that "History is bound to pronounce her judgment upon these assumptions, and to say that they are unfounded," does not express the whole truth. They were unequivocally and historically false.

A bill appropriating three millions of dollars for the purpose of negotiations was introduced into the House. In the debate following Mr. Wilmot defined and defended his position. Alluding to the adoption of the proviso by a decisive majority, he expressed the opinion, which the facts by no means warranted, that "the entire South were even then willing to acquiesce." He said the friends of the administration - of

whom he was one did not then charge upon him and those who voted with him the defeat of the Two-Million Bill by the introduction of the proviso. He admitted that "the South resisted it manfully, boldly resisted it; but," he added, "it was passed, and there was no cry that the Union was to be

severed." Disclaiming all sympathy for, or affiliation with, Abolitionists, Mr. Wilmot said: "I stand by every compromise of the Constitution. I was in favor of the annexation of Texas. The Democracy of the North was for it to a man, and is fighting the war cheerfully, not reluctantly, for Texas and the South." The declarations of the leaders and presses of the administration and the movements of the armies pointed, he said, to the acquisition of New Mexico and California; and he expressed the hope that the President would firmly adhere to his purpose. He desired fresh territory, but it must be preserved from the aggressions of slavery; and for that he contended. "When, in God's name," he asked, "will it be the time for the North to speak out, if not now? If the war is not for slavery, then I do not embarrass the administration with my amendment. If it is for slavery, I am deceived in its object."

Of course Mr. Wilmot was deceived: His declarations and his prompt disclaimer of all sympathy and affiliation with abolition revealed that fact, as also his want of acquaintance with slavery and the designs of the Slave Power. His ignorance, however, was speedily dispelled in the path on which he had so bravely entered; and his subsequent career showed that in the new school he had entered he became thoroughly, rapidly proficient. But at that time he evidently failed to comprehend the real facts of the case, or the true philosophy of those facts. The seeming acquiescence of the South in the vote on his proviso resulted not so much from a disposition to abide by it as from a settled purpose to reverse it as soon as possible, and from the conviction that such reversal could be obtained. He soon learned, however, the strength and tenacity of the Southern purpose to guard with sleepless vigilance the system of slavery, and to keep it from all possible or conceivable danger; but he never failed to render good service in the struggle on which he then entered.

There were other examples, in the same party, of like resistance to the exacting demands of slavery. Among them was that of Bradford R. Wood of New York, subsequently a Republican, and Minister to Denmark during the Rebellion.