Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War With a New Introductory Essay

A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine determine the nation's destiny.

In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks.

Demonstrating the profoundly successful fusion of value and interest within Republican ideology prior to the Civil War, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men remains a classic of modern American historical writing. Eloquent and influential, it shows how this ideology provided the moral consensus which allowed the North, for the first time in history, to mobilize an entire society in modern warfare.

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A Masterpiece , 2008-12-24
This book, along with Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, provides extremely valuable insights into a crucial turning point in American history, which still resonates today. Both are masterpieces of synthesis and interpretation. Both are scholarly and detailed, yet convey a feeling of excitement at the events described. Both enable the reader to relive the tensions, aspirations, thoughts, and struggles of the times they describe. The 1995 reissue of Free Soil begins with an important essay by Foner, which he wrote for it.
Foner was a Marxist-Leninist when he wrote both books. But he never allowed his Marxism to vitiate his historical analysis. On the contrary, he constantly emphasized that the motives that propelled the participants were ideas and ideals, not economic interest or social class (e.g., pages 4-5, 104-5, 110, 113, 168-76, 183-4, 304)



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Graduate Student Review, 2008-04-03
The issues with slavery in America reached all the way back to the birth of the nation. The Founding Fathers agreed to a compromise on slavery when the Constitution was written. Basically nothing was done about the institution except to leave it to later generations to deal with. Mr. Foner explains some of the attitudes and actions taken by the northern Republicans in the twenty years prior to the U.S. Civil War.

The party of the South became the Democrats, once known as the Jacksonian Democrats, and the Whigs in the North were replaced by the conservative Republicans. In the North a person could improve his social standing with hard work. The Republicans major belief was in the idea of free labor. The belief in free labor was contrary to the society in the South. Slaves and poor whites were for the most part unable to advance socially and economically. Foner quoted the New York Times of the day as printing: "Our Paupers today, thanks to free labor, are our yeoman and merchants of tomorrow. (p.16) Basically the Republicans believed if a man applied himself and worked very hard he could improve both his financial and social condition.

The Republicans believed that the slaves in the South were lazy and ignorant and would never better themselves. They also thought that the poor whites despised the slaves and considered any work that a slave did as beneath them and disgraceful. This promoted laziness and helped to keep the poor whites of the South from advancing. The Republicans thought that the institution of slavery was not only oppressing the slaves but the southern economy as well. In 1858 Aaron Cragin, a New Hampshire Congressman observed after hearing southern speech, "this language of feudalism and aristocracy has a strange sound to me." (p.71) The North was considered a bourgeois culture whereas the South was considered an aristocracy. (p.71)

Chapter three is written about Salmon P. Chase. Foner credits Chase with creating the anti-slavery argument in the political arena. Chase stated that slavery was sectional and freedom national. (p. 102) What Chase meant by that statement is that slavery was a state problem and not something that Congress could establish. (p.102). Foner discussed the belief of Chase in the concept of Slave Power. This is where the southern slave owners controlled the government and the South in general.

Foner discusses the Radical Republicans explaining how they would accept no compromise on slavery and were willing to take the nation to civil war to end the hated institution. The radicals wanted the states to end slavery not Congress. Foner spends several chapters describing the different factions within the newly created Republican Party. The conservatives in the Republican Party wanted to preserve the union and were willing to make concessions to the South if necessary. The moderates of the party were the ones that had the two goals, free soil and the Union. They also were against the expansion of slavery into new states. (p. 219) The Republican Party gathered all those against slavery and those who were for free labor and an upwardly mobile population that worked hard to improve their lot in life.

Mr. Foner's book, Free Soil, was written nearly forty years ago but it is still worthwhile for a student of history wanting to learn about the political process prior to the U.S. Civil War. The book is very well researched and has footnotes throughout so that the reader can see what sources were used for the book. It is an excellent book and should be used in all courses that study the U.S. Civil War and the twenty years prior to it.



