Дэвид Уилмот: Пенсильвания саяхатшысы және құлдыққа қарсы күрескер

American politician (1814–1868)
the politician

David Wilmot (January 20, 1814 – March 16, 1868) was an American politician and judge. He served as Representative and a Senator for Pennsylvania and as a judge of the Court of Claims. He is best known for being the prime sponsor and eponym of the Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban the expansion of slavery to western lands gained in the Mexican Cession. A notable member of the anti slavery Free Soil Party, Wilmot later was instrumental in establishing the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.

David Wilmot was born on January 20, 1814, in Bethany, Pennsylvania. He completed preparatory studies at the local Beech Woods Academy and the Cayuga Lake Academy in Aurora, Cayuga County, New York. He then read law with Pennsylvania state judge William Jessup in Montrose, Pennsylvania, and with George Washington Woodward in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, in August 1834. As James G. Blaine later wrote:

"David Wilmot represented a district which had always given Democratic majorities and was himself an intense partisan of that political school. He was a man of strong physique and strong common sense; of phlegmatic temperament, without any pretension to genius; a sensible speaker, with no claim to eloquence or oratory. But he had courage, determination, and honesty". In August 1846, an appropriations bill for $2 million to be used by the President in negotiating a treaty of peace with Mexico was introduced in the House. Wilmot immediately offered the following amendment:

"Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted." Wilmot modeled the language for what would usually be referred to as the Wilmot Proviso after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Historian Sean Wilentz writes that it is unclear why Wilmot, an "unremarkable" first term Congressman, was the one to introduce the measure. Wilmot would later claim that he had introduced the proviso independent of any other members of Congress, while Congressman Jacob Brinkerhoff claimed that he was the true author of the proviso. Wilentz speculates that the proviso was jointly drafted by Wilmot and other anti slavery Democrats, and that the drafters agreed that whoever had the first opportunity to introduce the proviso would do so. In an 1848 speech, Wilmot responded to critics who called him a radical abolitionist by pointing to Thomas Jefferson's proposed Land Ordinance of 1784, which would have banned slavery in a large portion of western territory slated for federal expansion. "This sir, looks very much like the 'Proviso.' Here is the original "firebrand"—the heresy, for holding onto which men are now proscribed by the government of their country. Mr. Jefferson, had he lived at this day, would have been denounced as an abolitionist, and a disturber of the peace of the Union." The House, after first voting down a counter proposal simply to extend the Missouri Compromise line across the Mexican Cession, passed the proviso by a vote of 83–64. This led to an attempt to table the entire appropriations bill rather than pass it with "the obnoxious proviso attached", but this effort was defeated "in an ominously sectional vote, 78–94". The United States Senate adjourned rather than approve the bill with the proviso.

A measure to the Wilmot Proviso was brought forward at the next session of Congress, with the appropriation amount increased to $3 million, and the scope of the amendment expanded to include all future territory which might be acquired by the United States. This was passed in the House by a vote of 115 to 105, but the Senate refused to concur and passed a bill of its own without the amendment. The House acquiesced, owing largely to the influence of general Lewis Cass. By 1848 Wilmot was thoroughly identified as a Free Soiler, but, like many other Free Soilers, he did not oppose the expansion of slavery based on a legal rejection of the short term existence of the institution itself, but rather because he felt slavery was detrimental to the interests of whites. In fact, he sometimes referred to the Wilmot proviso as the "White Man's Proviso". In a speech in the House, Wilmot said, "I plead the cause and the rights of white freemen [and] I would preserve to free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance, where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor." Around the same time, however, Wilmot, in a New York speech, spoke of the ultimate demise of slavery when he argued, "Keep it within given limits and in time it will wear itself out. Its existence can only be perpetuated by constant expansion. Slavery has within itself the seeds of its own destruction." Wilmot was presented as the Free Soil candidate for speaker of the United States House of Representatives in 1849 and was soon at odds with the mainstream Pennsylvania Democratic Party led by James Buchanan. Wilmot was forced to withdraw from the 1850 congressional elections in favor of the more moderate Galusha A. Grow.

A Pennsylvania State historical marker is placed at Williams Street at the Riverside Cemetery, Towanda, identifying the cemetery as his resting place. The Wilmot House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and David Wilmot School in 1988.