however, like Stephens and Brown in the House, charged that the war was unnecessary and unjustifiable; they condemned it as a war which aimed solely at conquest. Even the lay members of the party soon. began to lose the enthusiasm which a successful war, giving promise of desirable acquisitions of territory, usually arouses. They then demanded that the war be terminated at the earliest possible occasion."

Meanwhile, the anti-slavery forces in Congress, divining Polk's intention to extend our territory at the expense of Mexico, hit upon the Wilmot proviso to effect the exclusion of slavery from any new acquisition. The sectional line became more pronounced than ever. Southern Whigs united solidly with southern Democrats to block the measure but it was due to "northern men with southern principles " that they were eventually successful. All this was to have its influence on the situation within the parties. The northern Whig members had clearly shown their anti-slavery character; it was henceforth a factor to be reckoned with in the problem of maintaining party harmony.

The easiest solution under the circumstances was to avoid the issue. This the southern Whigs attempted to do by proclaiming their hostility to the acquisition of territory as a result of the war. In the House they had rallied around the resolutions of Stephens of Georgia, repudiating any idea of the dismemberment of Mexico and the acquisition of any of her territory, while in the Senate they supported the amendment of Berrien to the same purport. Pointing to the signs in the North of the impending conflict, they called upon

60 J. B. Lamar to Cobb, June 24, 1846, Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb Correspondence; J. Cameron to Mangum, Feb. 1, 1847, Mangum MSS.

their fellow southerners to secure themselves and their institution, and appealed to national patriotism to exclude this direful question from the nation's councils." This remedy was one in which the northern members could cooperate-one, in fact, which they almost demanded as a compromise arrangement, knowing that it would exclude territory which seemed almost certain to come in open to slavery." Clay from his retirement forged the connecting link between the sections of the party when, at the close of his Lexington speech on the Mexican war, he introduced resolutions disavowing any wish or desire on our part to acquire any foreign territory for the purpose of propagating slavery, or of introducing slaves from the United States into such foreign territory "."

66

63

To what extent the southern Whigs were willing to stand on this ground in connection with their local activity is evident from the following report by a Democratic leader on the situation in the Georgia

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1 Cong. Globe, 29 Cong., 2 sess., 228-229, 330, 354, 357, 556. ExSenator Wm. C. Rives of Virginia was unwilling that there should be any territorial acquisition south of 36° 30'. He thought that the reasonable demands of the slave-holding regions" could be satisfied by securing a recognition of the Rio Grande for the western boundary of Texas". Rives to Crittenden, Feb. 5, 8, 1847, Crittenden MSS. Senator Archer of Virginia occupied the same ground. Polk, Diary, II, 115. 62 The editor of the Cincinnati Atlas wrote to Crittenden, Sept. 7, 1847: "They [the northern Whigs] offer you a ground of just compromise, national, conservative, right and proper in itself, which, to save the Union and the Republic, ought to be adopted even if the agitation of the slavery question did not threaten the peace of the Union. That ground is no territory at all. We do not need another foot; and we can get none, either by conquest or purchase, but must come with the terrific slavery agitation." Crittenden MSS.

63 National Intelligencer, Nov. 25, 1847.

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William C. Preston of South Carolina warmly commended the stand taken in the Lexington speech, a State paper which he thought would do much to "arrest the fatal policy which is hurrying us to the most disastrous consequences". Clay, Private Correspondence, 550.

legislature, a state in which both parties were keen on southern rights:

After a four days discussion in the Senate, on the Wilmot Proviso, and the war and the acquisition of Territory, the vote was taken last night. The Whigs took high ground against the war and denounced it as infamous and iniquitous. They also went against any further acquisition of Territory, occupying pretty much the position of Mr. Clay in his Lexington speech. You will see that a resolution was introduced declaring that the people of Georgia will adhere to the Missouri Compromise line, in the division of Territory that may hereafter be acquired by the General Government. It was lost by a vote of 20 to 26. Of the twenty who voted for it, 18 are D. and 2 Whigs; of those who voted against it 21 are Whigs and 5 Democrats. I think the Democrats who voted against it, were the vote to be taken over, would record their votes in favor of it. As for the Whigs, they are right in a political point of view, in opposing it, if they desire to preserve the unity of the party North and South."

