I have stood through the day as the standard-bearer of a forlorn hope. DAVID WILMOT, December 3, 1849 It may be that you will succeed in burying the Ordinance of Freedom. But the people will write upon its tomb Resurgam—I shall rise again; and the same history which records its resurrection may also inform posterity that they who fancied they killed the Proviso, only committed political suicide. SALMON P. CHASE, May 27, 1850 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, adopted by Congress, February 1, 1865, ratification announced December 18, 1865. DAVID WILMOT FREE-SOILER CHAPTER I THE YEARS PREPARATORY DAVID WILMOT came of stock originally British, but (on both sides of the family) of long transplantation to American soil. The earliest of the Wilmots traceable with certainty on this side of the Atlantic was Benjamin-"old Goodeman Willmote" of the colonial records, who was living in New Haven in 1641, and "tooke the oathe of fidellitie" in May, 1648. His wife bore him two sons, Benjamin and William, and a daughter, who was named for her mother, Ann. The elder Benjamin died in 1669, aged about fourscore. Benjamin Wilmot 2d drops out of our story; for it was his younger brother, William, born in England and a six-year-old immigrant with his parents, who was the progenitor of the author of the Proviso. He married Sarah Thomas, daughter of John and Tabitha Thomas, in 1658, and died in 1689, leaving five sons and five daughters, all of whom married and left issue. John Wilmot, one of these five sons of William and Sarah, born January 20, 1667, married Sarah Clark and was the father of nine children, among them a son, Valentine, born December 14, 1713, who married Rachel Johnson and later settled in Woodbridge, Connecticut. There his branch of the clan seems to have remained for at least two generations. Valentine's line was continued by a son, David, and David's son, Randall— father of the David Wilmot of Proviso fame-was born in Woodbridge, on May 20, 1792. The Wilmots had not failed to achieve distinction during their century and a half of residence in the New World. Samuel Wilmot, a descendant of William the younger, baptized in January, 1744, was one of the New England Tories who removed to New Brunswick during the Revolution. He became a major in the British army. A grandson of his, Lemuel Allan Wilmot (1809-1878), "was a member of Parliament, judge of the Supreme Court, prime minister and attorneygeneral of New Brunswick, governor of the province, etc. Another grandson, Robert Duncan Wilmot, was a member of Parliament, surveyor-general, provincial secretary, member of the Privy Council of Canada, speaker of the Canadian Senate, lieutenant governor of New Brunswick, etc." 1 992 The influence which had kept the parent stem of the family generally rooted in New England through five generations seems to have been shaken in the sixth. Perhaps Randall Wilmot's mother brought in a change of temperament; but she was herself "a native of Connecticut. Her name was Lois Grannis, and she was a lady of pronounced character and refinement." At all events, Randall felt something of the westward urge. He moved over into Sullivan County, New York, and there married Mary Grant (1792-1820)—“a blonde beauty, who belonged to the Grant family of Sullivan County. David Wilmot said that he and General Grant once had a long conversation on the subject of their ancestry, and after following the Grant line for some time came to the conclusion that they were very distant relatives." Randall and Mary must have moved on again very soon; for, when David was born, January 20, 1814, they were living in the newly founded county seat of Wayne County, Pennsylvania-the little town of Bethany. 1 Frank Willing Leach, the North American, Oct. 18, 1914. See also The Wilmot Family of New Haven, Conn., by Donald Lines Jacobus. 'Letter from Maria Wilmot Overton, in the Athens (Pa.) News, Nov. 18, 1891. 8 Ibid. It seems to-day like a bit of their ancestral New England, set citadel-like on the jutting shoulder of a hill which pushes suddenly into the valley of the Dyberry. From three sides the approach is sharply upward; but when the traveler has climbed the scarp and set foot on the broken plateau that stretches north and west, he finds himself at the foot of a single long street, shaded by splendid trees and flanked by grave old colonial houses that drowse in memories of the days when Bethany housed the county offices and officials, and the tide of life and excitement flowed in and out and reached a spring flood with each session or term of court. Eighty years ago all that local glory passed to Honesdale, three miles south, on the great lane of travel that comes up the Lackawaxen and streams on through Carbondale, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and westward by the valley of the Susquehanna. The courthouse, deserted by bench and bar, transformed into a home for the erstwhile University of Northern Pennsylvania, and still later destroyed by fire, was never replaced; and the old public square is now merely a quiet, tree-girt meadow. The little brick schoolhouse at the top of the street, where the boy David recited his first lessons, has been converted into a dwelling. But the stately mansion which his father built, facing the square, looks out between its Doric columns over the emptiness where the courthouse once stood, and seems so steeped in associations of the past that the visitor unconsciously hushes his voice and moves softly, for fear of disturbing the dream, or jostling the shadowy figures in high stocks and higher top-hats, who, in imagination, may be seen moving in and out. The stage and setting of the child's first visions of life—the talk of courts and cases and politics which must have been the daily conversation around his father's table—no doubt directly influenced the bent of young Wilmot's career. Take something from the dignity of its elms and maples, and restore the body and life of the county buildings, and the Bethany of to-day would be practically the same town David |