thickly populated, and its government, thanks to the long series of revolutions, was little more than a memory. Moreover most of the strategic points were in the hands of American armies for several months, and American forces held the capital. Had that situation developed at any time after 1898, especially after the precedent of the Philippines, there is little doubt that the United States would have kept the whole country.

In the United States there was a widespread, but poorly organized feeling that Polk ought to keep all of Mexico. This conviction was especially strong in New York and in parts of the Middle West. Resolutions adopted by public meetings, newspaper articles, opinions of army and navy officials, and assertions of numerous congressmen all united in demanding the whole country. The following quotation from a statement in the New York Evening Post is typical of this state of mind:

"Now, we ask whether any man can coolly contemplate the idea of recalling our troops from the territory we at present occupy and thus by one stroke of a secretary's pen resign this beautiful country to the custody of the ignorant cowards and profligate ruffians who have ruled it the last twenty-five years. Why, humanity cries out against it. Civilization and Christianity protest against this reflux of the tide of barbarism and anarchy."

By January, 1848, agitation in favor of keeping all of Mexico was well under way, and with a little more time it might have become formidable. What would have happened if Trist's treaty had not arrived at this point no one can tell. Its appearance, and the President's determination to accept it, prevented the demand from becoming imperious. Polk himself had decided not to annihilate Mexican sovereignty, and ratification of the treaty brought the question to an end.

The Whigs, northern and southern alike, opposed the project of taking the whole country, as did John C. Calhoun, so not all Southerners favored indefinite expansion in the interests of slavery. As a matter of fact the demand for western expansion, for the fulfillment of the "manifest destiny" of the United States, was as much a western as a southern cry.

THE WILMOT PROVISO

Because of the tense feeling aroused by the abolitionist crusade, it was inevitable that expansion and slavery should be discussed together. Texas would certainly be a slave state, a prospect which many northern Democrats viewed with disfavor. They had been induced to approve the project of annexing Texas by the promise of the southern Democrats to work for the reoccupation of the whole of Oregon, and a bargain to this effect was made in the Democratic convention of 1844. When the Oregon issue came up, Calhoun and a number of other prominent southern Democrats supported Polk in his policy of a division along the forty-ninth parallel. Exasperated at what they regarded as Calhoun's duplicity and breach of faith, the northern Democrats waited for a chance at revenge. This came in 1846, with Polk's appeal to Congress for an appropriation of two million dollars to buy additional Mexican territory. On August 8, 1846, a bill for that purpose was introduced in the House. To this bill was added the amendment known as the "Wilmot Proviso":

"Provided, That, as 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, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted."

The bill with the Proviso passed the House, but it was still under discussion in the Senate when the session came to an end.

The most plausible explanation of the origin of the Proviso is that it was the product of a quarrel within the Democratic party. Angered at losing part of Oregon, the northwestern Democrats determined to deprive their southern associates of any more slave territory. To this end the Proviso was launched; written by Jacob Brinkerhoff of Ohio, it was introduced by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, in order to conceal its true source.

Although the Proviso was never adopted by Congress, it became the guiding principle of the moderate antislavery forces. Let slavery alone in the states they would, but they were determined to prevent any further extension in the territories. Ten free state legislatures passed resolutions in favor of the measure.

The dispute between the free-soilers and the proslavery champions threatened to split, not only the old political parties, but the Union itself. Polk's expansionist policy and the war focused the attention of the whole country upon the question. Even the moderates on both sides were deeply moved; as for the radicals, they were talking of secession more calmly than they ever talked of anything else. The attitude of the extreme abolitionists toward the war with Mexico, and toward the slavery problem, is well brought out in the Biglow Papers of James Russell Lowell. If the modern reader finds them devoid of great merit, he finds them extremely interesting for the light they throw on the times. All the abolitionists hated Polk as Gregory the Great hated the Arians, with that holy hatred of the man who knows nothing but his own side of the dispute. As the Reverend Theodore Parker, the West Roxbury abolitionist, put it: "If you take all the theft, all the assaults, all the cases of arson, ever committed in the United States since the settlement of Jamestown in 1608, and add to them all the cases of violence offered to women, with all the murders, they will not amount to half the wrongs committed in the war for the plunder of Mexico." With the country stirred as it never had been before, it remained to be seen whether the politicians, jockeying for position in the presidential race of 1848, could do anything to allay the passion.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

The hot discussion of slavery and of the related questions was an evil omen for both the great parties. Drawing their membership from both North and South, the leaders naturally objected to any issue, no matter what, which tended to weaken party solidarity. Their aim had been, so far as possible, to keep the discussion at least out of Congress. Never entirely successful, they failed utterly during and after the War with Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso pointed toward a new party alignment, northern and western, against southern, and the coming of the political conventions in 1848 was looked upon with grave concern.

THE ELECTION OF 1848

The Democrats met at Baltimore, late in May. The first business of importance was the settlement of the contest between two opposing delegations from New York, representing the factions named, in the choicest of political terminology, Hunkers and Barn-burners, respectively. The Barn-burners were reformers, followers of Van Buren, and firm believers in the Wilmot Proviso. Although Polk had made an effort to remain neutral, he seems to have incurred the special dislike of this group. The Hunkers were probably more nearly like what the politicians of a few years ago would have called "stand-patters." They opposed the Wilmot Proviso, and were inclined to boast of their regularity. Ordinarily a local disturbance would have been of little moment, but in 1848 the division of the party in New York gave the presidency to the Whig candidate. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan, in some respects one of the ablest men in the party. As a western man, he did not feel the keen hostility to slavery which characterized some of his eastern colleagues, nor was he so outspoken in defending the institution as were his friends from the South. His attitude was one of indifference to slavery like that which had prevailed generally throughout the Union in 1790. His solution of the problem was popular

sovereignty, so called, in accordance with which the settlers in any territory would themselves decide for or against slavery.

The Democratic platform denied the authority of Congress to interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, and declared that the federal government ought not to meddle with the question at all. With reference to the War with Mexico the platform followed Polk in stating that it was a "just and necessary" war, begun by Mexico.

The Whigs came together at Philadelphia in June. Among their presidential possibilities they had Henry Clay. Still a hero to his constituents, as he had been ever since his first entry into public life, and still in some respects the best known politician in the country, he labored under the disadvantage of his three defeats. After Clay, came the two victorious generals of the Mexican War, who were, fortunately for the party, both Whigs. To be sure the Whigs had execrated the war from beginning to end, but that did not keep them from taking from it whatever political capital came their way. In fact, with either of the generals as their leader, they could depend upon votes from those who agreed with the Whigs that the war was bad, and from those who had favored it, because of the popularity of the candidate. Of the two, Taylor had more of the vote-getting assets which politicians mean when they talk about "availability." His victory at Buena Vista had been great enough to move the purely political opponents of the war into something as close to admiration as they were capable of feeling, even if it did not touch a patriotic chord in the author of the Biglow Papers. Although Taylor was southern and a slave owner, and a man with no definite views on public questions, totally devoid of any knowledge of the trade of the politician, his party picked him because his name on the ballot might bring success and the patronage. As his running-mate Millard Fillmore of New York was nominated. As usual the Whigs put out no platform, because as a party they were agreed on one thing, and on nothing else: the desire for the presidency. This issue was somewhat too elementary to serve even as subject matter for a party platform.

Another convention, which adopted the name of Free Soil, nominated the disgruntled Barn-burner, Van Buren. Their platform contained the principle subsequently adopted by the Republicans: nonextension of slavery in the territories.