The Liberty Party, 1840–1848

Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States

Reinhard O. Johnson

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780807142646
• eBook ISBN: 9780807142639
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In early 1840, abolitionists founded the Liberty Party as a political outlet for their antislavery beliefs. A mere eight years later, bolstered by the increasing slavery debate and growing sectional conflict, the party had grown to challenge the two mainstream political factions in many areas. In The Liberty Party, 1840–1848, Reinhard O. Johnson provides the first comprehensive history of this short-lived but important third party, detailing how it helped to bring the antislavery movement to the forefront of American politics and became the central institutional vehicle in the fight against slavery.As the major instrument of antislavery sentiment, the Liberty organization was more than a political party and included not only eligible voters but also disfranchised African Americans and women. Most party members held evangelical beliefs, and as Johnson relates, an intense religiosity permeated most of the group's activities. He discusses the party's founding and its national growth through the presidential election of 1844; its struggles to define itself amid serious internal disagreements over philosophy, strategy, and tactics in the ensuing years; and the reasons behind its decline and merger into the Free Soil coalition in 1848. Informative appendices include statewide results for all presidential and gubernatorial elections between 1840 and 1848, the Liberty Party's 1844 platform, and short biographies of every Liberty member mentioned in the main text. Epic in scope and encyclopedic in detail, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848 is an invaluable reference for anyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics.

1

THE FORMATION OF THE LIBERTY PARTY

The most pathetic residue of antislavery organization was the little group which had attempted to turn the antislavery impulse toward political action. In 1840, they organized the Liberty Party.

GILBERT HOBBS BARNES, The Anti-Slavery Impulse

The Liberty Party came out of the movement for the immediate emancipation of the slave. Repudiation of colonization and gradual schemes for emancipation during the 1820s, the freeing of over one million slaves in the British West Indies beginning in 1831, the increased circulation of abolitionist pamphlets and newspapers, and the emergence of evangelical revivalism gave impetus to immediatism during the 1830s. Twelve men met in Boston in early 1832 to establish an organization devoted to furthering this cause. This New England Anti-Slavery Society grew to over one hundred local auxiliaries by 1835 and eventually reconstituted itself as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society when it became a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, which had been founded at Philadelphia in December 1833. This national society spread so rapidly across the North that it claimed 1,300 state and local affiliates with approximately 250,000 members by 1838.1

No single person or group controlled the whole body of abolitionists. Much of the real power lay in the state and local societies, but certain individuals were recognized as leaders in their regions. Most early antislavery advocates were involved in various reform activities and came to immediate abolition by many routes. A few were longtime veterans of the cause. Some had participated in gradual emancipation and colonization work. Others had developed concern for the slave as a result of religious experiences during the great revivals of the 1820s and 1830s. And a sizable number were converted to abolitionism during the great propaganda campaigns of immediate emancipation during the 1830s. Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of this antislavery crusade was its intensely religious tone. The turmoil that most denominations experienced before the Civil War demonstrated that a sizable antislavery faction existed within almost every major religious group in the country. In fact, it is difficult to generalize about abolitionists because of their diverse backgrounds and levels of participation in the movement.2

During the early years, most state and local societies concentrated on recruitment and propaganda. They published newspapers and innumerable pamphlets, commissioned agents to go on speaking and fundraising tours, and brought in American and English speakers to their meetings and conventions. Partially influenced by the revivalism of the 1830s, their prevailing philosophy of action was “moral suasion,” a strategy that emphasized the conversion of the individual as a prelude to basic societal change. “Prejudice and slaveowning, outward manifestations of unrepentant hearts, were to be conquered with the tools of revivalism.”3 Its advocates eschewed violence and coercion and emphasized a person-to-person interaction that made belief in “the power of virtuous agreement to persuade others of the need for emancipation” axiomatic.4

Many abolitionists, however, went beyond moral suasion and began to circulate petitions demanding that Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, especially after some Southern postmasters began censoring the U.S. mail of abolitionist literature. In 1836 Southern congressmen, backed by some Northern Democrats, succeeded in passing a “gag rule” that would automatically table antislavery petitions without discussion. This assault on civil liberties, supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment, incensed many who had not previously been associated with the abolitionists. Those concerned with freedom of speech frequently expressed their sentiments by signing the petitions, which, ironically, increased after the gag rule was approved. The gag rule provided the abolitionists with a national figure, former president John Quincy Adams. Although he refused to allow himself to be characterized as an abolitionist, Adams spoke eloquently against the gag rule from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The gag rule, which would not be permanently discontinued until 1844, strengthened the abolition movement. The controversy won many sympathizers, provided free publicity for the cause, and served as one of the major rallying points among antislavery men of various philosophies.

