BLUE, THE
FREE SOILERS: THIRD PARTY POLITICS, 1848-54, at 1 (1973).
In general, Fogel identifies with the abolitionists--without discriminating the different kinds of abolitionists or, more generally, of
free soilers (like Lincoln), who were not abolitionists.
While disunities do exist (tenements, ethic tensions, and mistreated industrial workers), we see no
Free Soilers, Workingman's organizations, Know Nothings, or anti-Abolitionist sentiment.
Such arguments had been aired in years past; the General Court had debated the ten-hour issue extensively in preceding sessions but bills were always defeated when enough Democrats and
Free Soilers joined a united Whig opposition.
From the early 1840s until 1857, they shifted from Liberty men to
Free Soilers to Republicans experiencing the ups and downs of the antislavery movement; they failed to defeat the Haun exclusion law of 1851, yet delivered the state five years later to presidential candidate John C.
Many of New York's Democrats defected to the
Free Soilers, enough to throw New York to the Republicans and thus give Zachary Taylor the thirty-six electoral votes sufficient to win him the presidency.
He gained support from fellow California settlers and former
free soilers who felt that government should promote a "civilized," free society in the West.
He carried guns and weapons to the
Free Soilers who were emigrating to the Kansas Territory in the 1850s.
Those opposed to slavery's movement into the territories--lumping together Barnburners,
Free Soilers, Liberty Party people, and Republicans--often did not drag emancipation into their advocacy.
Yet as the nation cleaved over the issue of chattel slavery, Missourians found themselves squarely in two lines of fire, one from the abolitionists who aimed at slaveholders in general and another from the
Free Soilers who targeted slaveholding Westerners directly.
One is the civilization of freedom and the other is the civilization of aristocracy, or slavery."(3) Despite the obvious resemblance in language, few historians of Illinois and the Midwest have highlighted the similarities between the rhetoric that shaped the political discourse in Illinois during the 1820s and the language employed by
Free Soilers and Republicans during the political controversies of the 1840s and 1850s.(4)
Before 1856 these representatives were Democrats, Whigs, and
Free Soilers. After 1856 they were overwhelmingly Republicans.
