free soil
No bondage permitted
Free soil refers to territory where slavery was prohibited before the American Civil War.
The term became a rallying cry for those opposing slavery's expansion into new states and territories.
The Free Soil Party, active from 1848 to 1854, campaigned on the slogan "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." The Kansas-Nebraska Act reignited debates over whether new territories would be free soil or open to slavery.
- abolitionFormal discontinuation of practice
- antislaveryOpposing human bondage
- territoryLand under jurisdiction
- KansasCentral American plains state
- NebraskaCentral plains state
Missouri Compromise · Republican · land · homestead · forty acres · land grant · settler · prairie · frontier · slavery · expansion · proviso · liberty · northern · western · westward expansion · manifest destiny · sectionalism
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Fugitive Slave Act
- Antebellum Politicsmanifest destiny, states' rights, nullification, secession, sectionalism
- slaverychattel slavery, enslaved, slave, enslavement, slave traders
free soilfire-eaters
Performers ingesting flames
slave power · doughface · popular sovereignty · Southern Democrats
free, soil, freely, freedom, freest, freer, freed, freeing, freeborn