the American people, as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would
ever be reckless enough to disturb."

I do not read this extract to involve Judge Douglas in an inconsistency.
If he afterward thought he had been wrong, it was right for him to change.
I bring this forward merely to show the high estimate placed on the
Missouri Compromise by all parties up to so late as the year 1849.

But going back a little in point of time. Our war with Mexico broke out
in 1846. When Congress was about adjourning that session, President Polk
asked them to place two millions of dollars under his control, to be used
by him in the recess, if found practicable and expedient, in negotiating
a treaty of peace with Mexico, and acquiring some part of her territory. A
bill was duly gotten up for the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly in
the House of Representatives, when a member by the name of David Wilmot, a
Democrat from Pennsylvania, moved as an amendment, "Provided, that in any
territory thus acquired there never shall be slavery."

This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso. It created a great
flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill
passed with it through the House. The Senate, however, adjourned without
final action on it, and so both appropriation and proviso were lost for
the time. The war continued, and at the next session the President renewed
his request for the appropriation, enlarging the amount, I think, to
three millions. Again came the proviso, and defeated the measure. Congress
adjourned again, and the war went on. In December, 1847, the new Congress
assembled. I was in the lower House that term. 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 I voted for it at least forty times during
the short time I was there. The Senate, however, held it in check, and it
never became a law. In the spring of 1848 a treaty of peace was made
with Mexico, by which we obtained that portion of her country which now
constitutes the Territories of New Mexico and Utah and the present State
of California. By this treaty the Wilmot Proviso was defeated, in so far
as it was intended to be a condition of the acquisition of territory.
Its friends, however, were still determined to find some way to restrain
slavery from getting into the new country. This new acquisition lay
directly west of our old purchase from France, and extended