before Pennsylvania-and now she is outstripped by States that have grown up within the memory of the present generation. Why is it? Can any one doubt that slavery is the cause?

He emphasized his point by contrasting Ohio with Kentucky, Michigan with Arkansas. The laborer of the North, going into the wilderness to hew himself a home, did more work than three slaves and consumed less. New empires were building in the West, while the South was falling back into decrepitude and decay.

What is the cause of this disparity? It is slavery, sir, and that alone. Slave labor exhausts and makes barren the fields it cultivates. That labor is only profitable to the master in the production of the staples of cotton, sugar, and tobacco. Crop follows crop, until the fertility of the soil is exhausted, when the old fields are abandoned, new and virgin soil sought out, to be exhausted in the same manner and in its turn likewise abandoned. Thus, sir, sterility follows its path. Eastern Virginia, unrivaled in the fertility of its soil, and in the geniality of its climate, with navigable rivers and harbors unsurpassed in commercial importance, is this day but little better than a barren waste. The free labor of the North has commenced the work of regeneration, and to this alone can eastern Virginia look for redemption and renewed prosperity.10

Sir, as a friend of the Union, as a lover of my country, and in no spirit of hostility to the South, I offer my amendment. Viewing slavery as I do, I must resist its further extension and propagation on the North American continent. It is an evil, the magnitude and the end of which no man can see. Mr. Walker, in his

10 In this clear vision of the blighting effect of slavery from the economic point of view, Wilmot seems to have freed himself from the mists which obscured the situation from many of his contemporaries. They com bated the "institution" from political, or more rarely, moral motives, but often at the same time conceded its claims to contributing profusely to the wealth and prosperity of the civilization in which it was implanted. For an incisive study of the position and progressing decay of the South under the influence of slavery, enforcing many fold this argument of Wilmot's, from the standpoint of an outside observer and the testimony of a cumulative body of indisputable statistics, see von Holst's Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 1846-1850, Chapter XVII.

celebrated Texas letter, urged the policy of annexation, as a means and aid in the final abolition of slavery. By the annexation of Texas, he said, a frontier of two thousand miles in extent would be opened, bordering on Mexico, over which our slave and black population, as it should press upon the country, could pass and become mingled with the mixed races of Mexico and South America. Sir, I thought at the time, and still think, that there was much force in this argument. But if we take the very country that was to be their refuge, and subvert it for slavery, what becomes of the reasoning and argument of Mr. Walker?

Here the hour expired and Mr. Wilmot was broken off in his remarks.

CHAPTER XII

THE PROVISO DEBATE IN THE HOUSE

WILMOT'S amendment, it will be remembered, was not yet formally before Congress. It had been brought in, by indirection, as part of Preston King's argument in support of his appeal-the only part of the "argument," in fact, that was really uttered. Wilmot had undertaken to offer it as the preface to his speech, but it had again been technically excluded on a point of order. Its presentation in regular form later, however, was surely forecast; and the challenge to its opponents and the appeal to its friends was as effective as if it had been the actual order of business under parliamentary rule. The storm of debate which broke forthwith was one of the most intense up to that time witnessed in Congress. It "rent asunder the transparent veil with which the proslavery party had attempted to conceal the true object of the war, and provoked the southern members into unusual frankness." In the resultant agitation Salmon P. Chase saw the near advent of "a new and more general antislavery movement, which would attract large numbers who had hitherto acted with the whig and democratic parties." Blaine, in his Twenty Years in Congress, says:

2

1

No question had arisen since the slavery agitation of 1820 that was so elaborately debated. The Wilmot Proviso absorbed the attention of Congress for a longer time than the Missouri Compromise; it produced a wider and deeper excitement in the country, and it threatened a more serious danger to the peace and integrity of the Union. The consecration of the territory of the

1 William Jay, A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War, p. 185.

2 Robert B. Warden, An Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, p. 315.

United States to freedom became from that day a rallying cry for every shade of antislavery sentiment. If it did not go as far as the Abolitionists in their extreme and uncompromising faith might demand, it yet took a long step forward and afforded the ground on which the battle of the giants was to be waged and possibly decided. The feeling in all sections became intense, and it proved the sword which cleft asunder political associations that had been close and intimate for a lifetime. Both the old parties. were largely represented on each side of the Proviso. The northern whigs, at the outset, generally sustained the Proviso, and the northern democrats divided, with a majority against it. In the slave States both parties were against it.

During the two weeks through which the Three Million Bill remained before the House, to the exclusion of all but minor routine or incidental business, nearly thirty important speeches were delivered, about equally divided between the friends and the enemies of the Proviso, which received almost more emphasis in the discussion than the bill itself.

3

Stephen Strong, of New York, was the first speaker. As the Chair had raised a point of order, "contending that all the speeches were out of order, there being no question before the Committee," Mr. Strong, to make his speech in order, offered a perfunctory motion to strike out "three" millions and insert "two." His address was an elaborate defense of the President and of the purposes and conduct of the war, and an attack on the advocates of the Proviso for attempting to discredit and destroy the Administration. He denounced the Proviso as "of Federal origin," "an old device," a "mere claptrap," designed "to make disturbance between different sections of the country," a piece of "political abolitionism." He professed a curious interest in its origin, saying he understood Mr. Brinkerhoff, of Ohio, in a card to his constituents, had claimed its authorship; but he believed its purpose had no Constitutional warrant, and its effect would be disastrous because "the way to fasten slavery upon the country forever

3 Cong. Globe, Twenty-ninth Congress, 2nd session, Appendix, p. 318.

is to wall it up within its present limits." He demanded action, and arraigned those who delayed it by a "rule or ruin" attitude.

4

John S. Chipman, of Michigan, followed with the declaration that while he would vote for the bill in any form, Proviso or no Proviso, to get the war ended, he opposed the Proviso as a project to disrupt the party and the country. "In his humble opinion, the preservation of the Union was worth a million times more than the pitiful consideration of a handful of degraded Africans. . . . . . When gentlemen pretending to love their country would place the consideration of the nominal liberation of a handful of degraded Africans in the one scale, and the Union in the other, and make the latter kick the beam, he would not give a fig for their patriotism." He thanked God that he should vote against the Wilmot Proviso. It smelt rank of negroism. The Two Million Bill would have passed both houses at the last session with little opposition, “but then it was he would not say in midnight conclave-that the combined delegations of the distinguished Representatives from New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, had the audacity to concoct this proviso," the motive, he insinuated, being revenge "because the Executive had not paid the attention to Pennsylvania in making his appointments which the Keystone State was entitled to."

After these two northern antagonists came Howell Cobb, of Georgia." He found Wilmot's speech supporting the Proviso devoid of any argument-a mere unprovable declaration that the North was "right" and the South "wrong." He demanded a continuation of the spirit of compromise which, he asserted, existed among the framers of the Constitution, allowing the two portions of the country (slave and free) to grow in parallel. He opposed any restriction such as that contemplated in the Proviso-permitting the North to extend her territory, her government, her power, strength and influence,

4 Cong. Globe, Appendix, p. 322.

Cong. Glob, p. 360.