310 Chapter 11 Westward Expansion
Therefore the fact that slavery had no future in the
Mexican cession was unimportant—in fact, for the
foes of slavery, it was an advantage. By attacking slav-
ery where it did not and probably never could exist,
they could conceal from the slaveholders—and per-
haps even from themselves—their hope ultimately to
extinguish the institution.
Slavery had complicated the Texas problem from
the start, and it beclouded the future of the
Southwest even before the Mexican flag had been
stripped from the staffs at Santa Fe and Los Angeles.
The northern, Van Burenite wing of the Democratic
party had become increasingly uneasy about the
proslavery cast of Polk’s policies, which were unpop-
ular in that part of the country. Once it became likely
that the war would bring new territory into the
Union, these Northerners felt compelled to try to
check the president and to assure their constituents
that they would resist the admission of further slave
territory. On August 8, 1846, during the debate on a
bill appropriating money for the conduct of the war,
Democratic Congressman David Wilmot of
Pennsylvania introduced an amendment that pro-
vided “as an express and fundamental condition to
the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of
Mexico” that “neither slavery nor involuntary servi-
tude shall ever exist in any part of said territory.”
Southerners found the Wilmot Provisoparticu-
larly insulting. Nevertheless, it passed the House,
where northern congressmen outnumbered southern.
But it was defeated in the Senate, where Southerners
held the balance. To counter the Proviso, Calhoun,
once again serving as senator from South Carolina,
introduced resolutions in 1846 arguing that Congress
had no right to bar slavery from any territory; because
territories belonged to all the states, slave and free, all
should have equal rights in them. From this position
it was only a step (soon taken) to demanding that
Congress guarantee the right of slave owners to bring
slaves into the territories and establish federal slave
codes in the territories. Most Northerners considered
this proposal as repulsive as Southerners found the
Wilmot Proviso.
Calhoun’s resolutions could never pass the
House of Representatives, and Wilmot’s Proviso
had no chance in the Senate. Yet their very exis-
tence threatened the Union; as Senator Benton
remarked, they were like the blades of a pair of scis-
sors, ineffective separately, yet an efficient cutting
tool taken together.
To resolve the territorial problem, two com-
promises were offered. One, eventually backed by
President Polk, would extend the Missouri
Compromise line to the Pacific. The majority of
Southerners were willing to go along with this
scheme, but most Northerners would no longer
agree to the reservation of anynew territory for
slavery. The other possibility, advocated by Senator
Lewis Cass of Michigan, called for organizing new
territories without mention of slavery, thus leaving
it to local settlers, through their territorial legisla-
tures, to determine their own institutions. Cass’s
popular sovereignty, known more vulgarly as
“squatter sovereignty,” had the superficial merit of
appearing to be democratic. Its virtue for the mem-
bers of Congress, however, was that it allowed
them to escape the responsibility of deciding the
question themselves.The Election of 1848
One test of strength occurred in August, before the
1848 presidential election. After six months of acri-
monious debate, Congress passed a bill barring slav-
ery from Oregon. The test, however, proved little. If
it required half a year to settle the question for
Oregon, how could an answer ever be found for
California and New Mexico? Plainly the time had
come, in a democracy, to go to the people. The
coming presidential election seemed to provide an
ideal opportunity.
The opportunity was missed. The politicians of
the parties hedged, fearful of losing votes in one sec-
tion or another. With the issues blurred, voters had
no real choice. That the Whigs should behave in
such a manner was perhaps to be expected of the
party of “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” but in 1848
they outdid even their 1840 performance, nominat-
ing Zachary Taylor for president. They chose the
general despite his lack of political sophistication
and even after he had flatly refused to state his opin-
ion on any current subject. The party offered no
platform. Taylor was a brave man and a fine general;
the Democrats had mistreated him; he was a com-
mon, ordinary fellow, unpretentious and warm-
hearted. Such was the Whig “argument.” Taylor’s
contribution to the campaign was so naive as to be
pathetic. “I am a Whig, but not an ultra Whig.... If
elected... I should feel bound to administer the
government untrammeled by party schemes.”
The Democratic party had little better to offer. All
the drive and zeal characteristic of it in the Jackson
period had gradually seeped away. Polk’s espousal of
Texas’s annexation had driven many Northerners from
its ranks. The party members finally nominated Lewis
Cass, the father of popular sovereignty, but they did
not endorse that or any other solution to the territorial
question. The Van Buren wing of the Democratic