vitals of the Nation. Benton, the last of the Romans, has been temporarily overthrown by the combinations against him. A venal and corrupt pack have hunted him into a brief retirement, because of his fearless and incorruptible integrity. Benton is not dead. He is a most extraordinary man in energy and in talent, and if those who ought to stand by him, do so with firmness, he will wield an influence and power second to no man in the Nation. . . .

Otherwise, however, the letter is full of cheerful spirit and lively interest in affairs at Washington and at home: of practical suggestions for the then pending arrangement of the judicial districts throughout the State; of amusement at the discomfiture of Buchanan by southern members, who "deal alike with their white and black slaves, making both work without reward"; of speculations as to the next National Convention, in which he predicted that Cass would have no chance, and Buchanan was already "a dead cock in the pit." So far as 1852 was concerned, Wilmot proved a good prophet. But of personal dejection or brooding over his retirement there is none.

Perhaps the most striking picture of the impression David Wilmot made on his friends at this period is found in a letter from F. P. Blair to Martin Van Buren,16 written three days earlier than Wilmot's letter just quoted (January 26, 1851). Both seem to be reminiscent of the conference to which Blair refers, for he, too, eulogizes Benton as the torch bearer whom the true Jackson democrats should announce as "the light they meant to follow, let others fall in or fall off as they thought fit; to seek no declaration for his candidacy from a convention, but let those leaders of men who like the old school nominate wherever two or three could be gathered together, in legislative halls, in towns, or at crossroads-wherever the spirit moved." Blair's measure of Wilmot, in immediate connection with these thoughts, is scarcely more than suggested by a few strokes; but it is vastly significant in what it leaves to the

16 Van Buren papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress,

understanding to fill in the portrait. He describes a visit to Preston King, whom he found laid up with a broken knee pan, his leg in a wooden frame "like a man in the stocks." He says they talked of several of the prominent and successful politicians of the day, "honest fellows who never had an honest thought. . . . We talked of those fellows merely to find out, if we could, what there was in them to give them the power to break down the honest principles born in our revolution and the patriotism that sustained them. Wilmot came in, and we concluded that they are not extinct, but under a cloud, and that the fire would brighten up if we only had some potent breath to blow it into a blaze."

CHAPTER XXV

ON THE BENCH

ALTHOUGH Wilmot had been thus eliminated so far as direct participation in Federal legislation was concerned, the opposing party leaders seemed persistently nervous about his activities and influence. Plitt's reports to Buchanan have many notes of anxiety on that score. October 7, 1850, just after the finish of the congressional campaign which ended in Wilmot's retirement, he reminds his chief of the "considerable importance attached to the office of Commissioner of the United States, since the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. Judge Grier wishes to be advised as to proper men in the different counties of the State, particularly the southern tier, and in Wilmot's district, or wherever there are free-soilers-so that he may make no mistakes." April 2, 1851, he is disturbed about the approaching convention at Reading. "The only thing to be apprehended is the determined and unscrupulous opposition of Cameron and Brewster and Wilmot, who will endeavor, each in his particular way, to throw firebrands into the convention. Wilmot, I hear, says that he will be a delegate. Should he be received, after openly opposing the regular nomination of the party?" 1

1

Wilmot, however, following a preference expressed before he left Washington, elected to take an active part in the democratic judicial conference at Harrisburg, June 11, 1851, for the nomination of five judges of the Supreme Court; and though he was unsuccessful in his effort on the contested seats from Lancaster County (Buchanan's) he was the mover

1 Buchanan papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. Cameron by this time was in Buchanan's high disfavor. Forney fell from grace some time later.

of resolutions approving the faithful and impartial conduct of the officers of the convention and seems to have been quite satisfied with the character of the nominees. Three weeks later, July 4, he spoke at the celebration at Terrytown, in his own county, "with much originality of thought, accompanied by very plain and forcible suggestions."

Under a constitutional amendment in the State of Pennsylvania adopted in 1850, the judiciary had been made elective, and the first campaign under the new law was launched in the fall of 1851. The Bradford County democratic convention, which assembled September 2, chose Wilmot unanimously as their candidate for president judge of the thirteenth district, then comprising the counties of Bradford, Susquehanna and Sullivan, and appointed five conferees to the district conference, instructed for him. The whigs made no nomination for the president judgeship, though they put their own nominees on the ticket for the two associate judgeships. As the whigs were the weaker party locally and the presiding office was conceded to Bradford, the democratic nomination by that county was tantamount to election. Wilmot was, in fact, unanimously nominated in the district conference (September 8), no other candidate being presented.

The comment of the Bradford Reporter is interesting, as reflecting the editorial opinion of the ablest and strongest paper in Judge Wilmot's district, and the mind of the man who, of all his contemporaries, probably understood him best, and most fully shared his political views and ideals. Under date of October 4, 1851, Mr. Goodrich wrote:

The elective Judiciary is an experiment, the success of which depends almost entirely upon the action of the people. They should guard with jealous care this important branch of government, strive with all diligence to keep it pure, making talent and learning the all-important requisites for the station. They should, also, choose men whose sympathies are with them; who have mingled freely among all classes of the community, that they may appreciate the passions and prejudices of human nature, and be

better prepared to discern the circumstances and motives that influence men and their conduct.

The selection of Mr. Wilmot to preside over our Courts will be fortunate for the taxpayers and people of the District. Possessed of a clear, active, legal mind, united with promptness and decision, the business of the Courts will be dispatched in as speedy a manner as is consistent with the rights of the parties interested. Having been in Congress for the last six years, and consequently unable to attend to the practice of the law, he is employed in but few cases now upon the calendar, and will thus be debarred from trying but few matters which may come before the Court, thus dispensing with the necessity of expensive and frequent special courts, as is now the case.

We might add, that while the Democratic party are united almost to a man, in support of Mr. Wilmot, the people of the District have for some time been looking to him as the most proper person to fill the station for which he has been nominated.

It could not have been expected, however, that those who had persistently opposed Wilmot at former elections on his free-soil principles would permit his elevation to the bench unopposed, especially as the Compromise of 1850 had failed. of its intended emollient purpose and had, instead, enlarged the wound and increased the inflammation in the body of the democratic party. The stricter enforcement of the FugitiveSlave Law, upon which the South had particularly insisted, was doing more than any other one thing, perhaps, to drive into separate and increasingly hostile camps those, on the one hand, whose eagerness for party coherence and power made them completely pliant to the demands of the slave interests, and those, on the other hand, whose vision of and devotion to higher principles forced them into an increasing resistance to slavery, and toward new and as yet undefined political relations.

The "Wilmot District" was the focus of free-soil sentiment in the State, and the democratic party there stood strongly on the ground of protest against insistence on assent to slavery