The United States Of America

The Constitution And Democracy

Free-Soil Party
Free-Soil Party, a third party influential in the United States from1848 to 1854. Its main objective was to prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories acquired from Mexico. The party evolved from antislavery and otherwise discontented elements in the Democratic and Whig parties. It was eclipsed in the early 1850's by the new Republican Party, which incorporated free soil goals.

Free soil became a political movement and slogan in the 1840's. Abolitionists in the North had already stirred antislavery sentiment, and government plans for annexing Texas created fears that this territory might enter the Union cut up into as many as six slave states. These fears were reflected in the Wilmot Proviso of 1846. The achievement of the small abolitionist Liberty party in defeating Henry Clay's presidential aspirations in 1844 demonstrated that political abolitionism could be effective. 

Led by Salmon P. Chase and John P. Hale, free-soilers, abolitionists, and others convened in Buffalo, N.Y., in August 1848 to set up a broadly based party. Among those present were discontented New York Democrats known as Barnburners,” headed by former President Martin VAN BUREN , who became the convention's presidential nominee. Van Buren polled 291,616 votes in November; more important, the Free Soil party elected nine congressmen. The Compromise of 1850 created more ardent free-soilers, who were outraged by its fugitive slave provision and were generally fearful of the expansion of slavery westward. Such increasing partisanship, however, did not help the Free Soil party itself. Hale, its presidential candidate in 1852, polled only 156,297 votes.

By 1854 the crisis over slavery in the territories had reached proportions beyond the resources of the party, and free-soilers flocked to the Republican party. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the duel over whether Kansas was to be a free or a slave state turned the North irrevocably toward free soil. Finally, the Dred Scott Case of 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in effect, that slavery could not be constitutionally restricted to the Southern states, made abolitionists out of most free-soilers and laid the ground for a final confrontation with the slaveholders.

Louis Filler
Antioch College