The Whigs and Democrats did not support the abolition of slavery in the 1840s. The Free Soil Party was formed in 1848, pledging to ban new slave states. The Wilmot Proviso was proposed but not approved. The Free Soil Party won 16 seats in Congress and had success in state and local elections. The party dissolved in 1852 and its members joined the Republican Party, which ran on a platform to end the expansion of slavery in 1860.
There were two major political parties in the United States during the 1840s, the Whigs and the Democrats, neither of which supported the abolition of slavery. At the time, the state of Texas had been admitted to the Union as a slave state, and when war was declared against Mexico in 1846, the Northern Whigs were concerned that the lands gained from the conflict would be turned into more slave territory. The debate on this issue has consolidated the divide between North and South and fractured political parties. In 1848, a new political party was formed, called the Free Soil Party. This party’s platform included a pledge to ban the admission of new slave states.
Southern states strongly opposed any federal imposition of restrictions on slaves, arguing that such decisions should be left to the states. Northern Democrats were aware of their constituents’ concerns and believed they would lose seats in Congress unless a restriction was enforced. To accomplish this, Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed an amendment to a war appropriations bill, known as the Wilmot Proviso, that would have banned slavery in any new state formed from lands acquired from Mexico. The amendment never got Senate approval, but the debate sharpened the conflict between North and South. The issue of the slave state was extremely controversial and, as a result, was ignored by both parties in the next election.
A faction of the New York Democratic Party, known as the Barnburners, withdrew from the party in protest. These eventually united with the Liberty Party and abolitionist Whigs to form a new political group known as the Free Soil Party. The party did not support the abolition of slavery in existing states and even nominated former President Van Buren, who owned slaves, as a presidential candidate for the 1848 election. The Free Soil Party’s platform included a ban on admission of any new states slaveholder in the Union.
The Free Soil Party got its name from their slogan, “Free soil, free speech, free work, free men.” One of their primary concerns was the inability of states that did not employ forced labor to compete with a state that did not have to pay its workers. The party won only a small percentage of the presidential vote, but took away enough votes from the Democratic candidate to ensure that Zachery Taylor, the Whig candidate, won the election. Additionally, they took 16 seats in Congress.
Free Soil Party candidates did much better in state and local elections in the Midwest, especially in Ohio and Wisconsin. In Ohio, their candidates worked with state Whig congressmen and successfully abolished most of the “black laws,” discriminatory restrictions on black individuals. The Compromise of 1850, a series of pieces of legislation that included the Fugitive Slave Act and the admission of California as a free state, sapped the party’s national influence.
In 1852 the Free Soil Party again ran a presidential candidate, John Hile. This time the party won about half the votes it had won in the previous election. Due to this poor performance, the party dissolved, and in 1854 the members of the Free Soil Party were absorbed into a new group, the Republican Party. Republicans ran their first presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860 on a platform to end the expansion of slavery.
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