goole in particular insisting that the amendment "had no natural or just relation to the bill," and calling for the reading of the rule against irrelevant and incongruous amendments. To forestall such an objection, Hamlin had modified the wording slightly, to the form:

Provided, further, That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory on the continent of America which shall be hereafter acquired by or annexed to the United States [by virtue of this appropriation, or in any other manner whatever] except for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into such territory from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed out of said territory to the person claiming his or her labor or service.

The only change was the insertion of the words which for purpose of indication are bracketed above, and this insertion was for the technical use of connecting the Proviso with the subject matter of the bill under consideration. Thus modified, the Chair decided after examining the rule, the amendment was in order; and he was sustained over Dromgoole's appeal by a vote of 116 to 83. Douglas, of Illinois, and Graham, of North Carolina, both tried to amend the Proviso so that its application might be restricted to territory north of 36° 30′ (the Missouri Compromise line), but both motions were rejected by the Committee. Dromgoole's substitute for the whole bill, designed as a means of evading the Proviso, was killed by having the Proviso attached to it. "At last the moment came, and a most solemn silence reigned in the House." The Committee adopted the Proviso by a vote of 110 to 89; and the House, voting upon the bill as thus reported, concurred in the amendment by 115 to 106 and passed the amended bill 115 to 105; David Wilmot's vote is recorded in the affirmative on both ballots. And "then there was a rush to David Wilmot,

34 Washington correspondence of the Bradford Reporter.

congratulating him on the success of this, his favorite

Predictions of a cross-cleavage through the old parties were fully verified. The Tioga Banner, analyzing the vote, found that of the 115 yeas, 61 were democrats, 48 whigs, and 6 native Americans; of the nays, 24 were whigs, 18 democrats from the free States, and the remainder from the South.

Wilmot's absence from the floor at the moment when the Three Million Bill was put upon its passage at this second session, and the assumption of the formal offering of the Proviso at that time by King and Hamlin, has been curiously misconstrued by some writers. Hamlin's biographer, apparently unaware of Wilmot's threefold introduction of the amendment at the preceding session, his two preceding offerings of it at the second session, or his two speeches on the subject, attributes the entire credit to his own hero.

Wilmot's inability to be present and take personal charge of his own Proviso on this later occasion is however apparently correctly explained even by these commentators. According to accounts which seem dependable, Polk sent for Wilmot on the fateful morning and kept him in conference beyond the hour set for the vote on the bill. Between the lines, if not in the words of the anecdote, is a plain intimation that the President's appointment was timed with a positive purpose to embarrass the introduction of the Proviso. If so, King and Hamlin were quite equal to the emergency; and Wilmot himself, as shown not only by the correspondence quoted above but by the official record, arrived in time for the climax and the (unfortunately but temporary) triumph of his effort.

35 Washington correspondence of the Bradford Reporter.

CHAPTER XIII

SENATE DEBATE ON THE PROVISO

THE Three Million Bill (to which the Wilmot Proviso was later to be offered as an amendment) first appeared in the proceedings of the Senate, during the second session of the Twenty-ninth Congress, on Tuesday, January 19, 1847, when Mr. Sevier, of Arkansas, reported a bill from the Committee on Foreign Relations "making further appropriations to bring the existing war with Mexico to a close," and appropriating specifically "three millions of dollars, for the purpose of discharging any extraordinary expenses which may be incurred in bringing the war to a conclusion; to be applied under the direction of the President, who shall cause an account of the expenditure thereof to be laid before Congress." Mr. Sevier gave notice that he should call up the bill for consideration at an early day, following the disposal of the Army Bill. It was made the special order for February 4, but did not actually come up for consideration until the next day.

1

Behind its broad general terms, the Three Million Bill was by this time well understood on all hands to carry the purpose of acquiring territory-New Mexico and California-as, indeed, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations explicitly admitted almost at the opening of the debate. The bill had not yet come up in the House; but experience with its predecessor at the first session, and King's attempt, in January of the current session, forecast the inevitable entry of the Wilmot Proviso or some similar proposal at an early stage of the discussion, even though no hint of the amendment itself had yet been given. It is not surprising, therefore, to find

1 Cong. Globe, Twenty-ninth Congress, 2nd session, p. 204.

apprehension of "this direful question" put into words in the opening speech of the senatorial debate-an earnest and dignified address by John Macpherson Berrien, of Georgia. After reviewing the grave considerations of national honor involved in the Mexican War, and the serious problems of general government which would arise in administering the affairs of the mixed populations brought in with the territory it was proposed to acquire, he said: 2

What is the position to which this lust for the acquisition of territory is about to lead us? When we shall have acquired these territories, how are we to surmount the difficulties which will necessarily attend their possession? We cannot, consistently with the Constitution, govern it as an independent province. We cannot, consistently with what we owe to ourselves, put it into a condition to be incorporated with the American Union. But suppose we could: Do you not bring with it that question which more than any other menaces the duration and the permanence of this Union? Do you believe that any treaty which may be negotiated with Mexico can receive the constitutional sanction of this body, leaving the question of slavery open? Do you believe it can receive the constitutional sanction of this body, excluding slavery? Do you believe it can receive the constitutional sanction of this body, permitting slavery? Grant that I am wrong. that it would be practicable to obtain the constitutional majority of the Senate to a treaty which would leave open the question of slavery and I ask southern Senators whether they would not be slumbering upon their posts if their assent were given to a treaty leaving that question open? I ask them if it is not their imperative duty to the States which they represent, when any acquisition of territory shall be made by treaty, to take care that the domestic institutions and interests of the States which they represent are protected by the express stipulations of that treaty? Suppose these overlooked . . . what follows? Inevitably, with the certainty of fate, the exclusion of their constituents from their constitutional right to a participation in the benefits of the territory acquired by common effort.

2 Cong. Globe, p. 330.

It then especially behooved southern Senators to oppose themselves to the acquisition of territory in any form. . . but the appeal is not merely to southern Senators, but to American Senators from whatever quarter of the Union they may come. The appeal is to them to exclude from the National councils this direful question. The acquisition of territory must bring before us, with accumulated force, a question which now menaces the permanence of this Union.

Berrien, however, as von Holst points out, did not voice the prevailing opinion of the South, but the views of a minority. Southern whigs, it is true, were decidedly opposed to all acquisition of territory; but the radical democracy openly avowed that the conflict in Mexico was a "southern war"; they held to the view defined by the Mobile Herald, that under their "humane policy, the natural tendency of the slaves is to increase. The effect follows, that if we have no outlet for them, they will be huddled within the extreme southern limits of the Union. These evils may be avoided by taking new territory in the direction of Mexico. The profitable existence of slavery is by no means incompatible with a more temperate region, but it is incompatible with a very dense population. We need plenty of soil to make it profitable."

Nevertheless, Mr. Berrien went so far as to offer an amendment to the bill containing the declaration that "the war with Mexico ought not to be prosecuted with any view to the dismemberment of that Republic, or to the acquisition by conquest of any portion of her territory"-all in the effort to forestall the impending struggle by evading the contemplated territorial extension. In this he was supported by Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, who referred specifically to the menacing indications afforded by antislavery resolutions presented by the State legislatures of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.*

3 Dr. H. von Holst, Constitutional and Political History of the U.S., 1846-1850, pp. 302, 303.

4 Cong. Globe, p. 338.