proviso be added, stipulating that from any
new territory acquired by purchase slavery should be excluded. This was
passed by the House, but rejected by the Senate. The Senate was long the
stronghold of the South, the States having an equal representation,
while in the House the greater increase of free State population gave
them a fresh advantage at each new census and apportionment. The "Wilmot
proviso" was for some years the watchword of the anti-extensionists. To
the typical Northerner, it seemed monstrous that slavery should be
introduced by law in territory where it had no previous existence. To
the typical Southerner it seemed no less unjust that his peculiar
institutions and usages should be excluded from the common domain, for
which his section had paid its share of money and more than its share of
blood.

While the question of the new territory had scarcely taken definite
form, there came the Presidential election of 1848. In the Whig
convention Clay's ambition received its final disappointment; Webster
had hardly a chance; all the statesmen of the party were set aside in
favor of General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, an upright, soldierly man,
a slaveholder, entirely unversed in civil affairs, and his claim resting
solely on successful generalship in the war. The Democrats nominated
Lewis Cass of Michigan, a mediocre politician, regarded by the South as
a trustworthy servant. The third party displayed new strength, and
exchanged the name of "Liberty" for "Free Soil." Under the stimulus of
recent events recruits of power and promise came to its standard. In
Massachusetts it gained such men as Samuel Hoar, Charles Sumner, Charles
Francis Adams, and Henry Wilson from the Whigs; and from the Democrats,
Robert Rantoul and N. P. Banks. Wilson and Charles Allen, delegates to
the Whig convention, declared,--when that body in its resolutions
absolutely ignored the question of slavery extension, and sank all
principles in a hurrah for "Old Rough and Ready,"--that they would no
longer support the party. They went home to work with their old
friends, the "Conscience Whigs," for the success of the Free Soil party,
whose convention was to meet at Buffalo. To that convention came strong
allies from Ohio. There were Joshua Giddings, for years one of the few
congressmen classed distinctly as anti-slavery, and Salmon P. Chase. New
York State offered a reinforcement strong in numbers, but in some
respects questionable. The anti-