Читать книгу American Civil War For Dummies - Keith D. Dickson - Страница 18

The Wilmot Proviso was a resolution made by an obscure Pennsylvania Congressman, David Wilmot, who, in 1846, attached the proviso (a conditional clause inserted into legislation or a contract) to an appropriations bill. Wilmot’s proviso stated that any territory acquired in the war with Mexico would not be open to slavery. The bill passed the House of Representatives, where the North had a majority, but it died in the Senate, where the South held the balance of power. The controversy over the Wilmot Proviso illustrated to both sections how important political control in Congress was to furthering their interests. The proviso became the basis of the increasingly bitter political struggle throughout the 1850s.

The political battle lines were drawn in 1846 with the Wilmot Proviso, which reflected the increasingly dominant opinions of Northerners who desired to bring about their vision of the future. It declared that any territory obtained from Mexico would be closed to slavery. The voices of an increasingly vocal and influential group of New England and Midwest abolitionists demanded a final reckoning with the South. The abolitionists felt that containing slavery only to where it currently existed (so that it would eventually die out) was a step in the right direction, but the only solution was destroying the institution altogether. As long as slavery existed, they believed, the future health of the republic was in danger. Allowing slavery to expand into the new territories would only lengthen the life of the institution, and in the end it would destroy the democratic base upon which the nation had been founded. Abolitionists and their supporters spoke darkly of the “slave power,” a tyrannical, satanic entity in the South that sought to undermine and overwhelm the North. Southerners responded by loudly defending slavery as a positive good, benefitting both masters and slaves alike.