been opened. Much public money has been disbursed for the transportation of troops and supplies on boats that might have been saved had there been an easy land route.

So soon as I can look over my books, I will furnish you a detailed statement showing the heavy and expensive shipments by the river to The Dalles. It amounted to more than $25,000 each quarter, and sometimes probably more than that sum in one month, dependent, of course, upon the season of the year and the forces east of the mountains. I refer to the amounts paid by Government for military purposes.

The country east of the Cascade Mountains is now quite populous and exceedingly rich in mineral and other resources. The trade by the river is now greater than at any other period, and is increasing.

The demand for a land route through the Cascade mountains becomes more serious and important every day. As a military measure, it is important to connect the lower Columbia with the great interior by a practicable wagon road. I have seen the importance of it during the Indian wars. It would be still more necessary in case of a foreign war.

Respectfully submitted,

RUFUS INGALLS.

Brig. Gen., Chf. Qr. Mr., Army Potomac.

General Ingalls was born in Denmark, Maine, in 1820. He

graduated at West Point in 1843, and served through the Mexican war. He came to Oregon in May, 1849, as the quartermaster, with the rank of captain, of a company of artillery under the command of Major Hathaway, who established the U. S. military post of Fort Vancouver. During the Civil war he was the quartermaster general of the Army of the Potomac. He retired from the army July 1, 1883, and soon afterwards became a resident of Portland until his death in 1893.

GEORGE H. HIMES.

of the

Oregon Historical Society

VOLUME XV

SEPTEMBER, 1914

NUMBER 3

The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages

THE "BARGAIN OF 1844" AS THE ORIGIN OF THE WILMOT PROVISO*

By CLARK E. PERSINGER

Professor of American History in the University of Nebraska

[This paper reveals the fact that the proposed accessions of the whole of Oregon and of Texas were combined by the "Bargain of 1844" to make a Democratic party campaign issue and means of "party harmony and unity."-EDITOR QUARTERLY.]

Why did the Northern Democracy so suddenly present that "apple of discord"-the Wilmot proviso-to the Southern Democracy in August of 1846?

Von Holst answers this question with the rather vague assertion that the "vox populi of the North" compelled the politicians to take some action against the proposed increase of slave soil through the proposed Mexican cession.2 Wilson in his "Slave Power" attributes the proviso to "several Democratic members" of Congress, who had been "cajoled into a vote for [Texan] annexation," and now, unable to retrieve the past, sought in this way "to save the future." Schouler makes no assertion as to its origin. Garrison in his volume of the American Nation series contents himself with the statement: "The circumstances of its origin suggest, if no more, that its introduction was simply a maneuver for political advantage in a family quarrel among the Democrats."4

*Read before the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, December, 1911. Reprinted from the Annual Reports of that association for 1911, pp. 187-195.

1 Calhoun to Coryell, Nov. 7, 1846. Jameson, "Corresp. of Calhoun," 710. 2 Von Holst "Const. Hist. of the United States" (Lalor's transl.), II, 306.

3 Von Holst, II, 15-16.

4 "Westward Extension." Amer. Nation series, XVII, 255.

The explanations of both Wilson and Garrison hint at what seems to me the true reason for the proposal of the Wilmot proviso; but they merely hint at it, and do not satisfy the legitimate curiosity of the secondary student of this remarkable movement in the history of the antislavery struggle. It is the purpose of this paper to elaborate somewhat these two explanations, by showing that the Wilmot proviso owes its origin to the breaking of the "bargain of 1844" between the Northwestern and the Southern wings of the Democratic Party.

When President Tyler revived the question of Texan annexation in the spring of 1844 the Democratic Party was to all appearances homogeneous and united. In reality, however, it was composed of diverse elements, loosely bound together, needing only the Texan issue to reveal their existence and identity. These groups were three in number-the Southern, the Northeastern, and the Northwestern. The Southern gave its chief adherence to Calhoun; the Northeastern to Van Buren; the Northwestern as yet wavered between Cass, Douglas, and Allen; and one of its most brilliant and frequent spokesmen was the "impulsive and hasty" Senator Hannegan, of Indiana.1 The Southern or Calhoun group was already aggressively and recognizedly proslavery and proslave soil; the Northern or Van Buren group was already almost fanatically antislavery and free soil, and on the verge of that union with the Liberty Party which in 1848 produced the Free Soil Party. But the Northwestern group, although antislavery and free soil, was only moderately so. It was willing to see the increase of slave soil so long as free soil kept pace with it or gained a little upon it.

It was to these three groups of Democracy that the Tyler treaty for the annexation of Texas in the spring of 1844 brought immediate puzzlement and not-distant falling out. The Southern group, in its anxiety for Texas, was more than ready to ratify the Tyler treaty, especially as its own

1 Characterization by Cass, in conversation with Polk. Quaife, "Diary of Polk," I, 268.