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Even General Taylor announced, after Mexico had been placed completely at the mercy of his troops and of the other American armies, that he was unutterably opposed to the acquisition of any territory south of 36° 30', which might endanger the permanence of the Union by fomenting a sectional controversy. ✓ The Whig platform of opposition to the annexation of Mexican territory was accepted and made the foundation for the defence of southern rights. While the southern Democrats kept demanding more territory as an outlet for the surplus slave population of the near future and made glowing representations of the "manifest destiny" of our nation, their rivals gave answer to

4 L. J. Glenn to Cobb, Dec. 1, 1847, Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb Correspondence.

Taylor to Crittenden, Jan. 3, Feb. 13, Crittenden MSS. Taylor to Clayton, Sept. 4, 1848, Clayton MSS.

them and to the North that they wanted no more territory, that they preferred the status quo rather than the extension of the slave area at the expense of a rupture with the North." "Like the Trojan horse", said the Richmond Whig, "this fatal gift of Mexican territory is fraught with danger and death; like the unwary Trojans let us not break down the walls and admit it into the citadel."" The northern Democracy, Berrien told his constituents, were determined to engraft the Wilmot proviso upon all measures for acquiring territory; would southern men consent to acquire this territory won by their common sufferings, blood, and treasure with slavery excluded from it?" "The truth is ", said Botts of Virginia, when canvassing for his reelection, "that this proviso, although of Democratic origin was adopted by the Whig party of the North, for the purpose of furnishing a motive and an object to the South to put an end to this unbridled lust for acquisition, which, if not arrested, must put an end to all our institutions, sooner or later." Furthermore, Waddy Thompson, the late minister to Mexico, better informed, perhaps, than any one in the country concerning the situation on the Mexican borders, had just asserted as the basis of his opposition, that conditions of soil and climate would make slavery an impossibility in the coveted regions." This of course in the minds of many removed the strongest attraction for territorial indem

ce See editorials cited in National Intelligencer, June 3, Nov. 4, Dec. 13, 1847.

Niles' Register, LXXIII, 47.

es Speech at Dahlonega, Ga., ibid., 125.

69 Letter in Am. Whig Rev., VI, 509.

10 Speech at Greenville, S. C., National Intelligencer, Oct. 21.

nity." It was noted that, if true, this also reduced the Wilmot proviso to a mere abstraction, none the less insulting, but one which could be avoided at the same time that the South was saved from being surrounded by a cordon of free states.

The rank and file of the Whig party in the South, however, were becoming more and more distrustful of the northern wing. They protested against the unanimity with which the northern members had supported the slavery restriction proviso; " the Georgia Whigs, in convention assembled, denied its constitutionality and that of any other legislation by Congress restricting the right to hold slave property in the territories; and many expressed their determination to resist its passage even to a dissolution of the Union." The nearness of the presidential election, however, tended to make them restrain the violence of their utterances.

When Congress convened in the winter of 1847, several southern Whig members were for a time in doubt as to whether or not they should support Winthrop of Massachusetts, the favorite Whig candidate. for the speakership, against whom the taint of abolition. had repeatedly been charged. In throwing in their lot with his supporters and aiding in his election they exposed themselves to the charge of unsoundness to southern interests." Cabell of Florida refuted such assertions by calling attention to what was in reality the mainstay of the Whig party when the slavery question

1848.

Mobile Advertiser, Oct. 15, 1847; Savannah Republican, Jan. 15,

72 Raleigh Register, Feb. 28, 1847.

73 Mobile Advertiser, Oct. 15, 1847.

"Johnston and Browne, Life of A. H. Stephens, 219, 220; cf. Calhoun Correspondence, 1148.