An anti-Free Soil cartoon shows party leaders as warlocks brewing up a poison pot. |
The history of third party movements
in this country is strewn with failure,
futility, and frustration. Yet often they set the stage for great change to come. That was certainly true of the first important third party, the Free Soilers born on August 9, 1848 at
an outdoor convention in Buffalo, New York’s Court House Park.
The party arose from the bitter debate
about the status of territories recently
obtained by conquest in the Mexican War. Southern
zealots wanted the whole territory
including parts of Texas, New Mexico (including
the future Arizona), California, and parts of the future
states of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada open to slavery without
reservation. Northern states had enough power
in Congress to block that.
Northern Democrats, always seeking
accommodation, officially advanced
the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty—letting
the citizens of the new territories
decide their status by popular election.
This outraged anti-slavery Northern Whigs
and a minority of Democrats centered
on Up State New York. These factions endorsed the Wilmot Proviso an 1846 proposed rider to an appropriation bill for the costs of negotiating a peace with
Mexico. The Proviso would have banned slavery in any territory to be
acquired from Mexico. Although it was defeated, advocates hoped to resurrect it in some form.
In the run up to the 1848 Presidential
Race the Whigs, always an unstable coalition of former anti-Jacksonians, side-stepped the issue in their platform but nominated war
hero Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana plantation and slave owner who was presumed to be sympathetic to the extension of slavery. Although it later turned out that Taylor was
not, outraged anti-slavery Whigs centered in Massachusetts and New
England began to look for
alternatives.
Meanwhile the Democrats nominated Michigan Senator Lewis Cass, the leading proponent of Popular
Sovereignty leading to a similar crisis
among anti-slavery elements of that party.
The Barn Burners were Up State New York Democrats accused of being ready to burn down the barn of the Party over the Wilmont Proviso. |
A meeting was called in Utica at which it was decided to invite
anti-slavery Whigs and members of the tiny abolitionist
Liberty Party to join the Buffalo Convention and form a new party.
Although the meeting was engineered
by the Barn Burners and supporters of the old Albany Regency, the nation’s
first state-wide political machine
which had been put together by Martin
Van Buren in the late 1820’s, the leading
strategists at the convention became Ohio’s
Salmon B, Chase, a Whig and
erstwhile maverick Democratic Senator
John P. Hale of New Hampshire. Since his election to the Senate by a surprise
coalition of minority Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats in the New Hampshire
legislature in 1847, Hale had quickly
established himself as the most voracious
opponent of slavery in the Senate.
His experience led him to have faith in the possibilities of a fusion of the anti-slavery factions of the
two established parties.
Although the Free Soilers were above
all a party devoted to stemming the expansion of slavery, they were not quite the single issue party often
portrayed in history. Their platform adopted planks shrewdly designed to appeal to former partisans of the older
parties. On the one hand they endorsed Federal spending on internal improvements, a cause dear to Henry Clay Whigs and Westerners
and on the other opposed protective tariffs, long a cornerstone of Democratic platforms. They also advanced a proposal for disposing of government land in the west by
homesteading.
The Free Soil PartyTicket of 1848--Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams. |
Still, their party platform
proclaimed, “...we inscribe on our banner, ‘Free
Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men,’ and under it we will fight on
and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.”
The convention turned for the head of its national ticket to former President Van Buren, who had
been ousted after one term by the
Whigs and William Henry Harrison who
had aped the populism of Andrew Jackson
and had smeared him, unfairly, as an
elitist fop. The aging former Red Fox of the Kinderhook was a shrewd politician and saw a possibility
of a comeback, or at least a vindication
of his tarnished reputation. But Van
Buren had been strangely mum on the subject of slavery in national office, understandable as Andrew Jackson’s
Secretary of State, second Vice President, and protégée. As President he maneuvered for the annexation of Texas, which was bitterly opposed by anti-slavery
factions.
But Van Buren announced he had always been an opponent of slavery’s
expansion in his heart. And hoping
that a ticket led by a former President
would give them instant respectability,
the convention went along.
For Vice President the convention
turned to a familiar family name—Adams.
Charles Francis Adams was the
son and grandson of Presidents. His father, John Quincy Adams was lionized
by Massachusetts Whigs as Old Man
Eloquent for his long post-presidential
service in the House of
Representatives as an outspoken
anti-slavery man. The studious young
Adams was supposed to garner support
among the Boston elite.
The new party gained some important support, notably from intellectuals like educator Horace Mann, who had filled John Quincy Adams’s House seat
after his death; journalist and editor
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.; Charles Sumner leader of Boston’s Conscience Whigs and future Senator; poet/editor
William Cullen Bryant of New York City; the Quaker Hoosier John Greenleaf Whittier; and Walt Whitman who became a Brooklyn
party leader and editor of the Brooklyn
Freeman, a party newspaper.
This Massachusetts Free Soil rally featured former anti-slavery Whig, rising Party Star, and future U.S,Senator Charles Sumner. |
The Free Soilers also ran candidates for Congress and for several state legislatures.
The party was careful to pitch itself as moderate. It did not attack slavery as a fundamental evil or advocate for its abolition where it was in force. Instead it argued that the extension of
slavery was a threat to Free Labor and that blocking expansion
would eventually cause it to “wither
away” even in the Deep South. That drew the scorn of Abolitionists like
William Lloyd Garrison who charged
that it was “white manism.” Still, a lot of moderate slavery opponents
were drawn to the party.
During the campaign it became apparent that things were not working out as hoped and planned.
Of course the party had no hope in the
South, but that region was split between Democrats supporting Cass, and
Whigs in the corner of slave holding Taylor.
But Van Buren could not shake the elitist reputation so successfully
hung on him damaging his appeal to
northern voters, particularly in the big
cities. Worse, New England Whigs deeply distrusted him as Jackson’s former
crony. Many held their noses and voted for Taylor or sat on their hands in the election.
When the votes were counted the ticket of Van Buren and Adams got a
respectable 291,501 votes and 10.1% of popular votes cast for a distant third place. They failed
to get a single electoral vote and were probably the margin of difference that gave
the close race between Taylor and Cass to the old general.
On the bright side, the party won
seats in Congress and enough state legislative seats so that in
combination with liberal Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs they were able to
elect candidates like Sumner to the Senate.
Although a small minority in both
houses, the Free Soilers in Congress became an important voice in the national debate.
After the Compromise of 1850 most Democrats drifted back to their old party.
But a stalwart few remained steadfastly with the Free Soilers.
In the election of 1852 the Party
offered John P. Hale for President and Representative
George Julian of Indiana for
Vice President. The ticket garnered half of the popular votes won by Van
Buren and just over 5% of the total.
After Northern outrage against the Kansas Nebraska Act, most remaining
Free Soilers followed leaders like
Salmon P. Chase into becoming an important
part, maybe even the backbone,
of the new Republican Party, which
in the four short years between its nominations of John C. Frémont in 1856 and Abraham
Lincoln in 1860 became the first and
only third party ever to achieve major party status.
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