The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio.
The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party in 1854.
Read more about Free Soil Party: Positions, History, Legacy, Presidential Candidates, Other Noted Free Soilers
Famous quotes containing the words free, soil and/or party:
“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)
“Each of us, even the lowliest and most insignificant among us, was uprooted from his innermost existence by the almost constant volcanic upheavals visited upon our European soil and, as one of countless human beings, I can’t claim any special place for myself except that, as an Austrian, a Jew, writer, humanist and pacifist, I have always been precisely in those places where the effects of the thrusts were most violent.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“A baby changes your dinner party conversation from politics to poops.”
—Maurice Johnstone (20th century)