Letters such as this one were written by the South in protest of the Wilmot Proviso.
In August of 1846, Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania posed an addition to the was appropriations bill. Appropriations are the funds utilized to pay for a war. In his proposition, Wilmot suggested that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist" in any territory obtained from Mexico. Wilmot was a member of a group of Northern Democrats who believed James K. Polk was "pro-Southern." The Wilmot Proviso was an act to try to put a halt to the spread of slavery.
The result of the Wilmot Proviso was a deeper split between the states, specifically the regions of North and South. While the North claimed the new territories were a property of all the states because they themselves were not yet states, the Southern states claimed that the new territory was open to the spread of slavery.
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