Free Soilers

members of a mass, radical democratic party in the USA during the 1840’s and 1850’s. The Free Soil Party, formed in 1848, enjoyed the support of labor organizations, craftsmen, and radical strata of the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The Free Soilers advocated free distribution of land from the public domain to homesteaders and the prohibition of land sales to capitalist companies; they opposed the spread of slavery to the new territories. They took part in the armed struggle against slaveholding in Kansas during the period 1854–56. After the creation of the Republican Party in 1854, the Free Soilers became part of the party’s left, radical democratic wing.