The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-1854 (review)

64CIVIL WAR HISTORY polarize opinion in the United States on the antislavery question" (p. 27). He maintains that the slave trade had always been a profitable form of enterprise, and he brings forward without caveat Joseph Sturge's claim that slavers made a profit of 180 per cent on each slaving voyage. Each book makes an important contribution to die impressive body of recent scholarship on antislavery. Each is offered in an acceptable literary style, Temperley employing a muscular prose and Fladeland occasionally turning awkward and stereotyped phrases. The footnotes are exactly where they ought to be, for which the publishers are to be thanked and commended. James A. Rawley University of Nebraska—Lincoln The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-1854. By Frederick J. Blue, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973. Pp. xii, 350. $10.95.) The history of the Free Soil party, the first major attempt to organize the growing northern antislavery sentiment of the 1840's into an effective political force, is a largely neglected chapter in the antebellum era. Frederick J. Blue has now provided the first comprehensive history of the party from its birth in the campaign of 1848 to its absorption into the Republican party in 1854. The Free Soil party was the direct result of the refusal of either the Democratic or Whig Conventions in 1848 to nominate acceptable antislavery candidates or to endorse the Wilmot Proviso. In response, dissatisfied Whigs and Democrats joined with former Liberty party men in the summer of 1848 to form a new party committed to no further extension of slavery and no further concessions to Southern slave interests. As Blue analyses the party's fate, it rested throughout on a "unique blending of anti-extension principle and political expediency." Although most of its members shared the anti-extension goal, many also had a purely political motive. Indeed, a major source of the Free Soil strength in 1848, arose from the adherence to and leadership of the party by New York Barnburners whose motivation sprang mainly from a hope that their Free Soil role in 1848 would aid in recapturing control of the New York Democratic party from the Hunker faction. Similarly, many Conscience Whigs in Massachusetts saw the new party as an instrument to displace the cotton manufacturing element which was so influential in the Whig party. Consequently these peoples had no real intention or desire for the new party to continue after the 1848 election, but sought to return with increased influence to their respective traditional parties in the two-party structure. In 1848 the Free Soil party succeeded in making its opposition to the extension of slavery the major focus of the Presidential campaign. It won 10 per cent of the national Presidential vote and several Con- BOOK REVIEWS65 gressional and state posts; yet it rapidly lost strength in succeeding elections. Without a well established national organization and with little to say about local or state issues, many members made no concerted effort to perpetuate the party as a viable third party, but advocated coalition or fusion with one of the major parties as the best means to obtain their anti-extension ends. Indeed as Blue recounts this period, it was not only the Van Bürens, but more dedicated antislavery party leaders, such as Salmon Chase of Ohio, Henry Wilson and Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts who often appeared more interested in advancing their own personal and selfish political ambitions than in promoting the unity of the antislavery cause. Yet not all Free Soilers were willing to compromise their principles. Their small group in Congress fought valiantly to resist the Compromise of 1850 which in their minds was a further surrender to slavery, not a final settlement of the sectional issue. By 1853 the party was regaining some strength as the demise of die Whig party became imminent . Blue's work is essentially a leadership study with emphasis on the national phase of the party's history, and events in Ohio, New York and Massachusetts, which influenced the party's strength, although the party's efforts in the other northern states receive attention. The author also examines the motivation of antislavery men, such as...