Wilmot Proviso
The previous year, firebrand states rights advocate John C. Calhoun had urged that a preliminary bipartisan Southern convention be held in Mississippi to address the growing issue of the Federal government placing limits on the growth of slavery. The delegates to the October 1, 1849, Mississippi Convention denounced the controversial Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban slavery in the Mexican Cession, the land taken from Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War. and the slaveholding states agreed to send delegates to Nashville to define a resistance strategy in the face of perceived Northern aggression. Mississippi's legislature appropriated $20,000 for the expenses of their Nashville delegates and $200,000 for any "necessary measures for protecting the state ... in the event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso."