Liberty Party, founded November 13, 1839, Warsaw, New York, abolitionist political party, merged with the Free Soil Party in 1848. Newspaper: Liberty Party Paper, published by John Thomas in Syracuse, New York; the Emancipator, in Massachusetts; the Liberty Press and Albany Patriot, in upstate New York; the Philanthropist, in Ohio; Western Citizen, in Chicago; Free Labor Advocate, in Indiana; Liberty Standard, in Maine; American Freeman, in Wisconsin; New Jersey Freeman and Signal of Liberty, in Michigan. There were sixty Liberty Party newspapers. James Birney was the presidential candidate for the Liberty Party. (References)

• Chapter by Henry Wilson, "The Liberty Party," in Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
• Chapter by Henry Wilson, "Antislavery Organizations," in Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
• Officers, members and supporters of the Liberty Party - Part 1 / Part 2

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Chapter: “The Liberty Party,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872:

The early Abolitionists were pledged to the removal of slavery by political as well as moral agencies. Their modes of political action, however, were undefined. Some contemplated it' through existing political organizations, others through the formation of a new party. Mr. Garrison, as early as 1834, advocated the organization of a" Christian party in politics"; and two years later Professor Follen suggested the idea of a. new, progressive Democratic party, of which the abolition of s1avery should be a fundamental principle. William Goodell, Alvan Stewart, Myron Holley, James G. Birney, Joshua Leavitt, Gerrit Smith, and other eminent Abolitionists, early and persistently urged political action, and the formation of a party that should make the abolition of slavery a paramount issue.

Antislavery men first exemplified the principle of political action by questioning candidates for public office. Though their questions were generally treated with neglect, their numbers so increased that they were able, in some localities, to effect resu1ts. In 1838, in the great contest in New York, William H. Seward and Luther Bradish, Whig candidates for governor and lieutenant-governor, gave respectful answers to their questions, while the Democratic candidates refused to answer at all. The answers of Mr. Bradish were satisfactory; those of Mr. Seward were but partially so, and their majorities were unquestionably increased by the abolition votes they received. At this election, Millard Fillmore, who was a candidate for Congress, was also questioned and gave satisfactory replies; and he received the antislavery vote. In after years, however, he forgot the pledges he then gave, and disappointed the hopes he then excited.''

Among the questioned candidates of those days was Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts. He had vindicated in Congress the right of petition with signal zeal and ability; and, when plied with questions, he framed' his reply so as to meet even the exacting demands of John G. Whittier. But, like Mr. Fillmore, he failed to remember the pledges he was then so prompt to give; and, a few years later, he was found ready to use the' patronage of the Federal government "to· crush out the spirit of Abolitionism" in his native State.

In the Middlesex district of the same State, Nathan Brooks and William Parmenter were candidates for Congress. Mr. Parmenter, the Democratic candidate, was known to be unsound and unreliable on the antislavery issue. Mr. Brooks, the Whig candidate, though known by his personal friends to be in sympathy with his questioners, declined to answer, from conscientious scruples about giving such pledges. His wife, a lady of culture, was then and, continued to be an earnest and self-sacrificing Abolitionist; one of that class of antislavery women to whose early labors the cause was so largely indebted.  But the Abolitionists, firmly adhering to their policy, refused, without such pledges, to give him their votes, and he was defeated.

The plan of questioning candidates in its practical workings not proving satisfactory, a distinct political organization was demanded by some of the Abolitionists. At a meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society, held at Utica, in September, 1838, a series of resolutions, setting forth with distinctness the principles of political action, and pledging the society to vote for no candidate unpledged to antislavery measures; was adopted. These resolutions were drawn by William Goodell, and reported by the business committee, at the head of which was Myron Holley. They were not intended to commit the Abolitionists of New York to the formation of a new political party; but they enunciated principles of action to which, in the then existing state of political parties, it was difficult to adhere without such an organization.

