Within six weeks after Lincoln's speech
President Polk sent to the Senate a treaty of peace, under which Mexico
ceded to the United States an extent of territory equal in area to
Germany, France, and Spain combined, and thereafter the origin of the
war was an obsolete question. What should be done with the new territory
was now the issue.
This issue embraced the already exciting slavery question, and Mr.
Lincoln was doubtless gratified that the Whigs had taken a position upon
it so consonant with his own convictions. Already, in the previous
Congress, the body of the Whig members had joined a small group of
antislavery Democrats in fastening upon an appropriation bill the famous
"Wilmot Proviso," that slavery should never exist in territory acquired
from Mexico, and the Whigs of the Thirtieth Congress steadily followed
the policy of voting for the same restriction in regard to every piece
of legislation where it was applicable. Mr. Lincoln often said he had
voted forty or fifty times for the Wilmot Proviso in various forms
during his single term.
Upon another point he and the other Whigs were equally wise. Repelling
the Democratic charge that they were unpatriotic in denouncing the war,
they voted in favor of every measure to sustain, supply, and encourage
the soldiers in the field.
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