Wilmot Proviso

The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War.

It passed the House largely on sectional lines between a generally anti-slavery North in favor and a pro-slavery South against, foreshadowing coming conflicts.

The Democrats had generally been successful in portraying those within their party attempting to push a purely sectional issue as extremists that were well outside the normal scope of traditional politics.

The key element of this defeat, which carried over into the congressional and local races in 1845 and 1846 throughout the South, was the party's failure to take a strong stand favoring Texas annexation.

For example, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax, arguing that the money would be used to prosecute the war and gain slave territory.

[7] On Saturday, August 8, 1846, President Polk submitted to Congress a request for $2,000,000 (~$60.7 million in 2023) in order to facilitate negotiations with Mexico over the final settlement of the war.

[10] Wilmot offered the following to the House in language modeled after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787: Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted.William W. Wick, Democrat of Indiana, attempted to eliminate total restriction of slavery by proposing an amendment that the Missouri Compromise line of latitude 36°30' simply be extended west to the Pacific.

Whig John Davis of Massachusetts attempted to forestall this effort by holding the floor until it would be too late to return the bill to the House, forcing the Senate to accept or reject the appropriation with the proviso intact.

[12] The issue resurfaced at the end of the year when Polk, in his annual message to Congress, renewed his request with the amount needed increasing to three million dollars.

This time Representative Stephen Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, reintroduced the proposal to simply extend the Missouri Compromise line to the west coast, and this was again defeated 109–82.

[16] Lewis Cass (Democrat) in December 1847, in his famous letter to A. O. P. Nicholson in Tennessee, further underlined the principle of appealing to popular sovereignty which would soon evolve as the mainstream Democratic alternative to the Wilmot Proviso: Leave it to the people, who will be affected by this question to adjust it upon their own responsibility, and in their own manner, and we shall render another tribute to the original principles of our government, and furnish another for its permanence and prosperity.

[13] While the original Southern response to the Wilmot Proviso was measured, it soon became clear to the South that this long postponed attack on slavery had finally occurred.

Rather than simply discuss the politics of the issue, historian William Freehling noted, "Most Southerners raged primarily because David Wilmot's holier-than-thou stance was so insulting.

The Barnburners were successfully opposed by their conservative opposition, the Hunkers, in their efforts to send a pro-proviso batch of delegates to the 1848 Democratic National Convention.

When the convention rejected a pro-proviso plank[20] and selected Lewis Cass as the nominee, the Barnburners again bolted and were the nucleus of forming the Free Soil Party.

The platform called for no federal restrictions of slavery in the territories, no restrictions on slavery by territorial governments until the point where they were drafting a state constitution in order to petition Congress for statehood, opposition to any candidates supporting either the proviso or popular sovereignty, and positive federal legislation overruling Mexican anti-slavery laws in the Mexican Cession.

[24] Southerner Whigs looked hopefully to slaveholder and war hero General Zachary Taylor as the solution to the widening sectional divide even though he took no public stance on the Wilmot Proviso.

[25] The opening salvo in a new level of sectional conflict occurred on December 13, 1848, when John G. Palfrey (Whig) of Massachusetts introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

Historian Allan Nevins sums up the situation which had been created by the Wilmot Proviso: Thus the contest was joined on the central issue which was to dominate all American history for the next dozen years, the disposition of the Territories.

For the time being, moderates who hoped to find a way of compromise and to repress the underlying issue of slavery itself – its toleration or non-toleration by a great free Christian state – were overwhelmingly in the majority.