At the sixth anniversary meeting of the American Antislavery Society, in May, 1839, a committee was appointed to call a national convention to discuss the principles and measures of the antislavery enterprise. This convention assembled at Albany on the last of July. The convention was not largely attended, nor did its result fully satisfy those who desired a distinct political organization. It issued an address, however, in which it was asserted that the Slave Power was waging a deliberate and determined war against the liberties of the free States; that the political power of slavery could only be met by political action; and that slavery must be driven out and dethroned from the stronghold in which it was so firmly intrenched by the ballot-box. In September an antislavery county convention was held at Rochester, New York. A few months before the meeting of that convention, Myron Holley, a resident of that city, had established the "Freeman," in which he had advocated political action with such earnestness and ability that he has been regarded, by common consent, the founder of the Liberty party.

Mr. Holley was a gentleman of superior attainments. He had held a leading position in the politics of Western New York as a supporter of De Witt Clinton, and was a canal commissioner during a considerable portion of the time in which the Erie Canal was in process of construction. He was a ripe scholar, a ready writer, an impressive speaker, and an urbane gentleman, of graceful manners and commanding presence. A bold thinker, and of large forecast, he clearly saw that slavery was to be put down either by the ballot-box or by the cartridge-box, or perhaps by both. He was for hastening without delay a resort to the former, in order that the stern appeal to the latter might if possible be averted. It was under such a leader that the convention adopted a series of resolutions and an address, in which the necessity of distinct political action was recognized, and the duty enjoined.

In the month of January, 1840, the New York State Antislavery Society held a convention in Genesee County. Mr. Holley, Gerrit Smith, and other Abolitionists, favorable to political action, were present. It was resolved to issue a call for a national antislavery convention, to be held on the 1st of April at Albany. This convention was called to discuss “the question of an independent nomination of abolition canddidates for the two highest offices in our national government; and, if thought expedient, to make such nominations for the friends of freedom to support at the next election.''

The executive committee of the national society took no action in relation to this movement of the New York society; but the board of managers of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society issued an address to the Abolitionists of the United States, in which they took exceptions to the manner in which the convention had been called, and the designs of those who called it. In this address the organization of a distinctive political party was declared to be in violation of the wishes of the great body of the Abolitionists, as had been shown by the unanimous votes of the State societies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The silence of the executive committee of the national society, and the advocacy of the “Emancipator," its organ, were both sharply criticised. They thus closed their address: “For the honor and purity of our enterprise, we trust that the Abolitionists of the several States will refuse to give any countenance to the proposed convention at Albany. Let their verdict be recorded against it as unauthorized, unnecessary, and premature. Let the meeting be insignificant and local, and thus rendered harmless."

The convention assembled at the time and place designated, Six States only were represented. Of its one hundred and twenty-one delegates, one hundred and four were from the State of New York. Alvan Stewart was made president. He was an early Abolitionist, having witnessed and realized, while visiting the South, in 1816; the cruelties, corruptions, and crimes necessarily involved in the system of chattel slavery. He was sincere and tender-hearted. The cruelties of the system seemed to affect him more than its crimes; and he would paint its horrors in language that none who listened to him could ever forget. One that well knew this remarkable man who rendered such effective service to the antislavery cause in its days of weakness and trial, thus describes him: “His conceptions were grand, his sweep of thought majestic, his language unique, his illustrations graphic, and his knowledge varied and minute." He had been a Whig, and one of the favorite orators of the party. A good lawyer, a clear-sighted politician, accustomed to deal with practical affairs, he early saw the necessity of assaulting slavery as a political evil by the use of the ballot. He came to that convention to aid, if possible, in giving form and shape to that idea.

Though small in numbers and somewhat local in its composition, its members were conscientious, earnest, and determined. After full debate and deliberate consideration, it was resolved by the small majority of eleven votes to present candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. For the former James G. Birney was selected, and for the latter Thomas Earle of Pennsylvania.

Born in Kentucky, reared and educated under the slave system, Mr. Birney was a hereditary owner of slaves. He embraced the antislavery reform from the deepest convictions of its justice, and gave freedom to his own slaves from the purest motives. He sacrificed property, political preferment, social standing, home and kindred, that he might serve a cause that could give him neither fortune nor favor. A gentleman with dignity of manner and varied culture, a sound lawyer, remarkably well versed in constitutional and international law, he wrote and spoke with grace and vigor. He was a prudent counsellor, and inclined to moderate action. Conciliatory in tone and manner, he was firm and fearless in maintaining his convictions of right. Thoroughly comprehending the vitality of the slave system and the tenacity of slaveholders, he foresaw and predicted the terrible convulsions into which the Slave Power would plunge the country. He believed that the exercise of the elective franchise was binding upon all. To possess and not to use the right to vote he declared to be “inconsistent with the duty of Abolitionists under the Constitution."

