How Did The Free-Soil Party Affect The Formation Of The United States?

The conclusion of the Mexican-American War by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 signaled the start of a new era for the United States, a period of crisis and growing division between the North and the South. The failure of the Wilmot Proviso provoked tensions between Northerners and Southerners within the Democratic party, division which in turn influenced the creation of the Free-Soil party. United under a bipartisan platform centered on the containment of the “peculiar institution” of slavery below the 36°30′ line, disgruntled Whigs and Democrats became firm opponents of the westward expansion of slavery, and loud critics of the South’s slaveocracy. Despite a defeat in the presidential election of 1848, the Free-Soilers revealed the growing divisions within America’s political system, and successfully opened the political landscape of the United States for newcomer Republicans and their abolitionist cause. Meanwhile, a massive migration of Americans to the territory of California stimulated by the
An aggrieved South, fearful of being denied more slave states, threatened secession. Whigs led by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and Democrats led by John C. Calhoun and Stephan A. Douglas engaged in intense negotiation in the chambers of Congress. Northern senators were willing to comply to the demands of the South so long as California’s identity as a free state was secured in the process. Among the many demands made by Southern senators was the issuing of a reinforced version of the 1793 Fugitive-Slave Law. Southern slave owners’ growing frustration with the increasing number of slave escapees and runaways on account of the Underground Railroad and other escape routes gave the ordeal of creating a stricter Fugitive-Slave Law great weight in what became the Compromise of 1850. Compromise was indeed struck