The Free-Soilers were a small but influential political party that came into existence in 1847-48 and opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. Democratic factionalism in a single state created the new Free-Soil Party. The New York Democratic Party represented a complex coalition particularly sensitive to shifts in national, state, and local developments. One of the most important of the northern state organizations, it achieved direct national importance with the 1836 election of Martin Van BuREN, but his unwillingness to cooperate in the admission of Texas to the Union led to his abandonment by the party’s southern wing in 1840 and its fierce hostility to him in 1844. On a statewide level, the party divided between “Hunkers” and “Barnburners,” with whom Van Buren was identified. When the tenant-farmer and rural vote shifted against the Democrats, Barnburners blamed the Hunkers. Barnburners also opposed President James K. Polk’s use of patronage to secure southern control of the national party through Hunker cooperation.
The Wilmot Proviso was the cause of much debate. Introduced by David Wilmot—a Democrat from Pennsyl-vania—the proviso stated that the institution of slavery was forbidden in territories acquired from Mexico. The Democratic state convention at Syracuse on September 29, 1847, split over adopting the Wilmot Proviso, as the Barnburners walked out. The Hunkers met January 26, 1848, at Albany while the Barnburners held their own convention on February 16 at Utica. Both sent delegations to the May national convention at Baltimore. The conflict over which New York delegation should be seated split the party nationally. In the end, the Barnburners withdrew, calling another national convention for Utica, June 22. Delegations from Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts and Connecticut joined the Barnburners there to nominate Van Buren. The convention then called for another national convention to unite the country on a “free-soil” basis.
There were already several such moves underway. A similar convention had already been called by the People’s Convention of Friends of Free Territory, which met in Columbus, Ohio, on June 20. The Whig Party’s nomination of Zachary Taylor at their convention on June 7 led to the departure of the “Conscience Whigs,” which itself consisted of two factions, and the Liberty Party with its National Reform allies.
The Buffalo convention of August 9 was bedlam, more like a public mass meeting than a delegated convention. Managed by the Barnburners, a Committee of Conference transacted all the business while the majority sat in a big tent to hear speeches. The platform pledged to discourage slavery, abolish it where possible (e. g., in the District of Columbia), prohibit its extension, guarantee retrenchment, provide cheap postage, abolish unnecessary offices, create more elective offices, promote internal improvements, secure a homestead law, pay the public debt, and levy a tariff for revenue. Conscience Whigs generally concurred, although they had little confidence in the Barnburner Democrats who seemed to see the movement primarily as a means to put the Democrats back on the right track.
The party had momentous importance for the antislavery movement. Noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison thought the party was a good beginning toward a loftier goal, “a party for keeping Free-Soil and not for setting men free.” Other political abolitionists and National Reformers around Gerrit Smith favored retaining the Liberty Party. Still, most abolitionists, including the prominent black spokesman Frederick Douglass, supported the party of “Free Soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”
The new party threatened components of both the existing parties. Whig statesman Daniel Webster called them “Free Spoilers” and the National Intelligencer
This cartoon depicting the Free-Soil controversy lays on the Democrats the major blame for violence perpetrated against antislavery settlers in Kansas. (Hulton/Archive)
Denounced their hypocrisy and insincerity as a device for Van Buren’s revenge. The Democratic Washington Union called the party simply a gathering of Whig Abolitionists. Free-Soilers in the “Old Northwest” demonstrated both the values and pitfalls of coalition politics. Michigan Free-Soilers rallied Whigs and others hostile to Democratic leader Lewis Cass, while Ohio Free-Soilers worked with the Democrats who declared for free territory. In the 1848 election, Van Buren polled 291,616 votes, and the Free-Soil party elected 14 congressmen and two senators.
In Massachusetts, Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner engineered an understanding of sorts between the Free-Soilers and the Democrats who were desperate to overthrow the Whig dominance in the state. By 1850, the tentative coalition had won a majority in the legislature in which Free-Soilers agreed to leave the state offices to the Democrats in return for the Senate. As a result, Sumner joined the growing antislavery contingent in Washington.
In some ways, the party seemed to lose much in the East after the elections, as the New York Barnburners soon drifted back into the Democratic Party. However, the two major parties rallied to the Compromise of 1850 and its new fugitive-slave provision, repudiating some of its state and local professions of sympathy for Free-Soil.
While the process lost the party politicians, it radicalized its electoral base, particularly in the Old Northwest. The unrepentant Free-Soilers attacked these policies. Former Democrats like Preston King and David Wilmot and former Whigs like Giddings, Henry Wilson, and Charles F. Adams would not return to their old parties. An 1851 Cleveland, Ohio, meeting of the remaining leaders called a national Free-Soil Democratic Convention to meet August 11, 1852, at Pittsburgh. Under Giddings, this enthusiastic convention proclaimed themselves “Free-Soil Democrats,” “Independent Democrats,” or, most commonly “Free Democrats.” It adopted a platform based on the 1848 Buffalo platform, but added planks condemning the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Bill, denouncing South Carolina’s seamen laws, demanding recognition of Haiti, and stating that it was the duty of the U. S. government to protest against European monarchical intervention in countries trying to establish republican governments. The party nominated a presidential ticket of John P. Hale of New Hampshire and George W. Julian of Indiana as his running mate. In the 1852 election, the ticket polled only 156,297 votes, but these were far more radical than the earlier Free-Soil Party votes.
The party disappeared with the 1854 crisis over Kansas and the emergence of the new Republican Party.
Further reading: Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).
—Richard L. Friedline
World History