Mr. Earle was a native of Massachusetts, of Quaker ancestry and sentiments. A. law student under John Sergeant of Philadelphia, and editor and author of several papers and books, he occupied quite a prominent public position in his adopted city and State. Though acting with the Democratic Party, he was an active member of the old Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Laboring for twenty years for constitutional reform in his State, he was a prominent member of the convention called for that purpose, of which, says Whittier, he was the “recognized author and originator." In that convention, his political friends proposed “white suffrage” as the 'basis of representation; but, though by so doing he sacrificed all hopes of political preferment, he took and firmly maintained the doctrine of human rights, without distinction of color or race.

Such were the men selected by the Liberty party as its candidates, as it entered the arena of national politics, and for the first time solicited the suffrages of the humane and liberty-loving for the highest offices of the government. Its vote, however, was but small. Of the two million and a half of the votes cast at that election, its candidates received less than seven thousand.  

But small as was the vote, the friends of this new mode of action were encouraged. Soon after the election the national committee of correspondence issued an address to the friends of the oppressed in the United States. It was written by Alvan Stewart, and bore the marks of his enthusiastic and hopeful spirit. It congratulated the friends of the slave that ·humanity, as a new element in political action, had been found; that the voice of stern justice was beginning to speak from a new place; and that the power to overthrow slavery had been discovered in “the terse literature of the ballot-box."

The Liberty party received-into its ranks, in 1841, an important accession in the person of Salmon P. Chase. Mr. Chase had, as early as 1837, acted as counsel for a woman claimed as a fugitive slave, and also for James G. Birney, who had been indicted for the offence of harboring a slave. In very elaborate arguments he had maintained that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was unwarranted by the Constitution of the United States; that Congress had no power to impose any duties in fugitive-slave cases upon State magistrates; and that slavery was local, and depended on State law for existence. Like several other antislavery men in Ohio he had voted for General Harrison. But the course of Mr. Tyler had convinced him that the cause of emancipation had little to hope from the Whigs, whose action was modified, if not controlled, by their slaveholding members at the South.  He united with others in calling an antislavery State convention, in December, 1841, at Columbus. It was strong in numbers, talent, and character. Samuel Lewis presided, and Leicester King, a gentleman of large influence, was nominated for governor. An address, written and reported by Mr. Chase, and unanimously adopted by the convention, was issued. It was a full exposition of the powers and duties of the people, and of the principles and purposes of the Liberty party. It was, perhaps, the best presentation of the subject that had then· been made. No previous paper had so clearly defined the province of political action, its limitations and prospective results. It was extensively circulated, and exerted considerable influence in giving cohesion and impulse to the new organization.

Other conventions, State, county, and district, were held. The men and presses that had inaugurated this mode of effort exhibited activity and zeal, accessions were made, and the party steadily increased. Among these conventions was one held in Peterboro, New York, in January, 1842. It issued an address to the slaves of the United States, written by Gerrit Smith. In justification of this act it was proclaimed that the slave has the right '"to all the words of consolation, encouragement, and advice-which his fellow-men can convey to him." Slaves were specially enjoined to use no violence, and to cherish no vindictive feelings towards their oppressors.  They were urged to pray to Him who hears the sighing of the prisoner to grant them speedy deliverance, and never let bribes, menaces, or sufferings obtain their consent to violate God's law. They were told, however, to have no conscience against the inexpressibly wicked law which forbade them to read, and that the slave who had learned to read " has already conquered half the difficulty in getting to Canada, and the slave who has learned to read the Bible has learned the way to heaven." They were cheered by the declaration that the decree of God had gone forth that slavery should continue to be “tortured even unto death," and that their redemption drew nigh. They were counselled to seek liberty by flight, and assured that the Abolitionist knows no more grateful employment than that of carrying the escaping slave to Canada.

