The XXIX THE SLAVERY QUESTION COMES TO THE FRONT In dealing with the acquisitions of territory secured at the end of the Mexican War statesmen were compelled to face the question of slavery extension. Discussion of the subject brought out the fact that sentiment was sharply divided, that the North as a section was violently opposed to extension and that the South as a section would bitterly resent any policy that did not permit extension. So threatening was the temper of the two sections and so sharp were their differences that slavery became the paramount issue of the day. THE WILMOT PROVISO Connected with the territorial trophies to which Polk pointed with so much pride there was a problem more disquieting than any that had arisen for many a year. This was the question of slavery extension. In 1846, when a bill was in its passage through Congress giving money to Polk to aid him in his plans for acquiring New Mexico and California, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed to amend the bill as follows: "Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, in virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the monies 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." In this attempt to prohibit the spread of slavery the Wilmot Proviso, as the amendment was called, woke up a question which politicians since the days of the Missouri Compromise had allowed to slumber, but which the abolitionists would allow to slumber no longer. The proviso arrested the attention of the public mind and called forth expressions of opinion in all parts of the Union. In the South the sentiment against the restriction of slavery was well expressed by the legislature of Virginia, which affirmed ment and in substance that the adoption and enforcement of the proviso would lead to actual warfare. In the North the sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the proviso. The legislatures of Sentiall the free States except Iowa passed resolutions to the effect North that Congress had the power and that it was its duty to prohibit South slavery in the territories. It was of ominous significance that opinion in regard to the proviso ran not along party lines but along sectional lines. Whigs and Democrats in the South joined in condemning the proviso; Whigs and Democrats in the North joined in giving it their support. Wilmot's amendment was defeated in 1846, but it came up in Congress again and again. Indeed, the proviso proved to be the thin edge of a wedge that was to sunder friendships and social ties and that was to be driven deeper and deeper until great religious denominations, political parties, and even the Union itself, were split in twain. THE ELECTION OF 1848 Although the Wilmot Proviso had made the question of the extension of slavery the most vital of all political issues, this question was avoided as far as it was possible to avoid it— by both the great political parties in the Presidential election of 1848. The Democrats in that year nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan and adopted a platform of the strict constructionist type. An effort was made in their convention to pass a resolution condemning the Wilmot Proviso, but the resolution was voted down by a heavy majority. The Whigs adopted no platform at all. They simply nominated General Zachary Taylor, of Louisiana, for President and Millard Fillmore, of New York, for Vice-President, and went before the country in the hope that Taylor's war record would bring them victory. Clay was before the convention-this was the fifth time he had come forward as a candidate for the Presidency-but on the first ballot Taylor showed greater strength. Resolutions affirming 1 The Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church were both split by the slavery question. In 1844 the Methodist Church divided upon the question of whether a bishop could hold slaves, the Southern members withdrawing and organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church South. In 1850 the Presbyterians divided upon the question whether a slaveholder should be admitted to membership in the Presbyterian Church. Free The Results of the Election of 1848 the Wilmot Proviso were offered in the Whig convention, but they were rejected. Thus the Democrats in 1848 were not ready to tie themselves up to the cause of slavery, and the Whigs were unwilling to become an antislavery party. But the Free Soil party,2 which met at Buffalo and nominated ex-President Van Buren for the Presidency, came out against slavery in the strongest of terms. The Free Soilers declared that Congress had no more power to make a slave than to make a king. They resolved: "That we accept the issue which the slave power has forced upon us; and to their demand for more slave States and more slave territory, our calm but final answer is: No more slave States, and no more slave territory." This ultimatum of the Free Soilers was a clear statement of the aims of most antislavery men: a majority of the opponents of slavery in 1848 did not wish to abolish slavery; they wished to prevent the spread of slavery. But in 1848 men generally were not ready to take sides on the slavery question. Van Buren failed to secure a single electoral vote. Taylor was not a great statesman; but in the Mexican War he had shown himself to be a good