Democratic Politics and Sectionalism: The Wilmot Proviso Controversy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS357 Democratic Politics and Sectionalism: The Wämot Proviso Controversy . By Chaplain W. Morrison. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967. Pp. viii, 244. $6.00.) According to Chaplain W. Morrison, American historians have been so intent upon analyzing the political question of slavery in the territories in the 1850's, that they have failed to investigate the origin and early progress of the issue. In this thoroughly researched book, Morrison has attempted to correct diis deficiency by showing how the territorial issue emerged from internal Democratic party strife in the late 1840's. New York Democrats, clustered around Martin Van Buren and nursing a variety of grievances against the Polk administration, sought to use the Wilmot Proviso to weaken southern influence within the party by replacing the southem-westem expansionist alliance with an antislavery expansionist alliance between northeastern and western Democrats. National Democratic leaders, facing the election of 1848, seized upon popular sovereignty in hopes of avoiding party disruption over the Proviso . Morrison finds the voters repudiated the compromise, thereby presaging the Democratic party's failure in 1850-1851 to successfully solve the problem of slavery in the territories. Morrison also contends that the Randall-Craven school of Civil War historians has erred in treating the matter of slavery in the territories as a superficial issue which was exploited by irresponsible politicians who refused to deal with concrete questions. Rather, the argument over slavery expansion was "closer to the essence of that [sectional] conflict—than die more direct and practical question of the existence of slavery itself." The issue symbolized by the Wilmot Proviso had great public appeal. In die South, the possibility of its passage threatened to condemn die section to a permanendy inferior political position and seemed to endanger slavery and white supremacy. The North, says Morrison, was also concerned about maintaining the caste system, and supported the Proviso "precisely because it expressed the northern determination to prevent the spread not only of slavery but of the despised Negro as well." Although Morrison has advanced no new interpretations of the period he discusses, historians will be grateful for diis first book-length analysis of the origins and ramifications of both the Wilmot Proviso and die doctrine of popular sovereignty. He finds the Proviso properly ascribed to David Wilmot, who introduced it for political rather than moral purposes , and attributes the latter proposal to George M. Dallas and Daniel S. Dickinson. Morrison carefully evaluates the reaction of each state Democratic party to the Proviso, and also discusses the Baltimore Convention and die presidential campaign of 1848. He fails, however, to prove that the issue of slavery expansion stirred up strong popular feeling prior to the Compromise of 1850. Instead, his book strongly supports Avery Craven's contention that politicians created the issue in order to manipulate it for partisan advantage. Morrison suggests that some Bam- 358CIVIL WAR HISTORY burners, like Preston King, were "most deeply committed to free soil for its own sake," but offers no proof of the assertion. Morrison himself admits (p. 75) that "in spite of the general appeal of the Wilmot Proviso in the North, the Barnburners were much less successful in keeping the territorial issue before the public dian Calhoun and his supporters in the South." And even in the Soudi, Calhoun had limited success with his Southern Rights movement. What Morrison does demonstrate is the ability of Democratic party regulars to silence the agitation over slavery expansion in the interest of party unity. In light of Zachary Taylor's own ambiguity on die matter, it would appear difficult to conclude that Democratic defeat in 1848 reflected a repudiation of die party's compromise on matters of slavery expansion. Certainly party victories in 1852 and 1856 demonstrated that popular sovereignty did help Democrats survive as a united party for anodier dozen years. Richard H. Abbott Eastern Michigan University New Orleans and the Railroads: The Struggle for Commercial Empire , 1830-1860. By Merl E. Reed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966. Pp. 172. $5.00.) Students of American history have long been intrigued by die almost imperceptible shift in the main direction of western trade and commerce prior to the Civil...