Let me again beg my readers to bear in mind, that I am not attempting
to write a complete history of the antislavery conflict. Many
individuals rendered essential services to the cause in different
parts of our country whose names even may not be mentioned on any of
my pages, for the reason that I had little or no personal acquaintance
with them. My purpose is merely to give my recollections of the most
important incidents in the progress of the great reform, and of the
individuals whom I personally knew in connection with those incidents.
Although I did not enjoy a very intimate acquaintance with the
distinguished gentleman whose name stands at the head of this article,
my connection with him was such that it will be very proper, as well as
very grateful to me, to give some account of him and of his inestimable
services.
At the annual meetings of the American Antislavery Society in New York,
and of the Massachusetts Society in Boston in May, 1835, our hearts
were greatly encouraged and our hands strengthened by the presence and
eloquence of the Hon. James G. Birney, then of Kentucky, lately of
Alabama. We had repeatedly heard of him during the preceding twelve
months, and of his labors and sacrifices in the cause of our enslaved
countrymen. As I said in my report at the time, all were charmed with
him. He was mild yet firm, cautious yet not afraid to speak the whole
truth, candid but not compromising, careful not to exaggerate in aught,
and equally careful not to conceal or extenuate. He imparted much
valuable information and animated us to persevere in our work.
Mr. Birney was a native of Kentucky, the only son of a wealthy
planter, who gave him some of the best opportunities that our country
then afforded for acquiring a thorough classical, scientific, and
professional education, to which were added the advantages of extensive
foreign travel. When he had completed his preparations for the practice
of the law he opened an office in Danville, his native place, and
married a Miss McDowell, of Virginia. Thus he was allied by marriage
as well as birth to a large circle of prominent slaveholders in two
States. Soon after he removed to Huntsville, Alabama, where he rapidly
rose to great distinction in his profession and in the estimation of
his fellow-citizens. He was elected Solicitor-General of the State,
and in 1828, when John Q. Adams was nominated for the Presidency,
Mr. Birney was chosen by the Whig party one of the Alabama Electors.
Moreover, he was an honored member of the Presbyterian church, and
was zealous and active as an elder in that denomination. I make these
statements to show that Mr. Birney occupied a very high position, both
civil and ecclesiastical.
He had been accustomed to slavery from his birth. So he purchased
a cotton plantation near Huntsville and directed the management of
it. But his kind heart was ill at ease in view of the condition of
the slaves. He could not regard them as brute animals, and felt that
there must be a terrible wrong in treating them as if they were. He
gladly entered into the project of the Colonization Society, hoping it
would lead ultimately to the deliverance of the bondsmen. He became
so interested in it that he turned from his legal practice, which
had become very lucrative, that he might discharge the duties of
General Superintendent of the Colonization Society in the States of
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. He travelled
extensively throughout those States, was everywhere treated with
respect, and had abundant opportunities for forming an opinion of the
real effect of the Colonization scheme upon the institution of slavery.
He saw that it was tending to perpetuate rather than to put an end to
the great iniquity.
Towards the close of 1833 Mr. Birney removed back to his native place,
that he might be near and minister to the comfort of his aged father.
He returned carrying with him his new-formed opinions of Colonization.
He found a few who had come to feel, with him, that something else and
more should be done for the relief of the oppressed. In December of
that year he joined them and formed the “Kentucky Gradual Emancipation
Society.” But the principles of it did not long satisfy him.
Mr. Garrison’s “Thoughts on Colonization,” published more than a
year before in Boston, had reached that neighborhood, and probably
had come under the consideration of Mr. Birney. It contained a
faithful searching review of the purposes, the spirit and tendency
of Colonization. Soon after, the famous discussion arose in Lane
Seminary, of which I have given some account on a previous page,
and which resulted in an eruption that threw eighty “live coals” in
as many directions over the country,--fervent young men, who went
diligently about, kindling up the minds of the people on the question
of _immediate_ emancipation.
