page_title: Origins of the American Civil War
section_title: "Free soil" movement
hierarchical_section_title: Origins of the American Civil War / Abolitionism / "Free soil" movement
caption_attribution_description: Frederick Douglass portrait
context_page_description: Historians debating the origins of the American Civil War focus on the reasons why seven Southern states declared their secession from the United States, why they united to form the Confederate States of America, and why the North refused to let them go. While virtually all historians in the 21st century agree that conflicts over slavery caused the war, they disagree sharply regarding which kinds of conflict—ideological, economic, political, or social—were most important.
  The primary catalyst for secession was slavery, most immediately the political battle over the right of Southerners to bring slavery into western territory that had hitherto been free under the terms of the Missouri Compromise or while part of Mexico. Initially, states entering the Union had alternated between slave and free states, keeping a sectional balance in the Senate, while free states outstripped slave states in population and in the House of Representatives. Another factor for secession and the formation of the Confederacy, was white Southern nationalism. The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism.
context_section_description: Opposition to the 1847 Wilmot Proviso helped to consolidate the "free-soil" forces. In 1848 Radical New York Democrats known as Barnburners, members of the Liberty Party, and anti-slavery Whigs formed the Free-Soil Party. The party supported former President Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams Sr. for President and Vice President. The party opposed the expansion of slavery into territories where it had not yet existed, such as Oregon and the ceded Mexican territory. It had the effect of dividing the Democratic Party in the North, especially in areas of Yankee settlement.
  Eric Foner in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970) emphasized the importance of free labor ideology to Northern opponents of slavery, pointing out that the moral concerns of the abolitionists were not necessarily the dominant sentiments in the North. Many Northerners (including Lincoln) opposed slavery also because they feared that rich slave owners would buy up the best lands and block opportunity for free white farmers using family and hired labor. Free Soilers joined the Republican party in 1854, with their appeal to powerful demands in the North through a broader commitment to "free labor" principles. Fear of the "Slave Power" had a far greater appeal to Northern self-interest than did abolitionist arguments based on the plight of black slaves in the South.
caption: Abolitionist Frederick Douglass
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