Moreover, the
Southern leaders openly avowed their opposition to securing any region to
free labor exclusively, no matter what the ordinances of nature might be.
In 1848, it must be remembered in this connection, Mr. Webster not only
urged the limitation of slave area, and sustained the power of Congress to
regulate this matter in the territories, but he did not resist the final
embodiment of the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in the bill for the
organization of Oregon, where the introduction of slavery was infinitely
more unlikely than in New Mexico. Cotton, sugar, and rice were excluded,
perhaps, by nature from the Mexican conquests, but slavery was not. It was
worse than idle to allege that a law of nature forbade slaves in a country
where mines gaped to receive them. The facts are all as plain as possible,
and there is no escape from the conclusion that in opposing the Wilmot
Proviso, in 1850, Mr. Webster abandoned his principles as to the extension
of slavery. He practically stood forth as the champion of the Southern
policy of letting the new territories alone, which could only result in
placing them in the grasp of slavery.
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