knife that was piercing the South, to mould the party machine into a policy of nonresistance to the slave power, and to substitute vague and convenient platform generalities for the former democratic endorsement of the Proviso, Wilmot was rallying a fast-growing body of free-soilers, determined to insist on principle regardless of expediency, and threatening thus to upset the whole plan and purpose of the Buchanan men.

The Secretary of State, in desperation, seems to have decided that Wilmot was an interloper who must be destroyed, since he could not be placated; and to this task his organs were addressing themselves. The direct-tax proposal provided a most welcome opening. It was, or could be made to appear, injurious to the interests of the great financial and commercial elements everywhere-to men of property and influence. It avoided even the mention of slavery, and the moral reaction which would make many of these same men side with Wilmot if the attack were confined to that ground. In fact, it might help to distract attention from the Proviso entirely. So the offensive was pushed in new directions.

Political journalism of that day was not gentle in its methods, but Ritchie seems to have startled even the cloyed taste of the times by the strong flavor of his style. The New York Evening Post, referring to one of the attacks on Wilmot, expressed surprise at the tone of an article in the Washington paper. "It must have crept into that journal without the knowledge of the proper superintendent of its columns. Its insolence is so gross that we can bring ourselves, by any sort of self-constraint, to suppose that it came from the pen or the mind of the courteous and circumspect editor of the Union.” That editor, nevertheless, fathered the article in question in a long, bitter tirade against Wilmot on the day following the original publication.

CHAPTER XVI

CAMPAIGN FOR A THIRD TERM

It was in such an atmosphere and amid such influences that David Wilmot entered upon his canvass for election to a third term in Congress-a contest which McClure says "attracted the attention of the whole nation," and in which Wilmot's triumph "did much to strengthen the antislavery movement throughout the North." 1

To understand the conditions which, in part, gave Wilmot his power, it must be realized that he believed his own position to be absolutely that of the true and historic democracy, from which the commissioned leaders of the party, especially in the Administration, were trying to divorce and degrade the organization by a misuse of their power. The new proposition to which they stood self-committed-that the will of the slavocracy should not be crossed, but must be acquiesced in to preserve party harmony and party control of office-he denounced as undemocratic as well as unsound. When they wrote it into their platforms and demanded support as a test of party loyalty, he denied the validity of the test and their right to impose it. He never doubted for a moment that his was the true, and theirs the false, democracy. He had no delusions on the subject of their immediate power to punish any who would not conform, or to strike down individual opposition; but under that lay a profound belief in the ultimate triumph of sound principle within the party. The group to which he turned in sympathy were radical or free-soil democrats, but always democrats-most truly so of all who claimed the name. There seems to have been no vision yet of the necessity for, and the rise of, a new and opposing party based on the ideal

1 Recollections of Half a Century, p. 237

of resistance to slavery. Wilmot's concept of and pride in the political organization to which he belonged illuminates a speech 2 made to his constituents at a democratic mass meeting at Tioga, September 21, 1847, shortly after the close of the second session of the Twenty-ninth Congress and the long Proviso debate:

Why is it, Mr. President, that democrats are ever appealing to the past, and the whigs always croaking about the future? The history, sir, of the past, affords a complete vindication of the general policy of the democratic party, while every page bears records of the follies and blunders of federalism. It is to silence this instructive lesson, taught by the history of parties in America, that our opponents ever seek to drown the voice of the past, in noisy and ill-omened prophecy of the future.

