Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

The proviso was adopted in the House, but failed in the Senate. It was, in February, 1847, again, by the House, tacked on the "three million bill," but being struck out in the Senate, the bill passed the House without it. But the proviso had done its work; the whole North was alive to its importance, and Presidential and Congressional timber blossomed or withered accordingly as it did or did not fly a banner inscribed "Wilmot Proviso."

Calhoun, professing great alarm and great concern for the Constitution, on February 19, 1847, introduced into the Senate his celebrated resolution declaring, among other things, that the Territories belonged to the "several States . . . as their joint and common property." "That the enactment of any law which should . . . deprive the citizens of any of the States . . . from emigrating with their property [slaves] into any of the Territories . . . would be a violation of the Constitution and the rights of the States, . . . and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself."

Here was the doctrine of state-rights born into full life, with the old doctrine of nullification embodied. Benton, speaking of the dangerous character of Calhoun's resolution, said of them:

"As Sylla saw in the young Caesar many Mariuses, so did he see in them many nullifications."

Benton, quite familiar with the whole history of slavery before, during, and after the Mexican War, himself a Senator from a slave State, says the Wilmot proviso "was secretly cherished as a means of keeping up discord, and forcing the issue between the North and the South," by Calhoun and his friends, citing Mr. Calhoun's Alabama letter of 1847, already quoted, in proof of his statement.

By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February, 1848) for $15,000,000 (above $3,000,000 more than was paid Napoleon for the Louisiana Purchase), New Mexico and Upper California were ceded by Mexico to the United States, and the Rio Grande from El Paso to its mouth became the boundary between the two countries. Upper California is now the State of California, and the New Mexico thus acquired included much of the present New Mexico, nearly all of Arizona, substantially all of Utah and Nevada, and the western portion of Colorado, in area 545,000 square miles, which, together with the Gadsden Purchase, by further treaty with Mexico (December 30, 1853) for $10,000,000 more, completed the despoiling of the sister Republic. The territory acquired by the last treaty now constitutes the southern part of Arizona and the southwest corner of New Mexico.

Almost contemporaneous with the invasion of Mexico, and as part of the plan for the acquisition of her territory, Buchanan, then Secretary of State, dispatched Lieutenant Gillespie, of the United States Army, via Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan, to Monterey, Upper California, ostensibly with dispatches to a consul, but really for the purpose of presenting a mere letter of introduction and a verbal request to Captain John C. Fremont, U.S.A., then on an exploring expedition to the Pacific Coast. The Lieutenant found Fremont at the north end of the Great Klamath Lake, Oregon, in the midst of hostile Indians. The letter being presented, Gillespie verbally communicated from the Secretary a request for him to counteract any foreign scheme on California, and to cultivate the good-will of the inhabitants towards the United States.

On this information Fremont returned, in May, 1846 (the month the war opened on the Rio Grande), to the valley of the Sacramento. His arrival there was timely, as already the ever-grasping hand of the British was at work. There had been inaugurated (1) the massacre of American settlers, (2) the subjection of California to British protection, and (3) the transfer of its public domain to British subjects. Fremont did not even know war had broken out between the United States and Mexico, yet he organized at first a defensive war in the Sacramento Valley for the protection of American settlers, and blood was shed; then he resolved to overturn the Mexican authority, and establish "California Independence." The celerity with which all this was accomplished was romantic. In thirty days all Northern California was freed from Mexican rule—the flag of independence raised; American settlers were saved, and the British party overthrown.

Since its discovery by Sir Francis Drake—two hundred years—England had sought to possess the splendid Bay of California, with its great seaport and the tributary country. The war between the United States and Mexico seemed her opportune time for the acquisition, but her efforts, both by sea and land, were thwarted by her only less voracious daughter.(61)

Often in human affairs events concur to control or turn aside the most carefully guarded plans. California and the other Mexican acquisitions were by the war party—the slave propagandists—fore- ordained to be slave territory. The free State men had done little to favor its theft and purchase, and it was therefore claimed that they of right should have little interest in its disposition.