Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/305

Rh cient territory to form Slave States south of the line of the Missouri Compromise as rapidly as Free States could be formed north of it, and that in this way &quot;the ancient equality of North and South could be maintained.&quot; (Blaine, vol. I, 46-7.)

As soon as it became evident that new territory additional to Texas would be acquired as the result of the Mexican war, the anti-slavery agitation appeared suddenly, August 8, 1846, in a proviso offered by Wilmot to the bill for appropriation of $2,000,000, designed to be used in concluding a peace with Mexico, that &quot;neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist therein.&quot; &quot;This Wilmot Proviso absorbed the attention of Congress for a longer time than the Missouri Compromise; it produced a wider and deeper excitement in the country and it threatened a more serious danger to the peace and integrity of the Union. The consecration of the territory of the United States to freedom became from that day a rallying cry for every shade of anti-slavery sentiment. If it did not go as far as the Abolitionists, in their extreme and uncompromising faith might demand, it yet took a long step forward and afforded the ground on which the battle of the giants was to be waged and possibly decided. Mr. Webster, who voted for the proviso with evident reluctance, said: &quot;All I can scan is contention, strife, agitation. The future is full of difficulties and full of dangers. We appear to be rushing on headlong and with our eyes all open. After several vicissitudes the Wilmot Proviso was defeated.

In the progress of these sectional discussions in Congress, a noteworthy vote was taken on the motion of Mr. Douglas to insert in the bill to organize a territorial government for Oregon, a clause &quot;that the line of 36° 30’, known as the Missouri Compromise line, approved March 6, 1820, be, and the same is hereby, declared to extend to the Pacific ocean.&quot; Mr. Douglas said significantly that &quot;the compromise therein effected is here-