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Show Birney's Liberty Party, Formed in 1840, Was Twice Defeated but It Raised an issue That Triumphed Twenty Years Later t - By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) ONE hundred years ago the United States was engaged in its most uproarious Presidential contest. con-test. It has come down in history his-tory as the "Log Cabin-Hard Cider" campaign of 1840, in which emotion almost completely com-pletely replaced reason, issues is-sues were totally ignored and a tired old man, who was little lit-tle fitted for the office of President, was swept into the White House on a tide of slogans and songs. When it ended, the country learned that the "singing Whigs" roaring out to the tune of "The Little Pig's Tail," this song: What has caused this great commotion-motion-motion Our country through? It is the ball a-rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. And with them we'll beat little Van. Van, Van, is a used-up man. were true prophets. For President Martin Van Buren, seeking re-election as the Democratic candidate, was indeed a "used-up man." He had captured only 60 electoral elector-al votes to 234 for Gen. William Wil-liam Henry Harrison, "Old Tippecanoe." Almost forgotfen in the midst of all this hurly-burly, because he had failed to win a single electoral elec-toral vote and had mustered only 7,059 popular votes (compared to Harrison's 1,275,017 and Van Bur-en's Bur-en's 1,128,702), was another candidate can-didate for President. Yet he was a significant figure in American history because he stood for a principle which would provide the most important issue in American Ameri-can politics during the next two decades, result eventually in the greatest civil war in history and be one of the cornerstones in the foundation of a new political party par-ty which would rule this country for 56 of the next 72 years. His name was James Gillespie Bir-ney Bir-ney and he was the candidate of the Liberty party, organized on April 1, 1840. Birney was born at Danville, Ky., on February 4, 1792, the son of one of the richest men in the Bluegrass state. At the age of 11 he was sent to Transylvania college at Lexington and after finishing fin-ishing there studied at the College Col-lege of New Jersey, now Princeton Prince-ton university, where he was graduated in 1810. After studying law for three years under Alexander Alex-ander J. Dallas, he was admitted to the bar and returned to his home in Kentucky to practice. In 1814 he became a member of the town council and two years later, although he was barely the constitutional con-stitutional age for membership, was elected to the lower house of the Kentucky assembly. Birney's people were slaveholders slavehold-ers but disapproved of the insti- tution of slavery slav-ery and were willing to e m a n c ipate their Negroes if Kentucky could be made a free state. Therefore it was only natural nat-ural that the young legislator, legisla-tor, early in his term in of-fice of-fice should Martin ieaa l"e move- Van Buren ment to prevent pre-vent the governor gover-nor of Kentucky from entering into correspondence with the governors gov-ernors of neighboring states to make an arrangement for the capture cap-ture and return of runaway slaves. Moves to Alabama. Evidently Birney's action made him unpopular with the voters in his district for he did not run for the legislature again but moved to Huntsville, Ala., in 1818 and had a prominent part in shaping the constitution under which Alabama Ala-bama came into the Union. He was a member of the state's first legislature but wrecked his political po-litical career in 1819 by opposing the legislature's indorsement of Andrew Jackson for President. Having run into debt, Birney was forced to return to the practice prac-tice of law and was soon elected by the legislature as solicitor of the Fifth Alabama district. He next disposed of his plantation and slaves to a friend who, he was confident, would treat them kindly. By devoting all of his time and energy to his law practice prac-tice he was soon prosperous again. While serving as attorney for the Cherokee Indians who occupied occu-pied the northeastern part of Alabama, Ala-bama, he began the first of the humanitarian enterprises which were to characterize his whole career. He helped the Chero-kees Chero-kees adopt a more civilized way of life and paid the expenses of many of the Indian girls who entered en-tered the Huntsville Female seminary sem-inary to get an education. To aid the movement to colonize emancipated slaves in Africa Birney Bir-ney raised funds for the American Ameri-can Colonization society and he also used his influence to secure the passage of an act by the Alabama Ala-bama legislature forbidding the importation of slaves into that state. In 1830 Birney organized a colonization col-onization society in Huntsville and acted as its treasurer for several years. Meanwhile he was busy with plans for uniting in one party par-ty all men, both Northern and Southern, who were in favor of preventing the extension of slavery. slav-ery. Finding that there was little lit-tle support for such an idea in the South, he decided to move to a free state but his appointment as agent of the American Colonization society so-ciety kept him in Huntsville for nearly two years longer. Then he resigned re-signed and bought a farm j adjoining his father's near ' Danville, Ky., ' declaring that that state was the best in the John P. Hale Union for taking a stand against slavery. In December, 1832, he helped promote a convention in Lexington Lexing-ton to form a society for the gradual emancipation of the slaves. But he learned to his sorrow sor-row that his old Kentucky friends were turning against him and only nine persons attended his convention. Undiscouraged by this fact, Birney next organized a society to attempt the emancipation emancipa-tion of the children of slaves when they reached the age of 21. He Becomes an Abolitionist. Birney's efforts to extend the membership of this society resulted re-sulted in his making a thorough study of the whole problem of slavery and he reached the conclusion con-clusion that its immediate abolition aboli-tion would be less harmful to the slave states than the gradual emancipation which he had formerly for-merly favored. To set an