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David Wilmot was a politician and lawyer known for his commitment to containing slavery, outlined in his influential Wilmot Proviso. Born in 1814, in rural Bethany, Pennsylvania, Wilmot began studying law in the 1830s, when he married Anne Morgan, with whom he raised three children.
Representative David Wilmot proposed the controversial amendment to the appropriations bill ending the Mexican War. Known as the Wilmot Proviso, his amendment would have prohibited slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. Passed by the House, but not by the Senate—where southern opposition was stronger—the proviso intensified the ...
In behalf of anti-slavery forces throughout the country, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania named David Wilmot offered an amendment (August 8, 1846) to the bill forbidding slavery in the new territory, thus precipitating bitter national debate in an atmosphere of heightening sectional conflict. Despite repeated attempts, the Wilmot ...
WILMOT PROVISO (1846) The proviso was introduced by Congressman David Wilmot (Democrat, Pennsylvania) as an amendment to a $2,000,000 appropriations bill requested by President james k. polk to finance the Mexican War. The proviso prohibited slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico, thus enabling northern Democrats, like Wilmot, to support ...
The Motivation of the Wilmot Proviso. NOTES AND DOCUMENTS. THE MOTIVATION OF THE WILMOT PROVISO. By RICHARD R. STENBERG. David Wilmot, a representative from the Bradford district in northeastern Pennsylvania, offered to the President's two mil-. lion bill, August 8, 1846, a proviso prohibiting slavery in terri-. tory to be acquired from Mexico.
Supportive of the numerous measures weakening slavery, he took special pleasure in the 1862 law that adopted the proviso's principle and banned slavery in all territories. At the conclusion of his Senate term Wilmot was appointed by Lincoln to be a judge on the newly created Court of Claims, on which he served until his death at his home in ...
David Wilmot 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 ...
