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In The Rise of American Democracy, Wilentz describes the birth and effects of the Wilmot Proviso. This Proviso was introduced to the House by a representative from Pennsylvania. It would create a law that decreed, “‘neither slavery nor involuntary service shall ever exist’ in any territories acquired from Mexico as a result of the war”(Wilentz 316). Obviously this stirred controversy with anyone and everyone supporting slavery and its spread westward. If this were to make it through as a bill, not only would slavery be confined to the southeastern United States, but eventually, slaveholders would lose a considerable amount of power in Congress. Abolitionists would score a major win and the fall of slavery would be accelerated. The Senate did not manage to pass the Proviso in the same session but the House passed a more extensive version during the next session and the Senate again had the chance to vote on it. Calhoun introduced legislation combating the anti slavery bill and declared that it discriminated against states. Soon, the entire nation and all of the parties and smaller factions took stands for or against the Proviso. Both the Democrats and Whigs had to divide North to South because of their interests in slavery.
The reason these divisions are so important lies in future events we already know will happen. Real lines were drawn between free and slave states and the same lines cut through united parties in Washington. Because of Wilmot’s Proviso, “Calhoun…launched a movement for southern rights and unity, which inspired anti-Proviso mass meetings across the South” (Wilentz 319). Did these meetings foreshadow a very real threat of a Confederacy? Though it’d be over another decade before the Civil War, an argument could be made that this movement is one of the first real signs of the South versus North hostile attitude. In Spedwards’s post, it is recognized that westward expansion and the expansion are linked and gravely debated in Congress. I agree that the two cannot be easily separated, if at all. By expanding, the US has to decide, slavery or no slavery. Another decision could be to continue kicking the can down the road and pairing every free state with a slave state. But the Proviso ignited tensions and lit the path ahead that was destined for a split between those who depended on slavery and those who would stop at nothing to end it.