Other changes were afoot in the antislavery movement as the persistence of its organizers was beginning to have an impact on federal legislators. Two and a half years after the gag rule on antislavery petitions in Congress was lifted, the Wilmot Proviso, outlawing slavery in territories acquired through the Mexican-American War, was attached to several bills in the House of Representatives. The proviso, which originated with Ohio Democratic Representative Jacob Brinkerhoff but was named after Pennsylvania Democratic Representative David Wilmot, who had better standing in Congress, passed the House in 1847 but was tabled in the Senate. The introduction of and debate surrounding the proviso may have contributed to the Liberty Party’s decline that year, as many saw the major parties beginning to absorb elements of the abolitionist movement’s demands. However, the proviso also raised questions among those committed to the total and immediate abolition of slavery. As it turns out, the bill received few votes in 1848, the same year in which the Liberty Party divided into several factions. One faction nominated John P. Hale, a former Democratic congressman from Dover, New Hampshire, for president, while two other groups formally split from the party and created the Industrial Congress and the Liberty League. The League affirmed Gerrit Smith’s leadership role among political abolitionists by making him the head of their organization. Smith was then nominated for president by the League under the newly formed National Liberty Party, whose platform remained focused on immediate abolition.70 However, many within the old Liberty ranks were reconsidering the political benefits of an independent party centered on abolishing slavery and advancing civil and political rights for African Americans. Perhaps it was time to go broader now that the party had helped to make the restriction of slavery a national political issue.
Some political abolitionists began looking toward building coalitions with disaffected members of the major parties with whom common ground could be shared in a united front to restrict the expansion of slavery in the nation. During the 1840s, the Liberty Party’s platforms, largely written by Salmon P. Chase, articulated a unique antislavery appeal that included the idea that slavery was “degrading” and “dishonoring” workers (Chase also attacked slavery for impoverishing the South and denying workers the right to an education). A point of convergence would emerge in the late 1840s between those seeking to stop the encroachment of slavery in the western territories as part of the abolitionist struggle and those seeking the same for reasons that would not “degrade” the labor of free men with slave-labor competition. The issue of “free soil” would dominate independent politics over the next decade. It took initial organizational form during the summer of 1848, when disaffected elements of the two major parties, in combination with elements of the Liberty Party and previously nonpolitical abolitionists, gathered in upstate New York and founded the Free Soil Party.71
A group within the Liberty Party led by Chase, Gamaliel Bailey, and Henry B. Stanton pushed for electoral coalition with Democrats and Whigs opposed to the westward expansion of slavery. In a series of intraparty fights, the procoalition forces outmaneuvered other factions within the Liberty Party and effectively merged the larger part of the party with antiextensionist Whigs and “Barnburner” Democrats (the antiextensionist wing of the New York State party, led by former president Martin Van Buren). Black and white delegates met in Buffalo, New York, on August 9, 1848, where they established the Free Soil Party and its principle of antiextension. They nominated Van Buren for president and Charles Francis Adams, the son of John Quincy Adams, for vice president. The party’s platform stated that (1) slavery could not be permitted outside of the currently established states; (2) slavery should be excluded from the District of Columbia; and (3) fugitive slaves were entitled to trial by jury in whichever state they were caught. Although the new party dropped the Liberty Party’s support for the immediate abolition of slavery, for many it also offered the chance to expand antislavery influence in the electoral arena.72
African Americans were divided over whether to support the Free Soil Party. Black delegates and other “colored gentlemen” attended the party’s first national convention, held in Buffalo. Among the delegates were Frederick Douglass, who received three roaring cheers when his presence was acknowledged from the podium, along with Liberty veterans Charles L. Remond, Henry Highland Garnet, and Samuel Ringgold Ward. While Douglass, Garnet, and Ward each addressed the convention, none received committee positions. African Americans interested in continuing to develop an independent electoral course in the abolitionist cause would debate in both the black press and at statewide conventions what to do in the 1848 election. The question was which party to support: the National Liberty Party or the Free Soil Party. The National Liberty Party, which was like the old Liberty Party only with a newer and larger network, advocated the immediate abolition of slavery, as well as the full protection of black civil and political rights. Meanwhile, the Free Soil Party did not advocate abolition but would place a limit on its extension.
While Douglass endorsed the National Liberty Party, Samuel Ringgold Ward saw important coalition-building possibilities in supporting the Free Soil Party. At the end of the Free Soil national convention, Ward handed Douglass his “Address to the Four Thousand Colored Voters of the State of New York,” in which Ward urged black voters to support the Free Soil ticket as part of a larger strategy for black political empowerment. Douglass’s response was as logical as it was unequivocal in his support for the National Liberty Party: “Vote against the extension of slavery, by voting against its existence.”73 Six weeks later, Douglass, along with Henry Bibb (who had also attended the Free Soil Party convention) and several other African Americans, issued “An Address to the Colored People” in the North Star, urging black voters not to support the Free Soil Party, because it was not antislavery, only antiextension. The debate continued.
In September of 1848, a Colored Convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio, where Douglass persuaded delegates to vote down a resolution endorsing the Free Soil Party. But neither would delegates support Douglass’s recommendation for the National Liberty Party. Martin R. Delany, who proposed the Free Soil resolution, had helped Douglass launch the North Star the year before. In later years Delany became the leading proponent of a new strain in black politics: black nationalism. What ultimately did pass at the convention in Cleveland was a resolution favoring the principles of the Free Soil Party, but not the party itself (a move reminiscent of Theodore Wright’s endorsement four years earlier of the principles of the Liberty Party, but not the party). To some delegates, there was a “higher standard” of equal rights to which they adhered—in other words, the black convention remained unsure of which way to go. Instead of taking a firm position on which party to support in the 1848 election, the convention probably created more confusion among black voters looking for political direction that year. Over the next months, African Americans continued to debate the benefits of the Free Soil Party among themselves. As Wesley notes, multiple references to the party appeared in black newspapers, as did notices of its upcoming meetings.74
The 1848 election proved confusing. While the “free” in the Free Soil Party’s slogan, “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men,” strongly appealed to African Americans, the freedom that the party advocated was meant mostly, if not exclusively, for white men. African Americans had to decide if they would be willing to support a party the majority of whose members were not pro-black, but pro-white, and some of whom were even anti-black. White workers in the North were alarmed by the idea of competition with free black labor, fearing that if slavery were abolished, it would result in a flood of emancipated slaves into the North. Pointing to the depressed conditions of Southern white workers, they concluded that black workers, being more desperate and therefore more willing to work for lower wages, would depress the wages of Northern white workers. On the other hand, they were also afraid that they would be unable to compete with slave labor if slavery were extended to the new territories. There was also the question of social status. Northern white workers abhorred the idea of working alongside slaves; it would “degrade” them, and not just financially.75
Despite