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The Free Soil Movement

See also Free soil movement.

Frederick Douglas noted, "The cry of Free Man was raised, not for the extension of liberty to the black man, but for the protection of the liberty of the white."

The assumptions, tastes, and cultural aims of the reformers of the thirties and forties anticipated the political and ideological ferment of the 1850s. A surge of working class Irish and German Catholic immigration provoked reactions among many Northern Whigs, as well as Democrats. But nativism and anti-slavery were not the only strong forces in the 1850s. Along with anti-slavery, a powerful temperance movement emerged, achieving the adoption in Maine in 1851 of a law against the sale of liquor.

In the Northwest, although farm tenancy was increasing, the number of farmers was still double that of farm laborers and tenants. Moreover, although the expansion of the factory system was undermining the economic independence of the small craftsman and artisan, industry in this region, still one largely of small towns, was still concentrated in small-scale enterprises. Arguably, social mobility was on the verge of contracting in the urban centers of the North, but long-cherished ideas of opportunity, "honest industry," and "toil" were at least close enough in time to lend plausibility to the free labor ideology.

In the rural and small-town North, the picture of Northern society (framed by the ethos of "free labor") corresponded to a large degree with reality. Propelled by advancements in transportation and communication, especially steam navigation, railroads, and telegraphs, the two decades before the Civil War saw the rapid expansion of the Northwest - a rapidly expanding region of free farmers. Combined with the rise of Northeastern and export markets for their products, the social standing of farmers in the region substantially improved. The small towns and villages that emerged as the Republican Party's heartland showed every sign of vigorous expansion. Their vision for an ideal society was of small-scale capitalism, with white American laborers entitled to the chance of upward mobility opportunities for advancement, rights to own property, and to control their own labor. Free-soilers demanded that slave labor and the plantation system should be excluded from the Western plains to guarantee the predominance there of the free farmer and to prevent any extension of the political power of the slaveholders.

Opposition to the 1847 Wilmot Proviso helped to consolidate the "free-soil" forces. Next year, Radical New York Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs held a convention at Buffalo, New York in August, forming the Free-Soil party. The party supports former president Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams for president and vice president, respectively. The party opposes the expansion of slavery in newly acquired territories such as Oregon and the ceded Mexican territory.

Relating Northern and Southern positions on slavery to basic differences in labor systems, but insisting on the role of culture and ideology in coloring these differences, Eric Foner's groundbreaking Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (1970) went beyond the economic determinism of Charles Beard (a leading historian of the period in the 1930s). Foner emphasized the importance of free labor ideology to Northern opponents of slavery, pointing out that the moral concerns of the abolitionists were not the dominant sentiments in the North. Foner demonstrated that most Northerners (including Lincoln) opposed slavery largely because they feared it might spread to the North and threaten the position of free white laborers.

In this sense, Republican radicals and the abolitionists were able to unleash powerful emotions in the North through a broader commitment to "free labor" principles. The "Slave Power" idea had a far greater appeal to Northern self-interest than arguments based on the plight of black slaves in the South. As Frederick Douglas noted, "The cry of Free Man was raised, not for the extension of liberty to the black man, but for the protection of the liberty of the white."