fighting man, and he therefore went into the campaign with the glamour of a hero. He received 163 electoral votes, and Cass 128. "It will hardly be speaking too strongly to characterize the election of 1848 as a contest without an issue. Neither of the two great parties which alone might expect to win sought to rally the people to the defense of any important principle. Practically the only thing decided was that a Whig general should be made President because he had done effective work in carrying on a Democratic war." 3 ASPECTS OF SLAVE LIFE Although the slavery question was dodged by the leading politicians in the campaign of 1848, it was nevertheless a problem full of high explosives and one for which a solution of some kind must presently be found. Since this is so, we ought The organization of the Free Soil party resulted in breaking up the Liberty party (p. 297). G. P. Garrison, Westward Extension, 284. at this point to draw near and take a close view of slavery as it existed about 1850. What was the character of this social institution about which the North and South differed so widely? What did it mean to be a slave? Slavery In 1850 fifteen States-Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Statistics Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missis- of sippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas-were recognizing slavery by law, while sixteen (counting California) made human bondage illegal. The total population of the slave States at this time was 9,569,540. The number of whites was 6,282,965; the number of free negroes 238,187; and the number of slaves 3,204,051. Of the whole number of slaves nearly two thirds were in the cotton States, engaged in cotton culture. The number of slaveholders was little less than 350,000. Among the whites about one person in eighteen was the owner of slaves. The majority of slaveholders owned less than five slaves each, and about one fifth of them owned only one slave each. About 8000 slaveholders owned more than fifty slaves each. Slave Class The slaveholders constituted the ruling class. And they were The a class well fitted to rule. It was everywhere acknowledged holding that the South excelled in the training of statesmen. "While the northern people," said a Northern man (Horace Bushnell), "were generally delving in labor for many generations to create a condition of comfort, slavery set the masters at once on a footing of ease, gave them leisure for elegant intercourse, for . studies, and seasoned their character with that kind of cultivation which distinguishes men of society. A class of statesmen was thus raised up who were prepared to figure as leaders in scenes of public life where so much depends upon manners and social address." The slaveholders were the ruling class in the South, and they were the leaders in the government of the nation as well. Up to 1850 every President but the two Adamses, Van Buren, and Harrison belonged to the slaveholding class. But there were upward of four million whites in the slave States who did not belong to the slaveholding class. Many of The Poor whites Free these non-slaveholders were merchants, mechanics, small farmers, professional men, and the like, and were prosperous, wellto-do citizens, but vast numbers of those who were outside the slaveholding class had but little property of any kind and were close to the poverty line. This class of non-slaveholders formed a rather distinct stratum of society known as poor whites. The condition of the poor whites was indeed pitiful. Besides being poor, they were illiterate, helpless, and abject, despised both by the slaveholders and the slaves. They enjoyed the right of suffrage, it is true, but when election day came they usually voted the way the slaveholder directed. They were almost completely shut out of the industrial world, for slavery required the presence of but few white men of their condition in life. Industrially regarded, the poor white was a hanger-on; socially, he was an outcast; politically, he was the tool of the slaveholder. But immeasurably worse than the plight of the poor white was the plight of the free negro, for while all slaves were negroes, in every State there were negroes who were not slaves. In 1850 there were nearly 200,000 free negroes in the North and a somewhat greater number in the South. But whether in the North or in the South, the free negro almost everywhere was branded as belonging to a separate and inferior caste and was discriminated against by unfriendly legislation. In the South the free negro was nowhere allowed to vote, while in most of the Northern States he was either denied the suffrage outright or was compelled to meet an unusually high property qualification. Nor did the free negro anywhere escape the humiliating persecutions of racial prejudice. A church in Boston excluded (in 1830) a colored family from the use of a pew to which the family had a clear legal title. In Rhode Island on the Boston and Providence railroad a special compartment was set apart for the negroes. In the slaveholding States free negroes were not in the eyes of the law full citizens. They could not hold meetings or teach each other to read and write, nor could they testify in a court of law against a white man. They could, however, accumulate property, and a part of the |