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Remarks of George Rathbun, 9 Feb.1847, 29th Congress, 2nd Session, Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 365.2.Ronald Takaki has made this point:  This northern concern for white racial purity wasa basis for the opposition to the expansion of slavery into the western territories.Ronald Takaki,  The Black Child-Savage in Ante-Bellum America, in The Great Fear:Race in the Mind of America, ed.Gary B.Nash and Richard Weiss (New York: Holt, Rine-hart & Winston, 1970), 35.3.Remarks of Abraham Lincoln, 27 July 1848,  Speech on Taylor and the Veto, TheAbraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Gen.Correspondence, 1833-1916, Amer-ican Memory: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P?mal:7:./temp/~ammem_VxjW:Subsequently, Lincoln would vote for the proviso when it was again brought beforethe House.4.Some Northern legislators did oppose the proviso because they reasoned that legalizingthe  peculiar institution in the Southwest would absorb excess slaves who otherwisemight head north after being given their freedom.So argued, for example, Democraticcongressman William Sawyer, from northwestern Ohio s 5th District.Sawyer vowedthat he would  join his constituents in forming armed columns a mile deep to repelany black invasion of Ohio. Thomas R.Hietala, Manifest Destiny: Anxious Aggrandizementin Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 169.Nonetheless,pro-proviso sentiment unified lawmakers from the North more than the effort toprohibit slavery in Missouri more than a quarter century earlier, when one of every 10free-state congressmen had sided with the slave states.5.Remarks of Sen.Robert Toombs (Ga.), delivered in the House, 13 Dec.1849.Quoted inFehrenbacher,  The Wilmot Proviso and the Mid-Century Crisis, Three SectionalConflicts, 20.6.Morrison, Democratic Politics, 59-60.239Race to the Frontierseries of incendiary speeches, the House again passed Wilmot s proviso, 115-106.Significantly, congressmen from states in the Old Northwest voted overwhelm-ing for it, across party lines  28 to 6.1 Indeed, without their support, the mea-sure would not have passed.This outcome marked the forging of a new politicalbond between Northerners and Westerners based on their shared opposition tothe extension of slavery.2 With tensions riding high all over the nation, SouthCarolina s John C.Calhoun then orchestrated adoption of the appropriation bill minus Wilmot s proviso  in the Southern-dominated Senate.On theevening of February 26, with the gallery packed and gas lights illuminating thechamber with a dazzling, surreal glow, four free-state senators, most notablyLewis Cass of Michigan, joined forces with their slave-state colleagues to makethis possible.3 Subsequently, backers of the proviso in the House attempted totack it on to the bill approved by the Senate, but failed to do so when severalNorthern legislators switched sides.4 Thus, the Wilmot Proviso was defeated.5For Northern opponents of the  peculiar institution, the lesson of this con-troversy was clear.Since their region of the country was less solidly unifiedagainst slavery than the South was for it, a more encompassing political strategywas needed to advance the antislavery cause.The enlisting of legislators desirousof preserving the West for the white race was a shrewd maneuver toward attain-ing that goal.As one historian has pointed out, the proviso (and, later, the FreeSoil movement)  offered whites a way to oppose slavery without necessarilyembracing blacks.the future of the nation, or certainly of the North, lay in theWest.If whites were to enjoy that future as free men, they would have to keep1.Of the representatives from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan who supported theproviso, 11 were Whigs and 17 Democrats.The six Old Northwest opponents of thisamendment, however, were all Democrats.For this breakdown of the congressionalvote, see  The Wilmot Proviso, National Era 1:8 (2 Feb.1847), 2.2.Of the 106 representatives who opposed the proviso, 18 came from the free states.Southern congressmen, by contrast, were almost unanimous in rejecting this amend-ment: only a lone Whig congressman from Delaware voted  yes.3. The Closing Debate in the Senate on the Three Million Bill, National Era 1:10 (10 Mar.1847), 2.Cass, who would become the Democratic candidate for President in 1848,angered many of his Northern colleagues by not supporting the proviso.On theSenate floor, he contended that passage of this amendment would undermine thenation s war effort against Mexico. The choice before us is the proviso or the war, hesaid. One or the other must be given up. Remarks of Lewis Cass, 1 Mar.1847, 29thCongress, 2nd Session, Congressional Globe, Senate, 550.4.There was speculation that President Polk had persuaded these representatives tochange their votes by awarding them favors such as diplomatic assignments and mili-tary postings for their sons.See  Freedom Betrayed, National Era 1:9 (4 Mar.1847), 3.Cf. How It Was Done, National Era 1:12 (25 Mar.1847), 4.5.President Polk had indicated that he would veto the proviso if it had passed both housesof Congress.He felt that slavery was a  domestic question, best left to individual statesto decide.See, Diary of James Polk, vol.4, diary entry for 9 March 1849, 364-5.240VII.The Politics of Exclusionthe region free of slaves.From that simple assumption grew an overarching anti-slavery argument that linked unlikely allies all across the continent. 1***The North-South split over the Wilmot Proviso had exposed a politicalfault line deeper and more significant than party affiliation.Whigs and Demo-crats north of the Mason Dixon Line had banded together against their counter-parts to the south.In the final House vote to reinstate the proviso as part of theSenate bill, all 36 Northern Whigs had sided with Wilmot, while all Southernones had joined with the pro-slavery bloc.(Free-state Democrats were divided41 to 22.) As long as these two national parties were so divided, the forcesopposed to slavery could not muster a reliable majority in Congress (certainlynot in the Senate) and, therefore, could not hope to shape national policy on thishighly explosive issue.Frustrated by this stalemated state of affairs, Northernlawmakers at both the state and national levels began to ponder the creation of anew political movement that could give a decisive edge to the antislavery cam-paign.As the presidential election of 1848 neared, unhappiness within the Whigand Democratic parties over their accommodating positions on slavery turnedinto open revolt [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]