I am yet, sir, a young man; but the events of the few years I have been an actor upon the stage of life would abundantly satisfy me, if history were silent, which party had the strongest claim upon my confidence and support. I have lived long enough to see federalism driven from one position to another-abandoning issue after issue-concealing its principles, and changing its name-predicting ruin and overthrow of liberty, and laboring with unpatriotic zeal for the fulfillment of its gloomy prophecies. The war waged by the bank of the United States against the people and government of the country during the administration of General Jackson, proves all that I have here charged upon the federal party. All who participated in the intensely exciting strife of that day, will remember the desperation of federalism, when its great idol was struck down. How were our ears assailed with imprecations and curses upon the head of that good old man, who, faithful to his trust, stood like a rock in the midst of an agitated ocean, calm and resolved, beating back the surges of corruption that for a time overwhelmed all beside. Federalism bewailed a Constitution shattered into fragments, and proclaimed the country in the midst of a revolution. A Senate thundered forth its im

2 From an extra of the Tioga Eagle, October 7, 1847. This was before the Eagle had listened to the seductions of the Postmaster-General and turned anti-Wilmot.

peachments, and a party excited to madness even clamored for the blood of the old Roman. Yet, sir, the storm subsided. Instead of a Constitution broken, its breaches had been healed; the country sprung forward under a new impulse, to a higher prosperity.

The great financial measures of Van Buren's administration -return to sound money and establishment of the "Independent Treasury" (always a leading tenet of Wilmot's political faith)-were further cited as erstwhile targets of the Federalists' violent excitement and noisy agitation—agitation and excitement long since forgotten and ignored in the success of the measures formerly denounced as leading inevitably to ruin. Coming down to the campaign of the day, he continued:

In the late presidential election, the tariff of 1842 was put forward as the controlling and all-absorbing issue. To this, federalism clung, as to its last and most darling measure. The ruthless democracy, that respected nothing venerable or good-that delighted in ruin, was about to lay its sacrilegious hand on this, the latest born and best beloved! Oh, how black, how universal, was to be that ruin, which was to follow the repeal of the tariff of 1842! "Your canals a solitude, and your lakes a desert waste of waters," were as a shadow to that profound abyss of ruin, that was to come home in its desolating influences to the fireside of every family in this wide Union. The fires of the forges were to go out. The loud breath of the engine, and the busy hum of machinery, were to be silent-the plough to stand still in the furrow, and the ax of the pioneer to be no more heard in the forest. The arm of industry was to be paralyzed and the strong muscles and sinews of the laborer to become relaxed and powerless. Oh, such a ruin! Such a RUIN! It is frightful to look back upon the picture. The tariff of 1842 is REPEALED. There is a great noise and tumult in the land-but the sun shines and the rains descend-the seed is sown and the harvest ripens. From every whig press-articulated by every whig tongue in the land, comes up the cry of ruin! ruin! RUIN! But like the spirit of the vasty deep, ruin will not come.

Is it possible that the same party that thus prophesied is again

organized and in the field? Yes, sir, again in the field; and with as bold a front as ever-appealing to the people with as much confidence as if they had never prophesied falsely. We hear no more about the tariff of 1842. It sleeps by the side of the United States Bank, and sleeps the death that has no resurrection. The American people have learned, by sore experience, that the prosperity of a country cannot be promoted by taxing the energies and industry of its people. Already is the federal party avoiding the issue of a high protective tariff, and like the bank issue, in a few years it will be openly repudiated. The war-this unjust, this presidential war, is now the sole theme of whig clamor and complaint. Our soldiers, however, are doing up this business of war pretty successfully, and I doubt not but an early peace will find us still prospering, with enlarged boundaries, and new fields for American enterprise and labor. Such, sir, is a brief chapter from the history of federalism in my day.

Mr. Wilmot then proceeded to make an application of his contrast of the parties to the issues of the day, and to ask what reason existed for, or what promise was to be expected from, a change of State administration from democratic to federalist control, comparing the character and policies of Governor Shunk with the recommendations and protestations of his opponent, James Irvin, and discussing at length the issues of the pending State campaign.

Turning next to a "subject of momentous import to the American people, the question between Freedom and Slavery," he recited the history of the Proviso as given in detail in a preceding chapter, and continued:

Now, sir, as to the thing itself.

What is the Proviso? What is its effect and object? Although plain in its language and clear in its design, this inquiry becomes necessary from the covert manner in which it is continually assailed. The whole southern press and Government organs of the North represent it as something which affects or interferes 3 See Origin and Authorship, Chapter IX.