Differences Among People in The Free Soil Party

The Free Soil Party consisted of the Liberty Party, the “Conscience”, or anti slavery, Whigs, and the “Barnburner” Democrats, who were very anti-slavery. The Free Soil Party was said to be able to be visualized as three concentric circles. Considering the term concentric circles means circles inside one another with a common center, the free soil party could be visualized like this because there were three levels in this party. For instance, the further the circle is from the center point the less radical they became on that center idea. For example, the innermost circle is composed of abolitionists, the surrounding circle is made of anti-slavery activists, and the outermost circle is a group of people who voted for the Wilmot Proviso but didn’t think it was a crucial matter.

Abraham Lincoln and Martin Van Buren were considered in the outermost circle.  This is a plausible place to put them because Abraham Lincoln did not attempt to promulgate, or to make known, abolition doctrines because he feared it would cause more opposition then it would abate slavery. This would not be considered as radical as the innermost circle would have been, the innermost circle would go to any measure to abolish slavery. Martin Van Buren is placed in the outermost circle because he did not care about slavery, until it blocked his nomination. Van Burenites did not even believe in most of the evils of slavery that the other Free Soils pointed out. Therefore, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Van Buren were placed in the outermost circle because they were not very radical in their beliefs on Slavery.