On this day in New York · August 9, 1848
The Free Soil Party Is Born in Buffalo
Twenty thousand Democrats, Whigs, and abolitionists packed a park by Lake Erie and walked out with a new party built on one promise: not one more acre of slave territory.
The facts
- Dates
- August 9 to 10, 1848
- Location
- Court House Park, Buffalo, New York
- Attendance
- About 20,000 delegates and spectators
- First-ballot vote
- Martin Van Buren 254, John P. Hale 183
On August 9 and 10, 1848, about 20,000 antislavery Democrats, Whigs, and Liberty Party men crowded into Court House Park in Buffalo to found the Free Soil Party. They nominated Martin Van Buren, the New York-born former president who had once run the very Democratic machine that shut antislavery voices out, giving him 254 votes on the first ballot against New Hampshire's John P. Hale. Charles Francis Adams Sr. of Massachusetts, son of one president and grandson of another, was picked for vice president by acclamation. The convention put a slogan on its banner that summed up the whole coalition and sent old political rivals into the fall campaign as running mates.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men
The 1848 Free Soil Party platform, adopted at the Buffalo convention
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The ticket lost, but it split enough Democratic votes in New York to help elect Whig Zachary Taylor, and it built the coalition of antislavery Democrats and Whigs that the Republican Party would absorb less than a decade later.
Sources
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