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The Free Soil Party was founded August 9-10, 1848, in Buffalo, New York. It included members of the “Conscience Whigs” Party, Democrats and members of the Liberty Party , which preceded it. The motto was, “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men.” It was a third party, whose main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the Western territories acquired after the war with Mexico.
The party argued that free men on free soil was a morally and economically superior system to slavery. The party agreed with the Wilmot Proviso, and tried to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans. Members felt it would be impossible for the government to end slavery where it already existed, but wanted to prevent slavery from extending into new territories.
The party was active from 1848 to 1852. The party’s support came largely from the areas of upstate New York. The 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed the long-standing Missouri Compromise and outraged many Northerners, contributing to the collapse of the Whigs and spurring the creation of a new, broad-based anti-slavery party known as the Republican Party. Most Free Soilers joined the Republican Party.
The Free Soil Party sent two senators and fourteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives to the Thirty-First congress in 1849.
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