Liberty Party. The Liberty party was organized in Warsaw, New York, in 1839 by abolitionists convinced that they must take their decade‐long
antislavery propaganda campaign into the polling booth to accomplish their purpose. The party campaigned in two presidential elections, in 1840 and 1844, nominating in both years James G. Birney (1792–1857), a former slaveholder from Kentucky and long‐time abolitionist. The party contested a number of local and state races as well. Rooted in
New England, upstate New York, and the Western Reserve area of northern Ohio, the Liberty party drew support largely from Protestant groups opposed to slavery on moral and religious grounds. Party leaders tried to broaden their appeal by stressing in their platform an economic argument against
slavery, claiming that wasteful expenditures by slaveholders drained resources from workers and the middle class in the North.
The party fared poorly at a time when deep loyalties to the two major parties, the Democrats and Whigs, and a lack of widespread antislavery sentiment dominated American political culture. Liberty party activists also encountered difficulties with other abolitionists who feared that electoral politics would compromise their beliefs. The party drew less than 1 percent of the national vote in the 1840 presidential election, and just over 2 percent in 1844. Some historians suggest that its New York State vote in the latter year denied the state to the Whig candidate, Henry
Clay, and insured the election of the slaveholder James Knox
Polk, but this involves the unlikely assumption that in the Liberty party's absence, its voters would have cast their ballots for Clay. It is more useful to see the Liberty party as an early manifestation a gathering movement that would culminate in the crusades of the
Free Soil and
Republican parties against slavery's expansion.
See also
Antebellum Era;
Democratic Party;
Political Parties;
Whig Party.
Bibliography
Richard H. Sewell , Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860, 1976.
Joel H. Silbey
