proportions in the counties of the northwest and west.[317] Of the older organizations, the Whig party seemed less affected, Taylor having received 53,047 votes, an increase of 7,519 over the Whig vote of 1844.  The Democratic candidate, Cass, received only 56,300, an absolute decrease of 1,620.  This was both an absolute and a relative decline, for the total voting population had increased by 24,459.  Presumptive evidence points to a wholesale desertion of the party by men of strong anti-slavery convictions.  Whither they had gone—­whether into the ranks of Whigs or Free-Soilers,—­concerned Democratic leaders less than the palpable fact that they had gone somewhere.

At the close of this eventful year, the political situation in Illinois was without precedent.  To offset Democratic losses in the presidential election, there were, to be sure, the usual Democratic triumphs in State and district elections.  But the composition of the legislature was peculiar.  On the vote for Speaker of the House, the Democrats showed a handsome majority:  there was no sign of a third party vote.  A few days later the following resolution was carried by a vote which threw the Democratic ranks into confusion:  “That our senators in Congress be instructed, and our representatives requested, to use all honorable means in their power, to procure the enactment of such laws by Congress for the government of the countries and territories of the United States, acquired by the treaty of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement, with the republic of Mexico, concluded February 2, A.D. 1848; as shall contain the express declaration, that there shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in said territories, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."[318]

At least fifteen representatives of what had hitherto been Democratic constituencies, had combined with the Whigs to embarrass the Democratic delegation at Washington.[319] Their expectation seems to have been that they could thus force Senator Douglas to resign his seat, for he had been an uncompromising opponent of the Wilmot Proviso.  Free-Soilers, Whigs, and Northern Democrats with anti-slavery leanings had voted for the instructions; only the Democrats from the southern counties voted solidly to sustain the Illinois delegation in its opposition to the Proviso.[320] While not a strict sectional vote, it showed plainly enough the rift in the Democratic party.  A disruptive issue had been raised.  For the moment a re-alignment of parties on geographical lines seemed imminent.  This was precisely the trend in national politics at this moment.

There was a traditional remedy for this sectional malady—­compromise.  It was an Illinois senator, himself a slave-owner, who had proposed the original Missouri proviso.  Senator Douglas had repeatedly proposed to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, in the same spirit in which compromise had been offered in 1820, but the essential conditions for a compromise on this basis were now wanting.