David Wilmot, American politician, sponsor of Wilmot Proviso (born 1814)

David Wilmot was an American politician and judge who represented Pennsylvania in the United States House of Representatives from 1845 to 1851 and in the United States Senate from 1861 to 1863. In 1863, president Abraham Lincoln appointed Wilmot to the Court of Claims, where he served until his death in 1868. He is best known for being the prime sponsor and eponym of the Wilmot Proviso, a failed legislative proposal to ban the expansion of slavery into western territories gained in the Mexican Cession. A Northern Democrat when he introduced and supported the Proviso, he subsequently became a notable member of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party. Wilmot later founded the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.