THE "BARGAIN OF 1844" AND THE WILMOT PROVISO 145
free States led off the opposition to their Southern brethren." 1 Northwestern Democrats, remembering, said the Washing- ton correspondent of the Baltimore American, "the 'bad faith' of the South, as they called it, upon the Oregon question,
- * * were resolved that no more slave territory should
come into the Union with their consent." 2 This determina- tion found expression in the Wilmot proviso, introduced, it is true, by Wilmot of Pennsylvania, a Northeastern Democrat, but its authorship claimed by the Northwestern Democrat, Brinkerhoff of Ohio. The original draft of this proviso, in Brinkerhoff s handwriting, is still, I am informed in a recent letter from Prof. R. T. Stevenson, of Ohio Wesleyan Univer- sity, in the possession of Brinkerhoff 's son, Mr. George Brinkerhoff, of Mansfield, Ohio.
In conclusion and summary: From the original establish- ment of free-soil and slave-soil sections of the Union during the late or post-Revolutionary period down to as late as 1843, the traditional principle upon which the country acted in re- gard to the slavery question was the equal, or approximately equal, division of all new territory between free soil and slave soil. When the proposal of Texan annexation threatened preponderant southward extension, Northeastern Democrats were frightened into opposition to its annexation, but North- western Democrats were willing to bargain with Southern Democrats for a combination of Texas and Oregon issues that should result in the continuation of the old, traditional policy of approximately equal expansion of free soil and slave soil. This bargain was more or less definitely drawn up by a small group of Northwestern and Southern Democratic politicians and submitted to and ratified by the Democratic convention at Baltimore in May, 1844. Democratic success in the campaign of 1844 was followed by the immediate carry- ing out of that portion of the "bargain" relating to the annexa- tion of Texas, for which all but a few of the Northwestern Democratic Members of Congress voted, these few asserting
1 ibid.
2 Ibid.
