Part 1 Slavery or Freedom In the West

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson was in his late 70’s. The former president had vowed “never to write, talk or even think of politics.” Still he voiced alarm when he heard about a fierce debate going on in Congress.

“In the gloomiest moment of the revolutionary war, I never had any fears equal to what I feel from this source…We have a wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.” The “wolf” was the issue of slavery. Jefferson feared that the bitter quarrel would tear the country apart.

Louisiana was the first state carved out of the Louisiana Purchase. Slavery was well established there, so not many people protested it coming in as a slave state. When Missouri asked to join the United States a few years later, there was an uproar.

There were 11 slave and 11 free states. If Missouri came into the Union, the balance would be upset. After many months, Senator Henry Clay proposed the Missouri Compromise. Missouri would come in as a slave state, and Maine would come in as a free state. An imaginary line was drawn on the southern border of Missouri. Slavery was permitted south of that line.

The Missouri Compromise applied only to lands from the Louisiana Purchase. Arguments started about what to do with land from the Mexican Cession. A bill called the Wilmot Proviso called for banning slavery in the region, but Southerners in the Senate were able to defeat it.

By the mid 1800’s, sectionalism was starting to split the country apart. Sectionalism is loyalty to a state or a region rather than the whole country. The South saw the North as a threat to their way of life. Many Northerners saw the South as a foreign country where American rights and liberties did not exist.

Northern abolitionists demanded that slavery should be banned, and that it was morally wrong. By the late 1840’s, many northerners agreed. Southerners felt slavery should be allowed everywhere, and that escaped slaves should be returned to the South. Many Southerners who didn’t even own slaves agreed with these ideas.

Some people who were moderate (trying to see both sides of an issue) suggested that the Missouri Compromise line should be extended to the ocean. Other moderates said that popular sovereignty should be used to decide the slavery question in new regions. Popular sovereignty is when people decide an issue by voting on it.

The debate over slavery led to the birth of a new political party. Many Northerners in both the Whig and the Democratic parties did oppose the spread of slavery. However, neither party could take a strong stand for fear of losing support in the South.

In 1848, antislavery people from both parties met in Buffalo, New York to form the Free Soil Party. Their slogan was: “Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.” Their main goal was to stop slavery from spreading any further. Only a few wanted to totally end slavery in the United States.

In this election, the Free Soilers chose former president Martin Van Buren. The Democrats chose Lewis Cass. The Whigs chose Zachary Taylor, a hero from the war with Mexico. Van Buren wanted to ban slavery in the new regions. Cass wanted to use popular sovereignty. Taylor was slave owner from the south.

Zachary Taylor won the election. However, the Free Soil candidate won 10% of the vote, and 13 Free Soilers were elected to Congress. In the Election of 1848, The Free Soil Party had a great showing for a party that was only 3 months old. This election showed that slavery was definitely a national issue.