Free Soil and the Rise of the Republican Party

Abstract

This chapter covers the rise of the Free-Soil and Republican Parties in the 1850s. While historians have given much scholarly attention to the ideology of the Republicans, citing their promotion of “free labor” and hostility toward the “slave power,” this chapter uncovers the agrarian nature of the Republican appeal. Such an understanding is critical given how popular the Republicans were with farmers. The party believed that civilization and loyalty in the West could only be secured by societies of small farmers practicing scientific land management. Yeomen farmers, Republicans argued, formed the strongest attachments to the Union. The land-use practices of slaveholders served as a foil to the northern ideal. Slave plantations exhausted the soil and caused nature to wither and decay. The slave South’s low literacy rates, barbaric habits, dirty buildings, and lack of economic opportunity reflected its poor treatment of farmland. The immense landholdings produced an aristocracy threatening to the Union. Politicians warned that if permitted in the West, large slave plantations would exhaust the soil, ruining land better utilized by small farmers.