n Democrats were called the "Hunkers." In the
democratic convention of 1848 at Baltimore appeared representatives of
both factions, and both sets were admitted, each with half the state
vote. This satisfied neither side. The Barn-burners called a convention
at Utica in June, and put Van Buren in nomination for the presidency.
The Liberty Party men had the preceding year nominated Hale for this
office, but now, seeing their opportunity, they called a new convention
at Buffalo for August 9, 1848, to which all Free-soilers were invited;
and this convention made Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams its
candidates for President and Vice-President. The platform declared
against any further extension of slavery. The party was henceforth known
as the "Free-soilers," the name coming from its insistence that the
territory conquered from Mexico should forever remain free. Its platform
denounced slavery as a sin against God and a crime against man, and
repudiated the compromise of 1850. It also laid special emphasis upon
the wickedness of the new fugitive slave law, of which it demanded the
repeal. By 1852 the regular Democracy in New York had won back a large
proportion of the Barn-burners or free-soil revolters, so that the
free-soil prospect in this year was not encouraging. Only 146,149
free-soil votes were polled in all the northern states.

[1856]

What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was
the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil
standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since
1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other
anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North
also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures
the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the
Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party,
fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine
early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal
improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may
be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did
that of Federalism.

But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid
confinement of slavery and the slave power to their narrowest
constitutional limits. It denounced the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. In the election of this year, 1