Convince me that your propositions are right, that they are just and true, and I will accept them. I will sustain them to the end. If they are wrong-and I now believe them to be-I will never sustain them, and I will show my faith in God by leaving the consequences with Him.

Any substantial change in the fundamental principles of government is revolutionary. Yours may be a peaceable one, but it is still a revolution. The seceded States are in armed revolution. You are in direct alliance with them. You say the Government shall not retake the forts, collect the revenue, and you ask us to aid in preventing the Government from doing its duty.

Permit this, and the judgment of the world will be that we have submitted to the inauguration of your principles as the principles of the Government. It would exhibit a weakness from which the country could never hope to recover. These are reasons satisfactory enough for me. I cannot vote for the first article.

He asserted strongly, in answer to a question, his wish to get the seceded States back; but "I cannot say," he continued, "that I have any special way (of doing it). It is their duty to return. There are better methods of coercing them than to march our army onto their soil. Now I understand it is your purpose to intrench slavery behind the Constitution." Mr. Ruffin, of North Carolina, admitted it, as to a portion of the territories. "I thought I was not mistaken," continued Wilmot; "the Government has long been administered in the interest of slavery. The fixed determination of the North is, that this shall be no longer. . . . Another objection to the proposed amendment is its ambiguity. Its construction is doubtful, when it should be plain. Don't let us differ when we go home. If we do, we shall settle nothing. Some will claim that the first article does not furnish a slave code. Others will claim that it does, and such, I think, is a fact. I am also opposed to the second article. I do not think it is right thus to bind posterity. I am opposed to the third article, except the first clause. If you think there is really a purpose at the North to interfere with slavery in the States, I am willing a declaratory

"As to the foreign slave-trade, we ask nothing. The laws are well enough as they are, if properly enforced. Besides, you make too much of it. You will claim hereafter that this formed one part of the compromise. . . . I am opposed, also, to abrogating the power of Congress over the District of Columbia. I hope to see slavery abolished in the District." In answer to direct question, Mr. Wilmot added that he accepted the Dred Scott decision so far as it decided what was in the record (of that case) but he would not permit it to settle the principle, any more than Virginia would accede to the decision on the Alien and Sedition Laws. He would be frank and go farther: If the court had undertaken to settle the principle, he would do all he reasonably could to overthrow the decision. The action of the government under Washington ought to be a precedent of some weight in favor of his position.

In the balloting on the rest of the sections, Wilmot joined with his State delegation in voting aye. He also supported, as a member of that delegation, a supplementary resolution introduced by Thomas E. Franklin, of Pennsylvania, declaring that the highest political duty of every citizen is allegiance to the Federal Government, and that no State has a constitutional right to secede; 10 but the convention voted, ten States to seven, to postpone its consideration indefinitely, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Ohio voting with the southern States for postponement, and New York being equally divided on this question, as it was on many others.

The Philadelphia Press, in its report of the proceedings, contrasted Wilmot's frank firmness with the readiness of some other Pennsylvania delegates "to yield up everything, in order to satisfy John Tyler, who did not come there to be satisfied with anything. There was no more uncompromising member 10 Journal of the (Peace) Conference Convention, p. 76.

than Mr. Wilmot, yet his action seems to have gained him the respect of the southern men." It is, however, reported by another authority, usually well-informed, that a fraction of the southern irreconcileables were roused to still greater hostility by Wilmot's remarks, and planned to kidnap him as he set out for his home journey. The attempt, it is said, was foiled by Wilmot's sending his baggage by train, and himself taking a stage coach to Baltimore.

On February 27, the Peace Convention adjourned without day, after adopting a preamble addressed to the Congress of the United States, reciting the State representation assembled and the action taken in their body, and requesting that the result as submitted be in turn submitted "to conventions in the States as an article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States." The sequel is clearly summarized by Thorpe : "1

11

It was referred to a committee of five, of which Crittenden was chairman, and he espoused it with what energy and hope he could, after his own resolutions had been rejected by the Conference. But to so generous a mind as Crittenden, no price, with honor, was too great for Union, and he labored to have the Conference resolutions substituted for his own. At times, until the second of March, he spoke, but the Senate, on that day, by a vote of twenty-eight to seven, rejected the amendment.12 The vote clearly measured the estimate which the senate put on the work of the Conference.

In its final form, as thus sent to the Congress of the United States for consideration, the convention's proposals were framed as a suggested thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, the seven separate propositions taking their places as correspondingly numbered sections. Whatever the spirit of compromise underlying, the effect would have been, of course, to write slavery and the Missouri Compromise thereof ex

11 Francis Newton Thorpe, The Constitutional History of the United States, Vol. II, pp. 636, 637.

12 Cong. Globe, March 2, 1861, p. 1405.

plicitly and glaringly across the face of the Constitution itself. History, however, was preparing a striking contrast to this proposal, in the actual event. A thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was passed, January 31, 1865, in these words:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The language of the first section, thus written lastingly into the Constitution of the United States, is that of the old Jeffersonian ordinance which Wilmot revived, infused with new life and unshakable purpose, and immortalized as the Wilmot Proviso.

As for Wilmot himself, after witnessing the conclusion of the efforts of the Peace Conference, and the arrival of Lincoln in Washington as President-elect, he returned to Pennsylvania and to his duties as president judge of the thirteenth district. But events moved swiftly to bring him back to the Capital. On the 4th of March, 1861, Simon Cameron resigned his place in the Senate to enter Lincoln's cabinet as Secretary of War, and on the 13th of March, David Wilmot was chosen by the republican caucus, and immediately thereafter elected by the legislature, to fill the unexpired term as United States senator from the State of Pennsylvania.

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE SENATE

WILMOT's response to the call of his new duties was immediate. The announcement of his election to the Senate appeared March 15, 1861. March 19, the same March 19, the same Harrisburg correspondent wrote that "on Saturday night Judge Wilmot arrived at Philadelphia on his way to take his seat at Washington, and took lodgings at the Continental Hotel. About eleven o'clock at night, a large number of the new Senator's friends gave him the compliment of a serenade. He spoke as follows:

I learn from those friends who are near about me that this salutation is proffered to me as a mark of public respect. Permit me, therefore, to express my acknowledgments and most grateful thanks. You will not expect of me any protracted remarks on this occasion. I am on my way to the Federal Capital for the purpose of entering upon the responsible duties which have been imposed upon me by the partiality of my native State. I shall endeavor to discharge my duty so as to meet with your approbation (cheers).

Fellow citizens-I have been misunderstood, I will not say misrepresented, before the people, touching one subject of deep and vital interest to Pennsylvania. I trust, before the brief period in the Senate which has been allotted to me shall have expired, I shall have vindicated myself in your estimation, and proved myself a true friend of the interests of my native State (renewed applause). I shall endeavor to take in view all the great and manifold interests of this country, and I shall esteem it my especial duty, so far as in me lies, to maintain the interests of this great State. I am, by education and by party association, a Republican, and I point you with pride to the fact that the Republican party in Congress have testified their fidelity to their principles and their country by the passage of the Morrill tariff bill (thunders of