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. FreeSpeech was sometimes included, which opposed Southerners at-tempt to prevent Congress from receiving abolition petitions throughthe Gag Rule.154 " FREE-SOIL PARTYFREE-SOIL PARTY.By the early 1840s, two distinct factions dividedthe anti-slavery issue.One group wanted the political system to re-form the government and the Constitution to eliminate slavery andformed the Liberty Party.The opposition, feeling that slavery hadcorrupted the system too badly for it to be saved, did not participate.The Liberty Party contested for local, state, and national political of-fices and opposed the annexation of Texas as a slave state.It held lit-tle sway in the election of 1840, but in 1844, it ran a national ticketfor president and vice president under James G.Birney and ThomasMorris, originator of the term  Slave Power Conspiracy. Althoughthey numbered a mere 63,000 nationally, their votes in New York andMichigan shifted them from the Whigs to the Democrats, givingJames K.Polk the presidency.By 1848, it was clear few voters would support a party favoringabolition.The Wilmot Proviso prohibited slavery from any territoryacquired in the War with Mexico.The Liberty Party, led by SalmonP.Chase and John P.Hale, combined with Conscience Whigs led byCharles Sumner and Charles Francis Adams and free-soil Democratsled by ex-President Martin Van Buren and David Wilmot, into theFree-Soil Party.In Buffalo, New York, the party nominated Van Bu-ren and Adams, declaring  Free Men, Free Soil, and Free Labor.Lacking in ideology, the pragmatist Van Buren saw his political ca-reer destroyed when the Free-Soil Party lost to the Whigs (ZacharyTaylor and Millard Fillmore) and Democrats (Lewis Cass) in theelection of 1848.They did, however, elect Chase and Hale to theU.S.Senate and 14 men to Congress, including George W.Julian ofIndiana, later a Republican congressman of note.Hale and Julian led the Free-Soil Party to another defeat in theelection of 1852 on their platform of opposition to the Compromiseof 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law, which to them exemplified thesin and crime of slavery.Once again, the Democrats (FranklinPierce) and Whigs (Winfield Scott) dominated national politics,forcing a merger of the Free-Soil Party with the new RepublicanParty in 1854, whom they supported in the election of 1856.FREEPORT DOCTRINE.Republican Abraham Lincoln, in the 1858Lincoln Douglas Debates in the U.S.senatorial race, asked Demo-crat Stephen Douglas whether slavery could be prohibited in a terri-FRÉMONT, JOHN CHARLES " 155tory despite the Dred Scott decision.This became the FreeportQuestion.Douglas s reply is known as the Freeport Doctrine, inwhich he maintained that slavery could be excluded from Western ter-ritories if no positive law were enacted in any territory endorsing theinstitution of slavery.Slavery could not exist in any locality withoutsuch a law.This duplicitous position alienated the South by contra-dicting his theory of Popular Sovereignty and the Southern Non-Exclusion Doctrine, and lessened his chances for the Democrat nom-ination in the election of 1860.FREEPORT QUESTION.In the race for the U.S.senatorial seat fromIllinois in 1858, Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln debatedDemocrat opponent Stephen A.Douglas in what became the famedLincoln Douglas Debates.At one point, Lincoln asked Douglas aquestion that would put him in a difficult position whether he an-swered yes or no: Could slavery be prohibited in a territory despiteDred Scott v.Sanford, the recent U.S.Supreme Court case ruling itcould not? In answering  yes, Douglas would likely gain enoughsupport to ensure his reelection to the U.S.Senate but alienate theSouth to the point of preventing his Democratic Party presidentialnomination for election in 1860.Saying  no would maintain hisSouthern support for the presidential election at the cost of losing thesenate seat in Illinois to Lincoln.Douglas s answer, in the affirma-tive, became known as the Freeport Doctrine.FRÉMONT, JOHN CHARLES (1813 1890).John Charles Frémontwas born in Savanannah, Georgia, and educated at Charleston College.He taught mathematics before joining the Army Topographical Engi-neers Corps as second lieutenant.He joined a party led by Joseph N.Nicollet that surveyed and mapped the region between the upper Mis-sissippi and Missouri rivers.Frémont surveyed the Des Moines Riverin 1841, and the same year he married Jessie Benton, the daughter ofthe influential U.S.Senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton,who was instrumental in furthering Frémont s career the rest of his life.A successful publicist and writer, Frémont s wife edited his three1840s diaries detailing his Western expeditions that made him ahousehold name in the United States as the  Pathfinder [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]