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The Free Soil Party, also called the Free Democratic Party or the Free Democracy, [3] was a political party in the United States from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was focused on opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States .
From his seat in the Senate, Chase emerged as one of the leaders of the Free Soil Party. In 1854, during the vitriolic debates over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he penned the Appeal of the Independent Democrats and helped to arrange the fusion of the Free Soilers with other opponents of the Kansas–Nebraska Act to form the Republican ...
In pointed contrast to the more moderate position staked out by the Free Soilers, they declared all proslavery laws and constitutions to be null and void and asserted the power and obligation of the United States Congress to abolish slavery. They endorsed the free-produce movement and the recent escape attempt by 77 enslaved people in ...
The Free Soil Party first raised this warning in 1848, arguing that the annexation of Texas as a slave state was a terrible mistake. The Free Soilers' rhetoric was taken up by the Republican party as it emerged in 1854.
The debates took the form of arguments over the powers of Congress rather than the merits of slavery. The result was the so-called "Free Soil Movement." Free-soilers believed that slavery was dangerous because of what it did to whites. The "peculiar institution" ensured that elites controlled most of the land, property, and capital in the South ...
American free-soilers, recently angered by the strengthened Fugitive Slave Law (passed as part of the Compromise of 1850 and requiring officials of free states to cooperate in the return of slaves), decried as unconstitutional what Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune labeled "The Manifesto of the Brigands."
In the Senate, 14 Whigs, 14 Democrats, and 12 Free-Soilers were elected. In the House, 175 Whigs, 108 Democrats, and 113 Free-Soilers were elected. [1] Although the Democratic-Free Soil coalition held a clear majority in each house, some Democratic legislators voiced their opposition to the election of the radical abolitionist Sumner.
By 1848 Wilmot was thoroughly identified as a Free Soiler, but, like many other Free Soilers, he did not oppose the expansion of slavery based on a legal rejection of the short-term existence of the institution itself, but rather because he felt slavery was detrimental to the interests of whites.