aring it to
be "an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any
territory from Mexico, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
shall ever exist therein."

Mr. Wilmot was in the first session of his first Congress, was but
thirty-three years of age, and up to that moment had not been known
beyond his district. His amendment made his name familiar at once
throughout the length and breadth of the Republic. 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 United States to freedom became
from that day a rallying cry for every shade of anti-slavery
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 on the issue thus presented, and it proved
a 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 question. The Northern
Whigs, at the outset, generally sustained the proviso, and the
Northern Democrats divided, with the majority against it. In the
slave States both parties were against it, only two men south of
Mason and Dixon's line voting for free soil,--John M. Clayton of
Delaware in the Senate, and Henry Grider of Kentucky in the House.
Mr. Grider re-entered Congress as a Republican after the war.
Among the conspicuous Whigs who voted for the proviso were Joseph
R. Ingersoll and James Pollock of Pennsylvania, Washington Hunt of
New York, Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, Robert C. Schenck
of Ohio, and Truman Smith of Connecticut. Among the Democrats were
Hannibal Hamlin, and all his colleagues from Maine, Simon Cameron
of Pennsylvania, Preston King of New York, John Wentworth of
Illinois, Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, and Robert McClelland of
Michigan, afterwards Secretary of the Interior under President
Pierce.

Mr. Webster voted for the proviso, but with gloomy apprehensions.
He could "see little of the future, and that little gave h