example, exam-ple, he gave free papers to his six former slaves who had remained re-mained with him and worked for wages. He also resigned his connection con-nection with the colonization society soci-ety and became an out-and-out abolitionist. During the next few years Birney Bir-ney devoted his time to the anti-slavery anti-slavery cause and traveled about the country making speeches for it. In 1835 he made the principal address at the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery society and laid down the rules for the abolitionists to observe in carrying carry-ing on their work. Next he announced an-nounced his intention of returning to Danville and establishing an abolitionist newspaper, the Philanthropist. Phi-lanthropist. But when he arrived in his native state, he found himself him-self regarded as a renegade and the persecutions of his neighbors and officials forced him to move to Cincinnati where he promised to keep up his agitation against slavery until it was destroyed. The .mayor of Cincinnati warned him that the city authorities authori-ties could not promise to protect him if he persisted in his intention inten-tion of publishing an anti-slavery paper in a city just across the river from the slave state of Kentucky. Ken-tucky. Despite this warning, Birney Bir-ney issued the first number of the Philanthropist and immediately discovered that the mayor's warning had not been an idle one. For the pro-slavery men started a campaign of persecution persecu-tion against him until finally a mob formed to destroy his property prop-erty and tar and feather him. Instead In-stead of fleeing, Birney boldly faced the mob and made such a stirring plea for the principle of freedom of the press and freedom free-dom of speech that the mob I was dissuaded from its purpose. In 1837 Birney moved to New York to become secretary of the National Anti-Slavery society and as such was its guiding genius. Within two years he had organized organ-ized 644 auxiliary societies in addition ad-dition to the 1,009 which had been in existence when he became secretary sec-retary of the national society. In one year he issued more than 725,000 copies of the society's publications, all spreading the gospel of abolition. As a part of his work Birney visited every state legislature in the North to secure the passage of resolutions against the extension exten-sion of slavery or to gain the right of trial by jury for those charged with breaking the slavery laws. In 1839 ex-President John Quincy Adams, who was then serving in congress, declared in favor of the abolition of slavery in the District Dis-trict of Columbia and Birney, seeing in this measure an entering enter-ing wedge for a national abolition aboli-tion law actively campaigned for the election of congressmen pledged to vote for the Adams proposal. A New Party Is Formed. As the presidential campaign of 1840 approached and it became evident that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats would take any decisive stand on the slavery question, Birney decided that the time had come to put an anti-slavery anti-slavery presidential candidate in the field. Accordingly he called for a convention to be held in Albany, N. Y., in April, 1840. Delegates from six states met there and their unanimous choice for the nominee of the new Liberty Lib-erty party was Birney. As mentioned men-tioned earlier in this article, he ran a poor third in the race with Harrison and Van Buren, polling only 7,059 popular votes and failing fail-ing to get a single one in the electoral elec-toral college. Despite the poor showing made by this party in the "Log Cabin-Hard Cabin-Hard Cider" campaign which sent Harrison to the White House, Birney was not discouraged. He kept the party alive and four years later he was again its nominee nom-inee for President. This time he polled 62,300 popular votes (nearly (near-ly nine times the number he had received in 1840) but again failed to get a single electoral vote. As a matter of fact he would probably have received more than 100,000 votes had it not been for the "Garland Forgery," a faked document purporting to be Birney's formal withdrawal from the race and his advice to the anti-slavery voters to support Henry Clay. After this campaign, which resulted in the election of James K. Polk, Birney withdrew from further national political activity. ac-tivity. But the seed which he had sown had fallen on fertile ground. In the campaign of 1848 the banner which Birney had first lifted was carried on by the Free Soil party with ex-President Martin Mar-tin Van Buren as the candidate for President and Charles Francis Fran-cis Adams, son of ex-President John Quincy Adams, for vice president. Campaigning on a platform which called for "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men" this ticket, even though it received only 291,000 votes, was sufficient to defeat Lewis Cass, the Democratic candidate can-didate nnd elect Gen. Zachary Taylor, the Whig, thereby stimulating the ; anti - slavery forces through- out the country to renewed activity. ac-tivity. In 1852 the Free Soil party j was again in the j race with Sen. I John P. Hale of New Hampshire Hamp-shire as its candidate. can-didate. He had quit the party John C. Fremont over the slavery issue. Although the Free Soilers' vote dropped from 291,000 to 157,000 the issue which they had kept alive would not down. The "irrepressible conflict" con-flict" with slavery was on. Four years later, by welding together all of the anti-slavery men Free Soilers, Old Line Whigs and Know Nothings into a new party, the Republican, the victory which Birney had foreseen was nearly in sight. For Gen. John C. Fremont, Fre-mont, the Republican candidate, polled more than 1,000,000 votes and began sounding the death knell of slavery. Birney did not live to see the final note sounded. He died near Perth Amboy, N. J., on November Novem-ber 25, 1857. Three years and three weeks later the Republican Republi-can party triumphed over the divided di-vided Democratic party and sent its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, to Washington. In a little more than a month after he took the oath of office the guns in Charleston Charles-ton harbor heralded the opening of a conflict in whose fires slavery slav-ery in the United States was destroyed de-stroyed forever. |