US Civil War

The Wilmot Proviso was an amendment to a funding bill that was created by President James K. Polk and was made to establish and fund peace negotiations with Mexico for a Treaty to end the Mexican American War. The proviso itself said that any acquired land from Mexico must be free from slavery or involuntary servitude. The proviso was never passed but the bill did. The proviso passed in the House, where majority was Northerners; people living in the northern states and didn't have many slaves. The Senate, with majority of slave owning southerners, refused to ratify and said Congress didn't have the power to ban slavery.

The Wilmot Proviso was not drafted by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, but was the workmanship of Jacob Brinkerhoff of Ohio who as a Free Soiler was unlikely to be recognised by the Speaker of the House. Wilmot had a copy of the amendment on hand when the Speaker called on him. Under the rules of the House it became the Wilmot Amendment instead of the Brinkerhoff Proviso.

This document would have banned slavery in any territory the USA acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or any territory in the Mexican Cession. David Wilmot, a congressman from Pennsylvania, introduced the Proviso to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846.
The wilmot proviso was introduced on August 8, 1846 in the house of Representatives as a rider on a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican-American War. The intent of the proviso, submitted by Democratic Congressman David Wilmot, was to prevent the introduction of Slavery in any territory aquirred from Mexico. The proviso did not pass in this session or in any other session when it was reintroduced over the course of the next several years, but many consider it as the first event in the long slide to Civil War which would accelerate through the 1850s. by Fitty