The Hemispheric Free Soil Movement

James Finley’s paper, “The Hemispheric Free Soil Movement,” offers another revisionist account of the relationship between transnational abolitionism and agrarianism. He shows how the geographic emphasis of the... [ view full abstract ]

James Finley’s paper, “The Hemispheric Free Soil Movement,” offers another revisionist account of the relationship between transnational abolitionism and agrarianism. He shows how the geographic emphasis of the historiography of the Free Soil movement, underscores how antislavery politicians sought to stall the Slave Power’s expansion into western territories and split from both the Whig and Democratic parties to form a sectional, rather than partisan, coalition. Topographical frames for understanding the Free Soil movement accordingly register along two axes: east-west and north-south, frames that, while expansive, effectively end at the borders of the United States. However, Finley argues that from its beginnings, the Free Soil movement was itself transnational, drawing legitimacy from English jurisprudence, specifically the concept that one’s legal status shifted based on geographic location. Moreover, the movement’s responses to the passage of the revised Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 demonstrate the power of transnational imaginaries, particularly from Black Free Soilers who recognized in the law’s passage the foreclosure of free soil within the US. Prominent Black Free Soilers Lewis and Milton Clarke, Martin Delany, and Samuel Ringgold Ward looked to Canada and the Caribbean as possible sites for free Black agrarian communities and truly free soil. Such claims reflect a return to the British origins of Free Soil ideology, inflected with the radicalism of the Black Atlantic and the agrarianism of the Free Soil movement.