During the early 1830s, abolitionists were often characterized as misfits and cranks. Few took them seriously. Mobs, sometimes led by “gentlemen of property and standing” in the community, inflicted abuse and injury on abolitionists across the North. Incidents occurred most frequently in states bordering slave territory and least often in the upper New England region. These riots culminated in Alton, Illinois, in November 1837, when abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed while defending his press from an unruly crowd. He died at the height of the anti-abolitionist rioting, but from that time on there was a sharp drop in the number and intensity of incidents directed against the abolitionists in the North, although these never entirely disappeared. Average citizens were becoming more concerned about the infringement of civil liberties, and, at the same time, antislavery activists were becoming recognized as legitimate reformers in most Northern communities.

As violent opposition to the antislavery forces declined, however, internal dissension weakened the cohesiveness of the movement. By 1840, many abolitionists spent much of their time raging at one another over a number of issues that were shattering the unity of purpose that had existed just a few years before. Contemporaries and historians have disagreed over what actually caused the famous 1840 split in the American Anti-Slavery Society, the most serious of all the disputes, but all commentators agree that William Lloyd Garrison played a central role in the controversy.5

Garrison had become a dominant figure in New England abolitionism. Born into an undistinguished Newburyport, Massachusetts, family in 1806, he led a journeyman printer’s life until an 1828 meeting with Benjamin Lundy, editor of an abolitionist newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, changed his life. Although Garrison had been interested in various reforms before he met Lundy, he had not committed himself fully to any particular cause before his exposure to abolition. Shortly after their 1828 meeting, he joined Lundy’s newspaper in Baltimore. Once there, he found himself promptly convicted of libel for his condemnation of a slave carrier from his hometown of Newburyport, Massachusetts. After Arthur Tappan, a wealthy New York philanthropist, paid his fine, Garrison left Baltimore and the temporarily defunct Genius of Universal Emancipation to go to Boston, where he planned to publish an abolitionist weekly. On January 1, 1831, the young printer published the first issue of the Liberator, a newspaper that soon became the most famous antislavery sheet in the land. He worked tirelessly in a variety of abolition activities, helped found both the New England Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society, and became one of the leading figures in the American antislavery movement.

By the late 1830s, Garrison had embraced a series of reform positions that extended the principles that had spurred his devotion to antislavery to other causes. He adopted a nonresistance philosophy that opposed force and evolved into a rejection of the state and a refusal to vote. Although he initially did not quarrel with those who wished to exercise their political franchise, he was adamantly opposed to direct political action in the form of an antislavery third party. At the same time, he was becoming more critical of many in the clergy for their refusal to dissociate from churches that would not take strong antislavery stands. Garrison also became more insistent on equal rights for women, particularly for their participation in antislavery meetings. The line between Garrison and his critics was not clear, however, because many agreed with him on some issues while disagreeing on others. Eventually, he became the major issue.

Events in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 presaged a May 1840 division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Shortly after a contentious 1839 meeting of the national society, problems in Massachusetts developed when a sizable group of abolitionists rebelled against Garrison’s domination of the state society. Henry Brewster Stanton, the official agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, aided these insurgents because he disliked Garrison’s opposition to political involvement and his power in the state society. Among the issues that brought Garrison’s opponents together were the role of politics in antislavery action, the nature of female participation in the society, the introduction of other causes into the organization, and Garrison’s harsh public persona, particularly with regard to the clergy and religious organizations.

Garrison easily routed his opponents at the annual meeting of the state society at which all present, including women, could vote. The losers withdrew, founded the Massachusetts Abolition Society, and prepared to issue their own newspaper, the Massachusetts Abolitionist. Elizur Wright, an antislavery lecturer and former mathematics professor at Western Reserve (Ohio) College, became its editor.6 Within eight months a large number of county and town societies affiliated with the new society. Sometimes a local antislavery organization would break its ties with the older society and then join the newer group. In other cases a separate organization would be in competition with the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. These events served as a rehearsal for the division in the national society a year later.7

Garrison and his many supporters (including many women) packed the annual national convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York in May 1840, even chartering a special boat to bring Garrison’s followers to the meeting.8 When their votes placed Abby Kelley, a leading female Garrisonian, on the business committee, a large portion of the dissenting...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Liberty Party, 1840–1848
• 1 The Formation of the Liberty Party
• 2 The Liberty Party Takes Shape: Early Development and the Election of 1844
• 3 A Period of Uncertainty and Confusion, 1845–1846
• 4 The Move to Free Soil, 1847–1848
• 5 New England
• 6 The Middle States
• 7 The Old Northwest
• 8 The Liberty Party Appeal
• 9 African Americans and the Liberty Party
• 10 The Liberty Party Membership
• 11 The Garrisonians, the Liberty Party, and the Abolition Movement in the 1840s
• Afterword
• Appendix A. Votes in Major Statewide Races, 1840–1848
• Appendix B. Banner Liberty Counties, 1844
• Appendix C. National Liberty Party Platform, 1844
• Appendix D. Liberty Membership
• Notes
• Index