326 Political Activity and Resistance to Oppression: From the American Revolution to the Civil War
and temperance. He also worked as an attorney for the
Cherokee and, in 1832, as an agent for the American Colo-
nization Society. Birney’s work for colonization—including
supervising the Liberia-bound voyage of 150 African Amer-
icans aboard the Ajax, his subsequent eff orts to raise money
for the society in Alabama, and a visit to New England—led
him to become a stronger voice for gradual abolition.
Returning to Kentucky, he freed his six remaining
slaves in 1834, joined the state’s Society for the Gradual
Relief of the State of Slavery, and began to consider more
immediatist approaches, including those advanced by the
American Anti-Slavery Society. Birney’s growing sense that
colonization was based more on racism than charity—and
then his willingness to publicly assert as much in documents
such as his key “Letter on Colonization”—led him to move
to the free state of Ohio in early 1836 and to become more
enmeshed in the abolitionist world. Working with Gamaliel
Bailey, he edited and published the Philanthropist, a news-
paper through which he argued for a politically involved
approach to immediate abolition. Southern Ohioans were
almost as unfriendly to his work as Kentuckians, and on
several occasions, he received death threats. Still, he spoke
regularly for the abolitionist cause, continued the Philan-
thropist until September 1837, and published a number of
brief pamphlets and letters on abolitionism.
Elected secretary of the American Anti-Slavery So-
ciety in late 1837, Birney moved to New York City, where
he continued to write—including the important 1839 “Let-
ter on the Political Obligations of Abolitionists,” which was
published in the Emancipator and later as a pamphlet. Th is
work, as well as Birney’s opposition to allowing women to
fully participate in antislavery organizations, placed Birney
alongside the Tappan brothers and against William Lloyd
Garrison in the extended debate that ultimately split Amer-
ican abolitionism.
As early as a November 1839 convention of antislav-
ery factions favoring political abolitionism held in Warsaw,
New York, Birney’s fellows were talking about running him
as a candidate for president of the United States. But Birney
resisted such attempts until a larger April 1840 convention
at Albany nominated him as the fi rst presidential candidate
of the newly formed Liberty Party. Birney did not campaign
actively, and he polled badly—gaining fewer than 8,000
votes. However, he was fast becoming an international
fi gure. From May through November in 1840, he worked
with the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, whichSee also: African Dorcas Association; Antislavery Societies;
Brown Fellowship Society; Free African Society; Prince
Hall Masonry
Jane M. AldrichBibliography
Berlin, Ira. Many Th ousands Gone: Th e First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1998.
Hine, Denise Clark, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. Th e
African-American Odyssey, Vol. 1. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2000.
Birney, James
James Gillespie Birney (1792–1857) was one of the leading
white abolitionists of his time and twice ran for president
on the Liberty Party’s ticket. Birney’s growth into abolition-
ism was gradual. Born in Kentucky to Irish immigrants
James Birney and Martha Read (who died when Birney was
three), Birney was raised in a slaveholding family, although
his father favored gradual emancipation, and the aunt who
raised him had abolitionist sympathies. Birney himself be-
came a slaveholder at age six when he received a boy named
Michael as a companion; he owned Michael until his full
conversion to abolitionism in the 1830s, when he freed him
and helped him establish a business of his own.
Birney attended Transylvania University in Lexing-
ton, Kentucky, and the College of New Jersey (now Princ-
eton), from which he graduated in 1810. Aft er reading law
in Philadelphia under Alexander J. Dallas, he established a
thriving law practice in Danville, Kentucky, and married
Agatha McDowell (daughter of a district judge) on Febru-
ary 1, 1816. During this time, he gained several additional
slaves through his marriage, and his prominence increased.
Most signifi cantly, in August 1816, Birney was elected to the
Kentucky legislature. In 1818, the family moved to Madison
County, Alabama. Birney served a term in the Alabama leg-
islature and remained a well-known attorney, but fi nancial
losses (brought on in part by gambling) forced him to sell his
Madison County plantation and several slaves. Th e Birneys
relocated to Huntsville, Alabama, where they prospered and
where Birney was elected mayor in 1829. He left the Episco-
palian church of his childhood, became a Presbyterian, and
embraced several reform causes: education, Sunday schools,