AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED 29 MAY 1854, AT THE EXECUTIVE MANSION IN HARRISBURG, TO VICTOR PIOLETT, PROMINENT PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRAT, CONCERNING THE RISE OF THE FREE SOIL AND REPUBLICAN PARTY, THE KANSAS - NEBRASKA ACT, AND BIGLER'S ELECTORAL CHANCES

[Harrisburg, 1854. Octavo sheet, folded to four pages, each page filled with Bigler's writing. "(Private)" written at the upper margin of the first page. Very Good with light foxing.

Democratic Governor Bigler aligned himself with his southern colleagues on issues of Slavery, Kansas, and opposition to the nascent Free Soil and Republican Parties. In 1855, the Republican and former Whig James Pollock defeated Bigler's attempted re-election in a landslide. Bigler's Letter is an interesting expression of a Pennsylvania Doughface's dilemma when faced with a rising tide of opposition to the extension of Slavery.
Bigler is elated that early efforts of his opponents appear to have met with failure. "The idea of Wilmot's Convention" has failed. "The friends of Pollock did their utmost to secure the nomination for him. Failing in this, they then attempted to prevent a nomination of any kind." In 1846 Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania had proposed a bill prohibiting Slavery in the Mexican Cession. Many Northern Democrats and Whigs supported it, and the Wilmot Proviso became a rallying point for the new Republican Party, formed in 1854.
Opposition to the Kansas - Nebraska Act, which became law one day after the date of Bigler's Letter, fueled the rise of anti-slavery agitation. Bigler explains rather cryptically that "If slavery can not extend, the South is to lose." However, he remarks that, rather than extend slavery north, "we intend to send it farther South," an idea that certainly resonated with southern expansionists who sought to annex Cuba and Central America as a southern empire for slavery.