| In 1848, Van Buren's Barnburners bolted the Democratic Party to join the Free-Soilers, and Van Buren's candidacy delivered election victory to the Whig Zachary Taylor. |
| After the Free-Soilers merged with the fledgling Republicans in 1854, Hapgood became one of the new party's Boston organizers. |
| They rejected as well the position of the Free-Soilers, who chose to battle slavery in the territories, accepting the Peculiar Institution where it already existed but resisting its expansion elsewhere. |
| Free-soilers, who actually outnumbered proslavery settlers, won most of the seats. |
| The founders were a disgruntled mix of Whigs, Democrats and Free-Soilers. |
| Southerners and Free-Soilers spent the next decade in a fight over California that, Richards argues, is integral to the story of how the Civil War began. |
