Hey there person
I'm Mr. Beat
Fun fact- When you Google “How many political parties are there in the USA?” Google tells you 2.
But, yet again, Google is wrong.
There are at least 39 other national political parties in the United States.
and people don't know this because the United States has a two-party system
and the Republican and Democratic parties do dominate.
These other parties are called "third parties."
Many of them have wide-ranging platforms.
However, several are single-issue parties, meaning they are mostly campaigning on just one issue.
An example of this is the United States Marijuana Party.
Members of this party are campaigning to legalize...you guessed it...marijuana.
But probably the most famous of all the single-issue parties was the Free Soil Party.
The Free Soil Party existed from 1848 to 1854, but it had a huge impact.
And their major issue was to stop the expansion of slavery. Here is their story.
Oh wait. But before I dive into the Free Soil Party, I should let you know that this is a collaboration with EmperorTigerstar.
He just released a video about another 19th-century third party called the Greenback Party.
Go check it out when you’re done watching this video.
It all started in 1848, with the New York State Democrats.
Known as “Barnburners,” they walked out of the states Democratic Party convention after those dang Hunkers voted against the Wilmot Proviso, a proposed law that would have banned slavery in all territory gained by winning the Mexican American War.
The “Hunkers” were for the expansion of slavery out west, so they obviously opposed the Wilmot Proviso.
The Barnburners were for it, and even were against Lewis Cass, the Democratic Party nominee for President, who proposed popular sovereignty to determine how slavery expanded out west.
So yeah, those Barnburners walked out, leaving the Democratic Party to knock on the door of the Conscience Whigs, or anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party.
The Barnburners said, “want to start a new political party?”
The Conscience Whigs were like “heck yeah dudes, but let’s get some more people.”
So those two groups knocked on the door of the Liberty Party, an abolitionist political party that had existed for 8 years at that point.
The Barnburners and Conscience Whigs were like “want to join us so you actually have a chance to win a Presidential election?” and most of the Liberty Party folks said “sure, why not?”
So together they formed the Free Soil Party, holding their first convention on August 9, 1848 in Buffalo, New York.
Their slogan? “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men.”
Hey...wait a second...what about women?
Anyway, they nominated Martin Van Buren for President, the New York native and former President who had lost his re-election bid back in 1840.
Noble dudes present at the convention included Salmon Chase, John Hale, and even Walt Whitman.
The Free Soil Party was a pragmatic party.
They weren’t necessarily calling for the end of all slavery, although that would be nice.
They realized much of the South depended on slave labor.
However, they all agreed there were enough slave states. No more!
Oh, and several of them opposed slavery not for moral reasons, but because they didn’t want white laborers to have to compete with slaves out west.
When some called for giving blacks the right to vote as part of the Free Soil Party’s platform, it actually got shot down.
They had issues other than slavery.
For example, they wanted more government money for infrastructure, a homestead law, and a way to pay off the debt and a new tariff to pay for it. Tariffs. Ew.
So back to their Presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, going for re-election again in the election of 1848, which you can find more about here.
Go watch it and come back. Everyone else here will wait for you. Don't worry.
Ok, thanks for doing that. Now, as you saw in that video, Van Buren lost the election of 1848, getting 10.1% of the popular vote and no electoral votes.
But hey, guess what?
The Free Soil Party was able to get 12 members elected to Congress that same election, as well as several more members getting elected to state government positions.
Most importantly, the party had made slavery a central issue in American politics and raised awareness of the anti-slavery cause.
So the Free Soil Party kept building.
However, their momentum came to a quick halt in 1850, thanks to the Compromise of 1850 (singing), which the Free Soil Party officially did not approve of, as it vowed to never compromise on the issue of slavery.
I also made a horrible video about the Compromise of 1850, but basically you need to know at this very moment that it was a huge way to at least temporarily calm both the North and South down about the slavery issue.
Because it did calm both sides down, the Free Soil Party lost a lot of members.
Most Barnburners went back to the Democratic party and most Conscience Whigs went back to the Whig Party.
So the moderates left the party, leaving only the hardliner and passionate abolitionists.
By 1852, they had lost significant membership.
That year, they nominated John Hale in the presidential election, but he got less than 5% of the popular vote.
Two years later, after the controversial and just plain horrible Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, the remaining Free Soil Party members ended up helping to create a new political party called the Republican Party.
Hey that party sounds familiar.
So the Free Soil Party went away almost as quickly as it sprung up.
It was only around for 6 years, the same amount of time as one term in the Senate.
Without the Free Soil Party, the abolition of slavery wouldn’t have happened as quickly as it did in the United States, and the Republican Party probably wouldn’t exist.
Well that’s the end of the video.
But you should watch YouTube for the next 72 hours straight.
At least. Start off that 72 hours by watching EmperorTigerstar’s video about the Greenback Party.
He released that video at the same time as this one.
Let’s start a political party video watching party.
There are a lot of them out there on YouTube.
And if you don't know who EmperorTigerstar is,
for crying out loud, what is wrong with you?
I mean, it's 2018. Wake up man.
Alright? Subscribe to his channel.
Thanks for watching.