USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The Failed 1846 Amendment That Tried to Contain Slavery. Debate over the Wilmot Proviso inflamed North-South divisions ahead of the Civil War.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.

Detailed explanation-3: -Though never enacted, the Wilmot Proviso signaled significant challenges regarding what to do with the extension of slavery into the territories. The controversy over slavery’s extension polarized public opinion and resulted in dramatically increased sectional tension during the 1850s.

Detailed explanation-4: -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.

Detailed explanation-5: -Historian James McPherson writes that there were some southerners who opposed it because they saw “the northern effort to exclude it [slavery] as an insult to southern honor.” The Wilmot Proviso, as this amendment came to be called, passed in the House on two separate occasions, and both times the Senate voted it down.