A national convention of the Liberty party was held at Buffalo in August, 1S43. There were nearly a thousand delegates, every free State but New Hampshire being represented. It was a convention of character and integrity, embracing among its leaders men of large ability and influence. This was freely accorded by those who did not belong to it by either association or sympathy. Says Stephen S. Foster, who was present, though not a member: “It was in my judgment the most earnest; devoted, patriotic, and practically intelligent political body which has ever met on this continent." A committee was appointed to report a series of resolutions embodying the principles and policy of the party. An unsuccessful effort was made in this committee, supported by Mr. Chase and opposed by Mr. Goodell, to postpone the nominations till the spring of next year. This committee reported a platform in which were clearly enunciated the purposes of the organization. .An effort was made in the committee by John Pierpont, but successfully opposed there by Mr. Chase, to report a declaration “to regard and treat the third clause of the Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void; and consequently as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States whenever we are called upon or sworn to support it." Failing in the committee, he introduced it into the convention with the startling question: “Shall we obey the dead fathers or the living God?” The convention responded to his appeal, and adopted the resolution by a decisive majority.

The convention nominated for President James G. Birney, then residing in Michigan, and for Vice-President Thomas Morris of Ohio. With its platform and candidates the Liberty party went into the canvass of 1844 with zeal and energy. A series of local and State conventions was held, at which its platform and candidates were earnestly comme11ded for the suffrages of the country. Among these conventions was one in Philadelphia on the 22nd of February, 1844. It appointed a committee, of which Professor Charles D. Cleaveland of that city was chairman, to prepare an address to the country. This address from the graceful and eloquent pen of its chairman was an admirable presentation of the principles and purposes of the party. It was largely circulated. Thus supported the Liberty party cast more than sixty thousand votes, had the balance of power in the States of New York and Michigan, and held in its hands the fate of that memorable contest.

Though the immediate annexation of Texas followed at once the election of Mr. Polk, the leaders of the Liberty party felt justified in their course of action, and still continued their appeals to the people to join their organization and sustain their line of policy. In the spring of 1845 a convention of the party, designed to embrace all who were in favor of continuing its uncompromising warfare against the usurpations of the Slave Power, and who were determined to use all constitutional and honorable means to effect the extinction of slavery in their respective States, and its reduction to its constitutional limits in the United States, was called to meet at Cincinnati, and was held on the 11th and 12th of June, about two thousand persons being present. It was strong in character as well as in numbers. It issued an address written by Salmon P. Chase, in which the evils of slavery and the crimes of the Slave Power were presented with great comprehensiveness and eloquence. The conditions of ultimate triumph were declared to be “unswerving fidelity to our principles; unalterable determination to carry these principles to the ballot-box at every election; inflexible and unanimous support of those and only those who are true to these principles." Recognizing the moral as well as political character of the struggle in which they were enlisted, and confident of the favor of God, the address said: "We are resolved to go forward, knowing that our cause is just, trusting in God. We ask you to go forward with us, invoking his blessing who sent his Son to redeem mankind. With him are the issues of all events. He can and he will disappoint all the devices of oppression. He can, and we trust he will, make our instrumentality efficient for the redemption of our land from slavery, and for the fulfilment of our fathers' pledge in behalf of freedom, before him and before the world."  

In October a convention of the friends of freedom in the Eastern and Middle States was held in Boston. An address was issued appealing to the people by every consideration of religion, humanity, and patriotism to exert all their powers for the overthrow of slavery. “Your homes and your altars," it said,” your honor and good name, are at stake. The slave in his prison stretches his manacled hand towards you, imploring your aid. A cloud of witnesses surround you. The oppressed millions of Europe beseech you to remove from their pathway to freedom the reproach and stumbling-block of democratic slavery. From the damp depths of dungeons, from the stake and the scaffold, where the martyrs of liberty have sealed their testimony with their blood, solemn and awful voices call upon you to make the dead letter of your republicanism a living truth. Join with us, then, fellow-citizens. Slavery is mighty; but it can be overthrown. In the name of God and humanity let us bring the mighty ballot-box of a kingless people to bear upon it."  