That remarkable young man, Theodore D. Weld, leader of the antislavery
party in Lane Seminary, visited Mr. Birney, and found him ready for
conversion, if not already a convert to the highest antislavery truth.
Their interviews resulted in Mr. Birney’s entire conviction that the
Colonization plan tended to uphold rather than to subvert slavery; and
that immediate emancipation, without removal from their homes, was the
right of every slave, and the duty of every slaveholder.
Without delay, he acted in accordance with this conviction. He
addressed an admirable letter to Rev. Mr. Mills, Corresponding
Secretary of the Kentucky Colonization Society, announcing that
he must no longer be considered a member of that association, and
stating, in a very lucid and impressive manner, his weighty reasons
for disapproving of, and feeling impelled to oppose, an enterprise
in which he had taken so much interest, and to which he had devoted
so much time and labor. Better than this, he summoned all his slaves
into his presence, acknowledged that he had been guilty of great wrong
in holding them as his property, informed them that he had executed
deeds of manumission for each and all of them, and that henceforth
they were free men, free women, free children. He offered to retain
in his service all who preferred to remain with him, and to pay them
fair wages for their labor. None left him, and, as he himself told me,
they afterwards toiled not only more cheerfully than before, but more
effectively, and for a greater number of hours. In several instances
he had been impelled to go to them in person, and insist upon their
“hanging up the shovel and the hoe.” In the fall of 1834 he addressed
a letter to the members of the Presbyterian Synod, in the vicinity of
Danville, in which he pressed upon them the sinfulness of holding their
fellow-beings as property, and showed them the true Scripture doctrine
respecting slavery. He also visited the seat of government during the
session of the Kentucky Legislature, and conversed with many members.
He found that most of them regarded slavery as an evil which could not
be perpetual, but most of them recoiled from the plan of immediate
emancipation.
Convinced that this was the vital doctrine, he determined to do all
in his power to disseminate it among the people. For this purpose he
purchased a printing-press and types, and engaged a man to print for
him at Danville a paper to be called _The Philanthropist_. So soon as
his intention became known, his neighbors roused themselves to prevent
the execution of it. While he continued a slaveholder and in favor of
Colonization, it was proper and safe enough for him to express freely
his opinions. But when he became an immediate emancipationist, and
liberated his slaves, he was regarded as a dangerous man. And now that
he was preparing to disseminate his doctrines through the press, he was
to be denounced and silenced.
On the 12th of July, 1835, the slaveholders of his neighborhood
assembled in mass meeting, in the town of Danville, and after rousing
themselves and each other to the right pitch of madness, they addressed
a letter to Mr. Birney, vehemently remonstrating with him, and pledging
themselves to prevent the publication of his paper, by the most violent
means, if necessary. Mr. Birney respectfully but firmly refused to
yield to their demand, assured them that he understood the rights of
an American citizen, and that he should exercise and defend them.
However, their threats, which did not intimidate him, so far excited
the apprehensions of his printer that he utterly refused to undertake
the publication.
When the report reached Alabama that Mr. Birney had become an immediate
Abolitionist, had renounced the Colonization Society, and had liberated
his slaves, most of those who had formerly known and honored him there
united in expressing very emphatically their displeasure, and declaring
their contempt for his new fanatical opinions. The Supreme Court of
that State expunged his name from the roll of attorneys practising at
its bar. And in the University of Alabama, of which he had been a most
useful trustee, several literary societies, of which he had been an
honorary member, hastened to pass resolutions expelling him from their
bodies. These acts convinced him of their hatred, but not of his error.
Finding that he could not get his paper printed in Danville, he removed
his press and types to Cincinnati, in order that he might publish his
_Philanthropist_ as near to his father’s home and his native State as
possible, and under the ægis of Ohio, whose constitution explicitly
guarantees to her citizens freedom of speech and of the press.
But he had not got himself and family settled in Cincinnati, before
he found that the inhabitants of that city were so swayed by Southern
influence that it would be useless to attempt to issue a paper there,
opposed to slavery and to the expatriation of the free colored people.
