David Wilmot Quotes
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
Until the Civil War, every territorial issue in American politics was colored by the slavery question. The South, even with its advantage of counting slaves as three-fifths of a person was inexorably losing proportional Congressional strength as the growth rate of the free states was much greater. So there would be a pro-slavery movement in every new territory. Wilmot and others were determined that after slavery had been outlawed for two decades in California before the territory became affiliated with the United States, that slavery not be reintroduced which is just what the Southern pro-slavery forces were trying to do. The amendment passed handily in the House but was killed in the Senate where Southern strength was proportionately stronger.
David Wilmot, *, U. S. Congressman (*, PA), Amendment in the House of Representatives, Congressional Globe, 29 Congress., 2nd Session
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Baldwin was a young lawyer at the time. He represented a shipload of ex-slaves who had taken over their Spanish slave ship and landed in America. The Spanish claimed, the ship owners and some of the crew all claimed the “property.”
This quotation illustrates the strong abolitionist tendency in the Ohio Territory. Under this clause, escaped slaves from Southern states would not be returned by the state authorities. Even more insulting to the slave enthusiasts of the South, if a Southerner brought any slaves into Ohio with them as was common for Southerners traveling with their personal slaves or horse team drivers, those slaves would be free. An interesting aspect of this clause of the Ohio Constitution was that the beginning was, word for word, copied from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. See {618100}.
Note that Lincoln did not justify the emancipation proclamation on moral or humanitarian grounds, but on the grounds of military necessity.
By 1863, Negro troops were being used to fill in gaps in the Union forces. Many union generals resisted having colored troops under their command. Thomas, however, welcomed them, and won several major battles where black soldiers were instrumental in victory.
The National Enquirer was originally a serious abolitionist newspaper, not the sensationalist tabloid it became in modern times.
In what turned out to be a tragic prediction of things to come:
Lincoln had promised amnesty to Southerners who would pledge loyalty to the Union. What many feared was that this would include slave owners re-enslaving their former "property," or that the government would allow them to do so in order to stop the rebellion.
The amendments failed as did the compromise.
On February 11, 1790 American Quakers submitted a petition to immediately abolish the African slave trade from America. Southerners like Jackson argued that the Congress should not even “consider” such a petition or debate such as subject for if it did, that per se, would imply the possible consideration of emancipation, and if that were possible, they would be on the slippery slope toward emancipation of existing slaves which would be the end of the world as the Southern whites then knew it.
Fitzhugh was a Southern iconoclast whose view of Northern labor was much like that of Karl Marx but who was an enthusiastic supporter of slavery. Fitzhugh was of the opinion that slavery would be reinstated in the North and his treatise agues for that. More and more intellectual opinion was coming to the conclusion that slavery must be abolished or made universal before Lincoln’s famous statement in his debate against Douglas. Although Northerners and Southerners had come to agree on this point, they disagreed about which alternative would and should prevail.
See {613644} for the earlier decree which this modified.
This was a compromise. Most Mexicans wanted immediate emancipation of all slaves. However, Stephen Austin and others desirous of attracting colonists thought that this would inhibit too many American Southerners from immigrating to Texas. Slave enthusiasts wanted no prohibition on slavery. The Mexican Emperor issued this compromise but was soon thereafter overthrown. The law was then repealed by the revolutionary government and emancipation was immediate. However, Austin was able to persuade the junta to keep the law in place for Texas only, and so it was. A similar law was being debated by Congress but the Southerners were able to block it. There were still slaves and slavery in Texas. Four years later {613642} there were more restrictions on slavery.
David Wilmot was an American politician and judge. He served as Representative and a Senator for Pennsylvania and as a Judge of the Court of Claims. He is best known for being the prime sponsor and namesake of the eponymous Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban the expansion of slavery to western lands gained in the Mexican Cession. A notable member of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, Wilmot later was instrumental in establishing the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.
