His amendment made his name familiar at once throughout the length and breadth of the Republic.

No question had arisen since the slavery agitation of 1820 that was so elaborately debated.

The Wilmot Proviso absorbed the attention of Congress for a longer time than the Missouri Compromise: it produced a wider and deeper excitement in the country, and it threatened a more serious danger to the peace and integrity of the Union.

The consecration of the territory of the United States to freedom became from that day a rallying cry for every shade of anti-slavery sentiment.

If it did not go as far as the Abolitionists in their extreme and uncompromising faith might demand, it yet took a long step forward, and afforded the ground on which the battle of the giants was to be waged, and possibly decided.