Free Soil Party

In this 1850 political cartoon, the artist attacks abolitionist, Free Soil, and other such interests of 1850 as dangers to the Union.

The Free Soil Party was, for a short duration, a political party in the United States. It was active in the 1848 and 1852 president elections, and in some state elections. It got lots of its strength from New York. Most of the important party members were former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was stopping slavery from spreading into the western lands, arguing that free men on free soil had a morally and economically better system than slavery. Also, many workers feared that slave labor would take away work for white workers.

The party membership was largely taken over by the Republican Party in 1854.

Further reading

• Frederick J. Blue; Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics 1987
• Frederick J. Blue. The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-54 (1973)
• Martin Duberman; Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1886 1968.
• Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1995). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195094972.
• T. C. Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (New York, 1897)
• 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

Free Soil Party Media

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  James G. Birney was the two-time presidential nominee of the Liberty Party, a forerunner of the Free Soil Party.

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  Free Soilers sought to exclude slavery from the Mexican Cession (red), which was acquired from Mexico in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

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  The party nominated former President Martin Van Buren for president in the 1848 presidential election.

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  Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was one of the most prominent leaders of the Free Soil Party.

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  After the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, Free Soilers joined with other groups to form the Republican Party, which nominated political neophyte John C. Frémont for president in 1856.

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  Free Soil performance in the 1848 election; darker shades of green indicate greater support

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  Frederick Douglass served as the secretary of the 1852 Free Soil National Convention.

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  Martin Van Buren daguerreotype by Mathew Brady circa 1849 - edit 1 (cropped)

Other websites

• The Free Soil Banner. digitallibrary.imcpl.org. Retrieved 6 April 2010.