Editing Wilmot Proviso (section)

==Aftermath==

[[File:US Slave Free 1789-1861.gif|right|thumb|400px|An animation showing the free/slave status of U.S. states and territories, 1789–1861, including the proposed Wilmot Proviso]]

With the approval of the treaty, the issue moved from one of abstraction to one involving practical matters. The nature of the Constitution, slavery, the value of free labor, political power, and ultimately political realignment were all involved in the debate.<ref>
Holt (1978), p. 50.</ref>  Historian Michael Morrison argues that from 1820 to 1846 a combination of "racism and veneration of the Union" had prevented a direct Northern attack on slavery.<ref name="Morrison pg. 53"/>  While the original Southern response to the Wilmot Proviso was measured, it soon became clear to the South that this long postponed attack on slavery had finally occurred.  Rather than simply discuss the politics of the issue, historian William Freehling noted, "Most Southerners raged primarily because David Wilmot's holier-than-thou stance was so insulting."<ref>Freehling (1990), p. 461.</ref>

In the North, the most immediate repercussions involved [[Martin Van Buren]] and the state of [[New York (state)|New York]].  The [[Barnburners and Hunkers|Barnburners]] were successfully opposed by their conservative opposition, the [[Barnburners and Hunkers|Hunkers]], in their efforts to send a pro-proviso batch of delegates to the 1848 Democratic National Convention.  The Barnburners held their own separate convention and sent their own slate of delegates to the convention in Baltimore.  Both delegations were seated with the state's total votes split between them.  When the convention rejected a pro-proviso plank<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20061209104259/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showplatforms.php?platindex=D1848|url-status=dead|title=American Presidency Document Categories &#124; The American Presidency Project|archive-date=9 December 2006|website=Presidency.ucsb.edu|access-date=14 December 2021}}</ref> and selected [[Lewis Cass]] as the nominee, the Barnburners again bolted and were the nucleus of forming the [[Free Soil Party]].<ref>
Richards (2000), p. 154–155.</ref>  Historian Leonard Richards writes of these disaffected Democrats:

<blockquote>Overall, then, Southern Democrats during the 1840s lost the hard core of their original [[doughface]] support.  No longer could they count on New England and New York Democrats to provide them with winning margins in the House. ...<br />To them [Free Soil Democrats] the movement to acquire Texas, and the fight over the Wilmot Proviso, marked the turning point, when aggressive slavemasters stole the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and began dictating the course of the nation's destiny.<ref>Richards (2000), p. 159.</ref></blockquote>

Historian [[William J. Cooper, Jr.|William Cooper]] presents the exactly opposite Southern perspective:

<blockquote>Southern Democrats, for whom slavery had always been central, had little difficulty in perceiving exactly what the proviso meant for them and their party.  In the first place the mere existence of the proviso meant the sectional strains that had plagued the Whigs on Texas now beset the Democrats on expansion, the issue the Democrats themselves had chosen as their own.  The proviso also announced to southerners that they had to face the challenge of certain northern Democrats who indicated their unwillingness to follow any longer the southern lead on slavery.  That circumstance struck at the very roots of the southern conception of party.  The southerners had always felt that their Northern colleagues must toe the southern line on all slavery-related issues.<ref>Cooper (1978), p. 233{{endash}}234.</ref></blockquote>

In [[Alabama]], with no available candidate sufficiently opposed to the proviso, [[William Lowndes Yancey|William L. Yancey]] secured the adoption by the state Democratic convention of the so-called "[[Alabama Platform]]", which was endorsed by the legislatures of Alabama and [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] and by Democratic state conventions in [[Florida]] and [[Virginia]]. The platform called for no federal restrictions of slavery in the territories, no restrictions on slavery by territorial governments until the point where they were drafting a state constitution in order to petition Congress for statehood, opposition to any candidates supporting either the proviso or popular sovereignty, and positive federal legislation overruling Mexican anti-slavery laws in the Mexican Cession.  However, the same Democratic Convention that had refused to endorse the proviso also rejected incorporating the Yancey proposal into the national platform by a 216–36 vote.  Unlike the Barnburner walkout, however, only Yancey and one other Alabama delegate left the convention. Yancey's efforts to stir up a third party movement in the state failed.<ref>Walther (2006), pp. 102{{endash}}117; Nevins (1947), p. 314. South Carolina had boycotted the entire convention, but a single South Carolinian was admitted by the convention as the state's delegation, and he cast all nine of the state's votes at the convention.</ref>

Southerner Whigs looked hopefully to slaveholder and war hero General [[Zachary Taylor]] as the solution to the widening sectional divide even though he took no public stance on the Wilmot Proviso.  However, Taylor, once nominated and elected, showed that he had his own plans.  Taylor hoped to create a new non-partisan coalition that would once again remove slavery from the national stage.  He expected to be able to accomplish this by freezing slavery at its 1849 boundaries and by immediately bypassing the territory stage and creating two new states out of the Mexican Cession.<ref>Cooper (1978), pp. 243{{endash}}245, 273{{endash}}276.</ref>

The opening salvo in a new level of sectional conflict occurred on December 13, 1848, when [[John G. Palfrey]] (Whig) of [[Massachusetts]] introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the [[District of Columbia]]. Throughout 1849 in the South "the rhetoric of resistance to the North escalated and spread".  The potentially secessionist [[Nashville Convention]] was scheduled for June 1850.<ref>Walther (2006), pp. 118{{endash}}122.</ref> When President [[Zachary Taylor|Taylor]] in his December 1849 message to Congress urged the admission of [[California]] as a free state, a state of crisis was further aggravated.  Historian Allan Nevins sums up the situation which had been created by the Wilmot Proviso:

<blockquote>Thus the contest was joined on the central issue which was to dominate all American history for the next dozen years, the disposition of the Territories.  Two sets of extremists had arisen: Northerners who demanded no new slave territories under any circumstances, and Southerners who demanded free entry for slavery into all territories, the penalty for denial to be secession.  For the time being, moderates who hoped to find a way of compromise and to repress the underlying issue of slavery itself – its toleration or non-toleration by a great free Christian state – were overwhelmingly in the majority.  But history showed that in crises of this sort the two sets of extremists were almost certain to grow in power, swallowing up more and more members of the conciliatory center.<ref>Nevins (1947), pp. 12{{endash}}13.</ref></blockquote>

Combined with other slavery-related issues, the Wilmot Proviso led to the [[Compromise of 1850]], which helped buy another uncertain decade of peace.  Radical secessionists were temporarily at bay as the Nashville Convention failed to endorse secession.  Moderates rallied around the Compromise as the final solution to the sectional issues involving slavery and the territories.  At the same time, however, the language of the [[Georgia Platform]], widely accepted throughout the South, made it clear that the South's commitment to Union was not unqualified; they fully expected the North to adhere to their part of the agreement.

In regard to the territory the Proviso would have covered, California had a brief period of slavery due to slave owning settlers arriving during the 1848 [[California Gold Rush]].  Since there were no [[slave patrol]]s or laws protecting slavery in the territory, slave escapes were quite common.  Ultimately, California decided to ban slavery in their 1849 constitution and was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1850.  Nevada would never have legal slavery and was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1864.  The territories of Utah and New Mexico would have slavery from the time they were acquired by America in 1848 until July 1862, when the United States banned slavery in all federal territories.  However, Utah had just 29 slaves (0.07% of the total population) and New Mexico had no slaves in the [[1860 United States census|1860 census]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/slavery-far-west-ca-co-nm-nv-or-ut-wa|title=Slavery in the Far West (CA, CO, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA)|website=Encyclopedia.com|access-date=14 December 2021}}</ref>