Mr. Chase and other leading men of the party confidently expected large accessions to their ranks as the result of these conventions and from that sense of outrage and injury, felt by large numbers at the North, inflicted by the Texas scheme. They were, however, disappointed; for the Liberty party contained within itself the seeds, if not of its own dissolution, at least of dissensions and divisions, and there were marked differences of sentiment on other subjects, growing out of former political and ecclesiastical connections, which could not but reveal themselves in their new relations.

These differences manifested themselves in a very marked degree in a State convention in New York during the same summer. Among the leading points of these differences was their divergence of views upon the Constitution of the United States; some regarding it an antislavery instrument, and some maintaining the exactly opposite opinion. Before the disruption of the American Antislavery Society the former view had been entertained by some, from which they deduced the conclusion that slavery was unconstitutional as well as morally wrong. In 1844 Mr. Goodell had published a work entitled, “Views of American Constitutional Law in its Bearings upon American Slavery." It had a large circulation and exerted considerable influence. Soon after its publication Lysander Spooner, a lawyer of Boston, published the "Unconstitutionality of Slavery." It was a work of decided ability and acuteness, and, though by many deemed fallacious in its reasonings and conclusions, exerted no small influence upon the popular mind, large numbers of the Liberty party accepting its positions. These causes soon began in a clear and unmistakable manner to reveal their presence, by the diverse modes of action and policies to which they gave rise. Of course these divided counsels and inharmonious efforts hindered the growth of the party and greatly diminished its influence.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 1.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 545-555.

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Chapter: “Antislavery Organizations,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872:

In June, 1845, a State convention was held at Port Byron, in New York. An address was presented, not only setting forth the unconstitutionality of slavery, but, perhaps in deference to the very general criticism that Abolitionists were men of " one idea," stating and elaborating somewhat fully the different objects government should have in view, and some of the more prominent measures that should receive its attention and support. This address, though read and printed, was not adopted. Many, however, of the Liberty party accepted its sentiments, and held a convention in June, 1847, at Macedon, in the same State. The convention nominated Gerrit Smith for President and Elihu Burritt for the Vice-Presidency, separated from the party, took the name of Liberty League, and issued an address to the people.

In October of the same year a national convention of the Liberty party was held at Buffalo. Several members of the Liberty League attended, and sought the indorsement of the convention for the candidates they had just put in nomination, but without success; John P. Hale of New Hampshire and Leicester King of Ohio receiving the nomination. This action was not taken without opposition, though the dissatisfaction was mostly confined to the State of New York. It was regarded as an abandonment of principle to go outside for a candidate, and to select one who had never identified himself or acted with the party; and Chase, Matthews, Lewis, Leavitt, and Dr. Bailey were severely censured for their course.

But this controversy between the two wings of the Liberty party, which resulted in the formation of the Liberty League, militated in no degree against either the earnestness or the honesty of the men who took opposite sides on the questions at issue. It only indicated the different methods suggested to different minds in their endeavor to solve a most difficult, not to say an insoluble problem. Neither hit upon the plan that actually secured the desired result, or that even gave promise of at least immediate success. Nothing now appears why slavery would not to-day be lording it over the land with increasing vigor, had not the South in its madness appealed to arms, and cut with its own sword the Gordian knot which others were vainly attempting to untie.

As distinguished from the other wing, it may be said that the members of the Liberty League were less practical, more disposed to adhere to theories, and more fearful of sacrificing principle to policy.  Like the members of the “old organization” and the French doctrinaires, they seemed to have more confidence in the power of abstract right, and less in the doctrine of expediency. They calculated largely on the power of truth, and on the belief that God is the “majority." Their watchword was: "Duty is ours, results are God's."

