CHAPTER XV OPENING OF THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS THE opening of the Thirtieth Congress, December 6, 1847, found David Wilmot seated with a Pennsylvania delegation of which more than half were new members. Changes elsewhere were in proportion, and of the little group who had been called into consultation on the purpose to offer the Proviso, only James Thompson had been returned to the House. Even Wilmot's lodgings and mess shifted again, back to the corner of 42 Street and Pennsylvania Avenue-no longer known as "Masi's," but as "Gilbert's." Here his messmates were Charles S. Stuart, Kingsley S. Bingham and R. McClelland, of Michigan, and Franklin Clark, E. K. Smart, Hezekiah Williams and James S. Wiley, of Maine. With the opening of the second session Gilbert's mess was enlarged to take in Senators Henry Dodge, of Wisconsin, A. C. Dodge, of Iowa, T. Fitzgerald, of Michigan, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, George W. Jones, of Iowa, and J. M. Niles, of Connecticut, while John D. Cummins, of Ohio, took Wiley's place among the members of the House at the table. Several of this group of northwestern and northeastern democrats were destined to play important parts later in the free-soil and the republican parties. But the new Congress opened to Wilmot an even more interesting association-one which was to affect deeply his after career; for at this session Abraham Lincoln took his seat as a whig representative from the State of Illinois. It is curious that these two men, who were to be drawn so closely together a decade later by devotion to one idea-resistance to slavery extension-should have come into the Thirtieth Congress by diametrically opposite roads. Wilmot was a defender and supporter of the Administration on the questions of Texan annexation and the Mexican War. Abraham Lincoln utterly condemned both. Wilmot had voted, alone in his State delegation, for the reduced tariff of 1846, and had been reelected largely on that issue. Lincoln, as a staunch whig, disbelieved in and denounced that tariff bill, and had used his party's ammunition vigorously against it in the campaign that gave him his seat in the House of Representatives. On one thing, however, they were united. In his speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854, Lincoln said: "The Wilmot Proviso, or the principle of it, was constantly coming up in some shape or other, and I think I may venture to say that I voted for it at least forty times during the short time I was there-"1 that is, in the Thirtieth Congress. Again, in a letter to J. F. Speed, dated August 24, 1855, he wrote: "When I was at Washington, I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times." Douglas, indeed, attributed Lincoln's first seizure of public attention to his stand on the Proviso. In one of the joint debates he is reported as saying: "Mr. Lincoln served with me, or I with him, in the legislature in 1836, when we parted. He subsided or was submerged for some years, and I lost sight of him. . . . When Wilmot raised the Wilmot Proviso tornado, Mr. Lincoln again turned up as a member of Congress from Sangamon district." 2 Lincoln, however, seems to have reserved his controversial argument of that question for political circles or occasions. "At Mrs. Spriggs' mess, where he boarded in Washington," says Ida M. Tarbell in her Life of Abraham Lincoln (Vol. I, p. 223), the Wilmot Proviso was the topic of frequent conversation and the occasion of many angry controversies. Dr. Busey, who was a fellow-boarder, says of Lincoln's part in these discussions that, 1 Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works, 1902, Vol. I, p. 184. though he may have been as radical as any of the household, he was so discreet in giving expression to his convictions on the slavery question as to avoid giving offense to anybody. When such conversation would threaten angry or even unpleasant contention, he would interrupt it by some anecdote, and so completely disarrange the tenor of the discussion that the parties engaged would either separate in good humor or continue conversation free from discord. It is much to be doubted whether Wilmot was equally temperate and diplomatic, either in disposition or language. The record of the proceedings in the House from December, 1847, until the following August adjournment, gathered into a single perspective, seem to show the young congressman from the twelfth Pennsylvania district moving more at his ease in the parliamentary atmosphere-more confident of the greatness of the principles of which he had become the personification-more aware of and alert against the powerful enemies he had made. He appears to enter with greater freedom, though briefly, into the debates, but (with one great exception) to let large questions on which he had already expressed himself pass with little, if anything, more than the formal yea or nay of his ballot. This is particularly noticeable, for example, in the case of the River and Harbor Appropriations which had drawn his fire during the preceding term. They reappeared in the Thirtieth Congress under varied forms. Herald of all was a resolution offered by John Pettit, of Indiana, to the general effect that Congress had the power to improve a river or harbor or inlet when such improvement was necessary to expedite or secure the movements of the Army or the safety or maintenance of the Navy. Wilmot, for reasons which he did not explain, voted against tabling this resolution. The main River and Harbor Act passed the House, August 11, by a vote of 118 to 62, Wilmot voting in the negative. It was not acted upon in the Senate. 