He therefore removed twenty miles up the river to the town of New
Richmond, where the dominant influence was in the hands of Quakers.
_The Philanthropist_ was much better received by the public than he
expected, and was so generally commended for the excellent spirit
with which the subject of slavery was discussed, that he thought it
best to remove his press back to Cincinnati. But he had hardly got
it established there before “the gentlemen of property and standing”
bestirred themselves and their minions to the determination that the
incendiary paper “must be suppressed by all means, right or wrong,
peaceably or forcibly.” Mr. Birney contended manfully, nobly, for the
liberty of speech and of the press. He met his opponents in public
and in private, refuted their arguments and exposed the fearful
consequences of their conduct, if persisted in. But his facts, his
logic, and his eloquence were of no avail. What had not been reasoned
into them could not be reasoned out of them. His opponents were
fixed in a foregone conclusion that slavery was a matter with which
the citizens of the free States were bound not to meddle, and were
made more impetuous by that dislike of the colored people, which was
intensified by the consciousness that they were living witnesses to the
inconsistency, cruelty, and meanness of our nation. I wish I had room
for a full account of Mr. Birney’s courageous and persistent defence of
his antislavery opinions, and of his right to publish and disseminate
them.
Suffice it to add that, on the evening of the 1st of August, 1836,
Mr. Birney having gone to a distant town to deliver a lecture, large
numbers of persons, among them some of the _most respectable_ citizens
of Cincinnati, went to the office of _The Philanthropist_, demolished
or threw into the streets everything they found there excepting the
printing-press. That they dragged to the bank of the Ohio, half a mile
distant, conveyed it in a boat to the middle of the river and threw it
in.
In the fall of 1837 Mr. Birney removed to New York, and for two years
or more rendered inestimable services as one of the Corresponding
Secretaries of the American Antislavery Society.
While there, some time in 1839, his father died, leaving a large amount
of property in lands, money, and slaves to him and his only sister,
Mrs. Marshall. Mr. Birney requested that all the slaves, twenty-one
in number, might be set off to him at their market value, as a part
of his patrimony. This was done. He immediately wrote and executed a
deed manumitting them all. Thus he sacrificed to his sense of right,
his respect for humanity, that which he might legally have retained
or disposed of as property, amounting to eighteen or twenty thousand
dollars.[I]
This act, added to all else that he had done and said in the cause
of liberty, and the invaluable contributions from his pen, and the
noble traits of character that were ever manifest in all his deeds and
words, raised Mr. Birney to the highest point in the estimation of
all Abolitionists. When, therefore, they had become weary of striving
to induce one or the other of the political parties to recognize the
rights of the colored population of the country; when they had found
that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats would attempt anything for the
relief of the millions of the oppressed, but what their _oppressors_
approved or consented to; when thus forced to the conclusion that a
Third Party must needs be formed in order to compel politicians and
statesmen to heed their demands for the relief of suffering outraged
millions in our land, James G. Birney was unanimously selected to be
their candidate for the presidency. He unquestionably possessed higher
qualifications for that office than either of the candidates of the
other parties. But, with shame be it said, he had too much faith in
the glorious doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, and in the
declared purpose of the Constitution of the United States to suit
the depraved policy of the nation in 1840. In that year the Liberty
party gave a very significant number of votes for Mr. Birney. And
again in 1844 their votes for him amounted to 62,300. These votes,
if given for Mr. Clay, as they would have been had he been true to
“the inalienable rights of man,” would have secured his election by a
majority of 23,119. This number was too large to be ignored. It showed
that the Abolitionists held the balance of power between the Whigs
and the Democrats. Their opinions and wishes thenceforward were more
respected by politicians and their partisans. Various attempts were
made to conciliate them, which, after several political abortions,
gave birth to the _Republican party_. This party, we hope and trust,
will be guided or forced to pursue such measures as will not only
abolish slavery, but raise the colored population of our country
to the enjoyment of all the privileges and the exercise of all the
prerogatives of American citizens.