sb. and a. U.S.
A. sb. Territory in which slaveholding was prohibited.
a. 1850. Calhoun, Wks. (1874), IV. 547. All these, in the slang of the day, were what are called slave territories, and not free soil; that is, territories belonging to slaveholding powers and open to the emigration of masters with their slaves.
B. adj. The epithet of a political party in 1846–56, which opposed the extension of slavery into the territories; pertaining to this party or its principles.
1848. Lowell, Biglow P., Poems, 1890, II. 143. I went to a free soil meetin’ once, an’ wut d’ ye think I see?
1875. N. Amer. Rev., CXX. Jan., 69, note. Mr. Clay was speaking of the antislavery agitators and of the Free-soil party, and said, with much bitterness, ‘We have put them down,—down,—down, where they will remain; down to a place so low, that they can never get up again.’
So Free-soiler (a) a politician in favor of free soil and opposed to slavery; (b) one who lives on free soil, a free man. Free-soilism, the principles of the Free-soil party, opposition to slavery.
1849. Longf., in Life (1891), II. 162. Palfrey, Adams, Sumner, young Dana, all and several Free-soilers.
1855. Fraser’s Mag., LI. 675. All the free-soilism of the north will strain its every nerve to resist a policy which has for one of its leading motive and objects the annexation of Cuba, and the unlimited extension of slave territory.
1875. N. Amer. Rev., CXX. Jan., 73. General Sringfellow told them to take their bowie-knives and exterminate every scoundrel who was tainted with Free-soilism or Abolitionism. The orders were obeyed.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., II. III. lv. 355. The Republican party was formed between 1854 and 1856 chiefly out of the wrecks of the Whig party, with the addition of the Abolitionists and Free Soilers, who, disgusted at the apparent subservience to the South of the leading northern Whigs, had for some time previously acted as a group by themselves, though some of them had been apt to vote for Whig candidates.
