Talk:Free Soil Party

I removed "manifest destiny" from the ideology field of the article infobox, because bellicose advocates for aggressive expansion of the territory of the United states did not congregate in the Free Soil Party (in fact, the Free Soil Party contained many opponents of the Mexican war). The great majority of Free Soilers certainly agreed that U.S. settlers should fill in the sparsely inhabited good agricultural lands which the U.S. already possessed, but so did the great majority of the U.S. population in general at that time.
Also "free market" in the ideology field might give a misleading impression. The Free Soil Party certainly believed in keeping the wheels of commerce turning, but many members of the party thought that the main point of such commerce was to benefit family farmers and small tradesmen... AnonMoos (talk) 02:55, 24 May 2016 (UTC) [reply ]

In the context of 19th-century U.S. politics, "Free Trade" meant low tariffs, but the Free-Soilers—while they weren't for high tariffs—supported federal spending on river and harbor improvements, and "such a tariff of duties as will raise revenue adequate to defray the expenses of the federal government" and to pay down the debt. In general, no party that mainly attracted northern support ca. 1850 could be as emphatically low-tariff as southern interests were. Such views on the party's ideology need to be supported in the body of the article (and preferably be discussed on this article talk page first), and not just be added to the ideology field of the infobox... AnonMoos (talk) 07:40, 4 September 2017 (UTC) [reply ]

I stumbled across "The National Conventions and Platforms of All Political Parties 1789-1905" book by Thomas Hudson McKee, which contains the text of the 1848 and 1852 platforms. I may eventually include excerpts in the article... AnonMoos (talk) 18:05, 23 June 2017 (UTC) [reply ]

That's often a vague label for all those opposed to Democrats in 1854-1855 (not a formally-organized party, by the way), among other uses. In some uses, it can refer more to old-line Whigs (who became politically homeless after the Whig party started disintegrating) than it does to Free Soilers. The Opposition Party (Northern U.S.) article has some problems now (see Talk:Opposition Party (Northern U.S.)#Inconsistencies in this article), and I really don't know what would be clarified by changing "Anti-Nebraska movement" to "Opposition party" in this article... AnonMoos (talk) 08:50, 8 September 2017 (UTC) [reply ]

What relevance does this source have to the claim that the Free Soil Party was center-right? The essay never describes the Party as right-wing, and even describes pro-slavery Whigs as "conservative". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.176.43.77 (talk) 13:52, 26 February 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

Pro-slavery vs. Anti-Slavery didn't really translate along a conventional left-right divide. The real "conservatives" ca. 1850 (in the sense of people who wanted the least disruption to the existing order), like the silver-gray faction of Whigs, mainly thought that people on all sides in politics should talk a lot less about slavery.

For some reason, people keep adding or trying to add stuff to the "ideology" and/or "political position" fields of the infobox without any real supporting discussion in the text of the article, which doesn't seem useful to me (see #Ideology infobox)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

First off, people who only edit the "ideology" field in the infobox, without contributing to the article in any other way, are annoying. Second, the slavery issue ca. 1850 did not really align along left vs. right in any simple manner (as I tried to explain above). For that matter, it might be difficult to classify the ca. 1850 major parties of Whigs and Democrats along a left-right axis as those terms are commonly understood today. ("Hamiltonian" vs. "Jeffersonian" would be more useful.) In any case, people living in the United States ca. 1850 did not commonly use the words "left" and "right" with political meanings (except when referring to the French Revolution)! AnonMoos (talk) 09:20, 19 June 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

It seems to be extremely important for some people to categorize this party as "right" or "left", but it's not very important in understanding the Free Soil Party. I'm not reverting right now, but people who only edit the ideology field of the infobox are not doing anything very useful, as I've said before. AnonMoos (talk) 16:56, 11 July 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

I say we just change it so that the political position part is gone as the party does not clearly align with the right or the left. Besides, the Free Soil Party was a big tent party anyway. -Blue Director (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

Since nobody has replied, I am going to change the political ideology section since the source does not say anything about whether the party was center-left or center-right. -Blue Director (talk) 20:16, 29 July 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

I concur. Curbon7 (talk) 21:12, 29 July 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

Part wasn't anti-slavery they were anti-expansion of slavery to secure economic opportunities for northerners in the west -- 15:22, 17 November 2023 Milanmish

Most in the party were not abolitionists as such, and they recognized that the U.S. Constitution as it existed at that time did not give the federal government any authority over slavery inside the slave states. However, many of them, like a large number of US Northerners ca. 1850, thought that slavery was morally evil, and their desire to exclude slavery from the territories went together with thinking it was morally evil, yet their practical politics was mostly concerned with benefiting White people. AnonMoos (talk) 13:46, 18 November 2023 (UTC) [reply ]

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