David Wilmot (20 January 1814 - 16 March 1868) was an American congressman and Judge of the Court of Claims. He is best remembered for introducing the Wilmot Proviso, a failed 1846 bill to ban the expansion of slavery into territories seized during the Mexican-American War. He was instrumental in establishing the American Republican Party in Pennsylvania.
Biography[]
Born in Pennsylvania in 1814, Wilmot read law in Wilkes-Barre and was admitted to the bar, taking up private practice in Bradford County. In March 1845 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat. Wilmot was initially known as being loyal to the party line under President James K. Polk; however, he and other moderate Democrats began to turn against Polk due to his being overly sympathetic to Southern slaveholding interests.
In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, when the United States succeeded in seizing California from Mexico, an appropriations bill was presented to the House granting $2 million (increased to $3 million) to President Polk to negotiate a peace treaty with Mexico. Wilmot introduced an amendment known as the Wilmot Proviso which would ban slavery or involuntary servitude from any territories ceded to the US as a result of the treaty. Wilmot and fellow anti-slavery Democrat Jacob Brinkerhoff both claimed at various times to have authored the proviso, but it is now believed that the anti-slavery faction had authored it together and Wilmot had introduced it simply because he was the first to have the chance to do so. The House voted through the bill, but the Senate adjourned rather than approve it. At the next session of Congress the bill containing the proviso was debated again, but the Senate passed their own version without the proviso and the House were convinced to go along.
In the 1847 legislative election the Democrats removed Wilmot from their ticket due to the proviso but was able to win re-election to the House on the platform of the Free Soil Party, a party dedicated to halting the expansion of slavery. He continued to serve in the House until 1851, when he was forced to step down in favour of the more moderate Galusha A. Grow. He served as President of the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas from 1851 - 1861 during which time he helped to found the Republican Party and helped John C. Fremont, the first Republican Presidential candidate, to campaign in the 1856 election. He ran for election on the Republican ticket in 1857, losing to William F. Packer, and then again in 1861. He was then appointed to the Court of Claims by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and served until his death in March 1868.