David Wilmot

Pennsylvania Democrat whose 1846 proviso to ban slavery in lands taken from Mexico split Congress along sectional lines.

Overview

In August 1846, as Congress debated money for negotiating an end to the Mexican-American War, first-term representative David Wilmot offered an amendment barring slavery from any territory acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso passed the House repeatedly with Northern votes but always died in the Senate, and the fight over it turned slavery in the territories into the defining question of national politics. Wilmot left the Democrats, helped build the new Republican Party, and served in the Senate during the Civil War before Abraham Lincoln appointed him to the Court of Claims.