The Wilmot Proviso was a bill proposed in the House of Representatives by Pennsylvania Democrat David Wilmot that would have prohibited slavery in all territories added to the United States as a result of the Mexican-American War (1846-48).
In 1846, President James K. Polk told Congress that the war with Mexico was a legitimate defense of U. S. territory in newly annexed Texas. He expressed his belief that Mexican dictator Santa Anna had planned to reconquer the state, which had seceded from Mexico only a decade before. Northern abolitionists were skeptical that the president was being forthright. They believed the war to be little more than a thinly disguised effort to expand Southern slavery at Mexico’s expense.
Once the war was won, Polk requested a $2 million appropriation from Congress in order to negotiate a peace settlement with Mexico. Congressman David Wilmot decided it was time to act. He proposed an amendment to the “$2 million bill” which “provided. . . that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory [acquired from Mexico], except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted.”
Quickly called the “Wilmot Proviso,” the proposed amendment touched off a storm of outrage throughout the South. Southerners saw the Wilmot Proviso as a cynical
Northern effort to increase their political power. Responding to a New York congressman’s support for Wilmot, Georgia congressman Seaborn Jones declared that Wilmot’s real fear was not slavery at all but, rather, “the power of the South in Congress. . . . It was not. . . the damning sin of slavery that the gentleman could not tolerate. . . oh, no sir! It was the potential power thus acquired by another part of the Union that roused. . . holy indignation!”
While the House added Wilmot’s proviso to the $2 million bill, the Senate adjourned before considering the legislation. In 1847 Polk increased his request to $3 million. Wilmot again added his proviso to the House version. This time, the Senate rejected the amendment outright.
The defeat of the Wilmot Proviso rallied antislavery forces, who abandoned the Democrat and Whig Parties in order to form organizations committed to keeping slavery out of the territories. The Liberty Party, the Free-Soil Party, and finally the Republican Party all pledged themselves to passage of the proviso. David Wilmot himself was a part of this political transformation. Leaving the Democratic Party, Wilmot first joined the Free-Soil Party and then, in the mid-1850s, became a Republican. During the Civil War, Wilmot served as a U. S. senator for Pennsylvania from 1861 to 1863 and then as a judge in the court of claims. By the end of the war, Wilmot’s vision had become reality.
See also abolition.
Further reading: Charles Buxton Going, David Wilmot, Free-Soiler: A Biography of the Great Advocate of the Wilmot Proviso (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1966); Chaplain W. Morrison, Democratic Politics and Sectionalism: The Wilmot Proviso Controversy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967).
—Tom Laichas
Wilson, Henry (1812-1875) abolitionist, politician Henry Wilson was a U. S. senator regarded as one of the most effective and respected of the Radical Republicans. Born Jeremiah Jones Colbath on February 16, 1812, in Farmington, New Hampshire, he was a son of poor farmers. Following a decade-long indenture to a local merchant, he changed his name to Henry Wilson and became a cobbler by trade. Wilson established a profitable shoe factory in Natick, Massachusetts, then successfully ran as a Whig for a seat in the state legislature in 1841.
Politically, Wilson was an ardent abolitionist who also championed the interests of working-class people. He left the Whigs in 1848 over the party’s failure to endorse the Wilmot Proviso, an antislavery measure. He then joined the new Free-Soil Party and edited the Free-Soil newspaper, the Boston Republican, until 1851. Three years later he changed his affiliation to the American (Know-Nothing) Party, and in 1855 he was appointed to fill a U. S. Senate seat vacated by Edward Everett. As a U. S. senator, Wilson became one of the most outspoken opponents of slavery and its expansion. In 1860 he became a member of the Republican Party and campaigned for Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, urging members of his party not to seek compromise with the South.
In spring 1861 Wilson was appointed as chair of the powerful Committee on Military Affairs, where he put his several years of experience as a brigadier general of Massachusetts militia to good use. In this capacity he capably framed and advanced legislation for organizing, recruiting, and supplying an army that numbered 1 million men by 1865. Wilson distrusted the officers of the Army of the Potomac; consequently, he pushed for an increase in admissions to the United States Military Academy at West Point in an attempt to flood the military with professional soldiers who supported Republicans. Along with fellow senator and Radical Republican Charles Sumner, Wilson also championed abolitionist goals, and in 1865 he helped to create the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist liberated African-American slaves.
After the war Wilson opposed President Andrew Johnson’s moderate Reconstruction, although he sided with moderates to advocate both federal aid for education and homesteading throughout the South. In 1872 he shared the Republican ticket with Ulysses S. Grant and was elected vice president. Wilson presided over the Senate until his death in Washington, D. C., on November 22, 1875.
See also abolition.
Further reading: Richard H. Abbott, Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry Wilson, 1812-1875 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972); John L. Myers, Henry Wilson and the Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, Md.: University Press of Maryland, 2003); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. 3 vols. (Boston: J. K. Osgood, 1837-1877).
—John C. Fredriksen
Wise, Henry A. (1806-1876) politician, Confederate general
Henry Alexander Wise was governor of Virginia and a Confederate general. Wise was born in Drummondtown, Virginia, on December 3, 1806. He graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania in 1825 before establishing a successful legal career. Wise became an outspoken proponent of slavery and Southern rights, and in 1832 he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives as a Jacksonian Democrat. However, he parted company with Andrew Jackson during the “bank war” and joined the
Whig Party; as of 1843 he was once again a member of the Democratic Party. In 1844 President John Tyler appointed him ambassador to Brazil, a position he held for three years. Afterward, Wise resumed his legal activities in Virginia. He served as a delegate at the state constitutional convention of 1850, and in 1855 he was elected governor.
In 1856 he campaigned on behalf of James Buchanan for the presidency, but John Brown’s abolitionist raid in 1859 pushed Wise back into the states’ rights camp, where he demanded the vigorous prosecution of Brown and his supporters. Wise opposed secession at first, but after President Abraham Lincoln called for military volunteers, he attended the Virginia secession convention in spring 1861. There he sided with the majority of delegates and voted for secession, tendering his services to the Confederacy.
Despite his lack of military experience, Wise was made a brigadier general on June 5, 1861. He was initially posted in the Kanawha Valley of western (now West) Virginia, where he lost several important skirmishes and was transferred. He ended up commanding the District of Albemarle, North Carolina, until Union forces easily captured strategic Roanoke Island. Wise was then shunted over to Virginia’s Peninsula region, where he fought bravely, if ineptly, over the next three years. Despite his uneven performance in the field, Wise was a popular leader with his men. He surrendered with the main army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April 1865. He subsequently resumed his legal activities, and he never asked for a governmental pardon. Wise died in Richmond, Virginia, on September 12, 1876, a vigorous politician but an indifferent military leader.
Further reading: Craig M. Simpson, A Good Sowtherner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