3 Cong. Globe, Thirtieth Congress, 1st session, p. 1063. He voted nay also on the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriations Bill, which he classed with the river and harbor measure as a vehicle for all sorts of ill-considered and often extravagant expenditures (it was, in fact, loaded with river-improvement items) many of them for the advantage of special interests; but he supported the bill of February 17, authorizing a loan of $16,000,000 (treasury notes); the Ten Regiment Bill for the increase of the military forces, and the Post Route Bill-all Administration measures. He voted for the resolution favoring an increase of duties on foreign luxuries of all kinds, as a means of enlarging the revenue (June 19), and he joined, also, in the act providing a charter for the city of Washington, especially in the motion to submit it to the people for popular approval, and in the resolutions extending congratulations to the people of France over the reëstablishment of the republic (April 3). His committee work throughout the session included service on the Standing Committee on Claims-one of the most important in the House-and the proceedings show that his service was active. He appears as the sponsor of bills from that Committee for the relief of Lyon and Howard, which he later debated on the floor; of Mary B. Renner, and Noah A. Phelps, and of James Moorhead. None of these measures appears to have been adopted at that session. He was also a member of the select committee on that portion of the President's message recommending that provision be made for the families of soldiers who lost their lives in the Mexican War. As a result of the labors of that committee, a bill was reported to the House, May 31, 1848, providing "for the families of such commissioned and noncommissioned officers, privates, musicians, whether belonging to the regular Army or to any volunteer corps, as may have been killed in battle or died from wounds. received or diseases contracted or other casualties occasioned whilst in the service of the United States during the war with the Republic of Mexico." This was passed, July 5, 1848.5 Cong. Globe, pp. 298, 322, 835, 850. 5 Cong. Globe, pp. 349, 798, 894. The first important matter, however, in which Wilmot took a prominent part was the adoption of a set of resolutions providing for action upon the President's message. The eighth of these resolutions, as offered by Samuel F. Vinton, of Ohio, directed, "That so much of said message as relates to the revenue, to the public debt, to the increase thereof, to the creation of a sinking fund, to a duty on tea and coffee, to the collection, safekeeping and disbursement of the public moneys; to the coinage, and the establishment of a branch mint at the city of New York; to the amendment of the sub-treasury act; to the estimated expenditures of the Government, be referred to the Committee of Ways and Means." Mr. Wilmot moved to amend as follows: And that the said Committee be instructed to report a bill which shall provide for raising annually, during the continuance of the war with Mexico, and until the payment of the public debt, the sum of five millions of dollars, to be assessed on personal property, stocks, and money at interest, and apportioned among the States as provided by the Constitution. Upon the Chair's affirmative reply to an inquiry whether five minutes were allowed a member to explain his amendment, Wilmot (in the language of the Globe): proceeded to say, that he had offered this amendment because he was opposed to a tax on tea and coffee, and that he should be compelled to vote against any proposition to that effect that might be offered. He believed the course which he proposed by this amendment was the proper one for meeting all extraordinary demands on the Government. For the ordinary expenses of the Government he was willing that the money should be raised by the duties upon imports; but for all extraordinary expenses, there should be an appeal made to the people. This was the straightforward way of doing business, and the Secretary of the Treasury, he was sorry to see, had not the courage to recommend that upon 6 Cong. Globe, p. 281. |