The Secession Movement in the United States 1847-1852 BY MELVIN JOHNSON WHITE of Louisiana A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1910 PREFACE. This little monograph, in substantially the form here presented, was submitted as a thesis in part fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin in 1910. It grew out of a seminary study of the Compromise of 1850, conducted by Dr. U. B. Phillips, now of the University of Michigan, who gave me many helpful suggestions and loaned me much valuable material from his private library. I also wish to acknowledge my obligations to Dr. F. J. Turner, now of Harvard University, under whom it was my great good fortune to have studied at Wisconsin; to Dr. H. V. Ames, of the University of Pennsylvania, for his time-saving suggestions in regard to where material was to be found; and to Dr. C. R. Fish, of the University of Wisconsin. Needless to say, the above-mentioned scholars are in no ways responsible for the faults of the work. Others whom I take this opportunity to thank are: Mrs. P. P. Claxton, formerly Miss Mary Hannah Johnson, Librarian of the Carnegie Library, Nashville, Tenn.; and Dr. T. M. Owen, Director of the Department of Archives and History of the State of Alabama, Montgomery, Ala., for aid and courtesies extended me while in their cities. While engaged in collecting the source material upon which this study is based, Mrs. White accompanied me to libraries in different parts of the country, and rendered invaluable aid by copying manuscripts and other matter. MELVIN JOHNSON WHITE. 340940 CHAPTER I. THE WILMOT PROVISO AGITATION, 1847-1848. The presidential campaign of 1844 marked the beginning of the last stage in the long slavery struggle in the United States. It indicated that the South, driven to a defense of the institution of negro slavery by the rapid growth of Abolition sentiment at the North, had resolved upon securing full control of the National Government.1 The Democratic party was the chosen instrument by means of which this purpose was to be accomplished. Whipped into line by its aggressive Southern wing, it committed itself to the acquisition of new territory, which the South planned to create into additional slave States, with the object of acquiring control in Congress, without which it could not believe its favorite institution safe. Early progress in this direction gave promise of ultimate success. Texas was annexed to the Union as a slave State in 1845. During May of the following year war was declared against the comparatively weak Republic of Mexico. Up to this time the anti-slavery forces, taken by surprise and off their guard, had nothing more serious than written and verbal opposition, upon the part of isolated individuals, to oppose to the proslavery program. David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, pointed out the way of attack, and paved the way for a concentration of the energies of the opposition, when, in August, 1846, he. introduced into the House of Representatives his famous Proviso for the exclusion, by an act of Congress, of negro slavery from the territory about to be acquired from Mexico. The sections at once locked horns in a struggle that precipitated a national crisis second only to the one of 1860. An act of President Polk's, during the first session of the twenty-ninth Congress, furnished the occasion for the introduction of the Proviso. War with Mexico had hardly begun when, in a special message to Congress, dated August 4, 1848, he suggested, since "a just and honorable peace, and not conquest" was our object in entering upon the conflict, the appropriation of such a sum of money as might be considered sufficient for con 1. Ford, The Campaign of 1844, in Proc. Amer. Antiq. Soc., Vol. XX, Pt. 1, Page 118. |