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Excellent background, 2008-01-28
This book is an excellent background study for anyone interested in the origins of the Republican Party in the 1850's before it became the Party of Jefferson Davis and Southern social conservatives in the 1970's and 1980's.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Oldie but Goodie, 2007-10-18
The roots of the Civil War reach back to the birth of the nation. The Founders agreed to disagree on the issue of slavery in order to form a `more perfect Union.' By the 1860s the nation was at war with itself. Why did the South secede, and why did the North take up arms to prevent its secession? (316) In Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, the first of Eric Foner's many influential books, he examines the two decades running up to the 1860 presidential election by taking a close look at the ideology of the Republican Party. In a time of rancorous sectional division, during which the Democratic Party was sundered north and south, with each section nominating its own presidential candidate, the Republicans drew anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats together under one banner. The party members shared a resentment of Southern political power, a devotion to the Union, moral revulsion to the peculiar institution, and a commitment to the northern social order and its development and expansion. (310-314)

During the 1850s, respected historians agree, that the government of President Buchanan was under the complete control of the South which threatened the essence of the Republican view of democracy--which was majority rule. (100) "The domination of both the South and the federal government by the Slave Power violated this basic democratic belief." (101) Repeated attempts by the southern Slave Power to establish slavery in the western territories brought the sectional conflict to a crisis. The North and South represented two incompatible social systems, and expansion of the decadent South, as Seward warned, might lead to "entirely a slave-holding nation."

Several critical chapters of Foner's book delineate the radical, conservative and moderate elements within the newly-formed Republican party, and include the northern Democratic-Republicans who were alienated by the slaveocracy which by then controlled their party. The former Democrats found their party no longer a "champion of popular rights." (177) The radicals battle cry was, "Liberty and Union." This small but powerful minority was influential within the party, and brooked no compromise with the South, believing that the Founders intended that slavery would eventually cease to exist in the nation. (139-144) The conservatives wanted to preserve the Union at any cost, and were willing to make concessions to the South in order to do so. It was the moderates, including Lincoln, who "refused to abandon either of their twin goals--free soil and the Union," and drew the line at expansion of slavery into the new states. (219) It was not the moral imperative of the abolitionists which drew together the radicals and conservatives, the Whigs and Democrats, and the former Liberty, Free Soil and Know-Nothings. It was the political anti-slavery, Free Labor ideology which "blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation." (309)

Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University whose interest in the antebellum period started in college in the 1960s. Foner has authored more than a dozen books on American political history and race relations, including his latest Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction; published in 2005. Free Soil began as his doctoral dissertation under Pulitzer prizewinner, Richard Hofstadter. This scholar's scholar assumes a substantial familiarity with 19th century American history, leaving the reader to fill in the essential details of the various acts, provisos, compromises and constitutions; likewise, biographical material on important players in the antebellum milieu, like Stephen A. Douglas and William H. Seward, is also given short shrift. An introductory essay written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Free Soil calls on recent historiography to explore the concept of "free labor" in the 19th century, a time when half of Northern Americans were wage-earners.

Free Soil is now nearly forty years old, yet remains a worthwhile read for anyone with a more than superficial interest in the Civil War and its causes. The reader comes away with a greater understanding of the role of the Republican Party in shaping the anti-slavery movement during the antebellum period.



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Early Republican Revolution, 2007-09-21
IT IS HARD TO FIND A BETTER HISTORIAN OF THE 19TH CENTURY THAN ERIC FONER. THIS BOOK HIGHLIGHTS THE MOST INETERESTING EVENTS IN THE MOST INTERESTING PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY. ERIC FONER BRINGS THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONTAINMENT AND ABOLITION OF SLAVERY TO LIFE IN THIS WELL WRITTEN AND SUPERBLY RESEARCHED WORK. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ANTEBELLUM AMERICA YOU NEED THIS BOOK.

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