Liberty Party (United States, 1840)
Template:Infobox historical American political party
The Liberty Party was a minor political party in the United States in the 1840s. The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause. It broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society due to grievances with William Lloyd Garrison's leadership. The party included abolitionists who were willing to work within electoral politics to try to influence people to support their goals (as opposed to Garrison's insistence that the U.S. constitution was a corrupt "covenant with death"). The party was announced in November 1839, and first gathered in Warsaw, New York. Its first national convention took place in Albany on April 1, 1840.
The Liberty Party nominated James G. Birney, a Kentuckian and former slaveholder, for President in 1840[1] and 1844.[2] The second nominating convention was held in August 1843 in Buffalo, New York. The Liberty Party platform of 1843-1844 resolved "to regard and to treat" the fugitive slave clause of the U.S. constitution "as utterly null and void, and consequently forming no part of the Constitution of the United States", and also:
- "Resolved. That the Liberty Party... will demand the absolute and unqualified divorce of the General [i.e. federal] Government from Slavery, and also the restoration of equality of rights among men, in every State where the party exists, or may exist."
The party did not attract much support; in the 1840 election, Birney received only 6,797 votes, and in the 1844 election 62,103 votes (2.3% of the popular vote). A third nominating convention was held in Syracuse, New York October 1847, endorsing John P. Hale of New Hampshire with 103 votes (there Gerrit Smith received forty-four votes for the nomination, with another twelve scattered votes for others).[3] However, this nomination was later withdrawn due to the subsequent events of 1848.
In 1848, with the political sentiment stirred up by the Wilmot Proviso controversies, and the "Barnburner" faction of New York Democrats splitting off from the rest of the Democratic party, there was the possibility of forming a much larger and more influential political grouping devoted to anti-slavery goals — but not all of whom considered themselves to be primarily abolitionists as such, or were willing to work under the Liberty Party name. Therefore the party met in Buffalo, New York with other groups in August 1848 to form the Free Soil Party. A minority which was not willing to merge with the Free Soil Party nominated Gerrit Smith as rump National Liberty Party candidate for 1848, at a convention held on June 14th and 15th 1848 in Buffalo.[4] Smith went on to win 2,545 votes, less than 1% of the Free Soil vote.
The Free Soil Party later merged with the Republican Party in 1854, by which time many of the issues originally championed by the Liberty Party had become politically mainstream. A member of the Liberty Party who later rose to great political prominence as a Free-Soiler and Republican was Salmon P. Chase.
Chase joined the Liberty Party in 1841, and had a significant influence on the Liberty Party platform of 1844, as well as organizing the "Southern and Western Liberty Convention" in Cincinnati in 1845, where a number of delegates from the midwest and upper south met. In order to broaden the appeal of the party, Chase advocated supplementing the almost purely religious and moral Liberty Party rhetoric of the 1840 election with political and constitutional analysis, and wished the party to emphasize that its immediate goal was to withdraw all direct federal government support and recognition of slavery (or to "divorce" the federal government from slavery), as opposed to simply demanding the abolition of slavery everywhere in the United States (something which was beyond the legal power of the federal government to accomplish as the U.S. constitution then existed). In 1847-1848, Chase was a strong supporter of the fusion movement which resulted in the formation of the Free Soil Party.[5]
Candidates
| Election year | Result | Nominees | |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | Vice President | ||
| 1840 | lost | James G. Birney (New York) | Thomas Earle (Pennsylvania) |
| 1844 | lost | James G. Birney (New York) | Thomas Morris (Ohio) |
| 1848 | withdrew | John P. Hale (New Hampshire) | Leicester King (Ohio) |
| 1848 | lost | Gerrit Smith (New York) | Charles C. Foote (Michigan) |
Notes
References
- The National Era. 1 (43). Washington, D.C.: Buell & Blanchard, Printers. 1847 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qdUmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ywIGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4063,1821428.
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- Template:Cit book
- National Party Conventions 1831-1972, Rhodes Cook, Congressional Quarterly, 1976. ISBN 0-87187-093-2.
Further reading
- Johnson, Reinhard O. (2009). The Liberty Party, 1840-1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States. Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-3393-4.