On the other side, the men who advised and aided in putting Mr. Hale in nomination had less faith in the policy, safety, or duty of simply adhering to the proclamation of abstract ideas, however correct or forcibly expressed. They saw that, in the presence and in spite of all the arguments, appeals, and fierce invectives of the able and eloquent writers and orators of either the "old organization" or of the Liberty League, the Slave Power was marching on, with relentless purpose and increasing audacity, from victory to victory, until it appeared that, unless it could be checked, Mr. Calhoun's theory would be reduced to practice and the Constitution would carry slavery wherever it went, and slavery would be no longer sectional, but national. Texas had been annexed, vast territory had been acquired; and the question was now upon them:  " Shall this territory be free or slave?" And their past bitter experience had shown that something more than appeals to reason, conscience, and the plighted faith of the fathers was necessary to prevent the final consummation for which all these previous steps had been taken. In settling that question they saw that votes were more potent than words; that an organized and growing party would prove more efficient than any amount of protest and earnest entreaty. To strengthen this purpose, such men as Chase, Leavitt, Whittier, William Jackson, and Dr. Bailey saw that there were hundreds of thousands, in both the Whig and Democratic parties, who were deeply dissatisfied with the state of affairs and the immediate prospect before them, and were anxiously looking for some practical scheme, some common ground on which they could make a stand in resistance to these· aggressions. They hoped much, too, from such men as Dix, Hale, Niles, King, and Wilmot among the Democrats; Giddings, Palfrey, Seward, Mann, and Root among the Whigs; much from the Barnburners in New York and the "conscience" Whigs in Massachusetts. They judged, and the event has proved that they judged wisely, that by narrowing the platform, even if it did not contain all that the most advanced Abolitionists desired, if such, men and their followers could be drawn from the Whig and Democratic parties, and be thus arrayed in a compact and vigorous organization against the Slave Power, there would be great gain. Though they could not exactly forecast the end of such a movement, they felt that it was a step in the right direction, and that, when taken, it would disclose still further the path of duty and place them in a position to go forward therein.

But the Liberty League and dissatisfied members of the Liberty party were not idle. Meeting in convention at Auburn in January, 1848, they called a national convention to meet in Buffalo in June. John Curtis of Ohio presided, and Gerrit Smith was chairman of the Committee on the Address and Resolutions. The committee reported two addresses, --one to the colored people of the free States and one to the people of the United States. In them they censured severely the action of the Liberty party for what they denounced as recreancy to the principles of the party. The colored people were told that it was the " perfection of treachery to the slave " to vote for a slaveholder, or for one who thinks that a slaveholder is fit for civil office; that it was the religious indorsement of slavery that kept it in countenance; and that it was "better, infinitely better for your poor, lashed, bleeding, and chained brothers and sisters that you should never see the inside of a church nor the inside of a Bible, than that you should by your proslavery connections sanctify their enslavement."

Speeches of great earnestness and directness were made by Beriah Green, Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Henry Highland Garnett, Elizur Wright, and George Bradburn. Mr. Green maintained that when the nation indorses slavery “the most marked inconsistencies creep out of the same lips, the flattest contradictions fall from the same tongues." Civil governments, he said, should be the reflection from the throne of God. To assert the claims of justice, to define and defend rights, to cherish and express a world-embracing philanthropy, to promote the general welfare, to afford counsel and protection, are “the appropriate objects of civil government." "God gave civil government," remarked Mr. Smith, “I had wellnigh said, to be on terms of companionship with the poor. Certain it is that he gave it chiefly for the purpose of protecting the rights of those who are too poor, ignorant, and weak to protect themselves. With their definition of civil government and the purposes for which it was instituted and with their knowledge of what slavery was, such endorsement could, not but seem not only unconstitutional, but inconsistent with and subversive of government itself. "Anti-Slavery men said Mr. Smith,” should identify themselves with the slave, and be willing to be hated and despised; they should not be ashamed to do what slaveholders call slave-stealing. It was not “vulgar," he contended,” low, or mean;" to help slaves to escape from the clutches of their oppressor. '''As I live and as God lives," he continued,” there is net on earth a more honorable employment. There is not in all the world a more honorable tombstone than that on which the slaveholder would inscribe, 'Here lies a slave-stealer.'"

The convention, much against his own avowed wishes nominated Mr. Smith for the Presidency. Mr. Burritt having declined the nomination of the Liberty League for the Vice­ Presidency, C. C. Foot of Michigan was selected as the candidate.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 109-113.

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Officers, Members and Supporters:

Stewart, Alvan, 1790-1849, Utica, New York, reformer, educator, lawyer, abolitionist leader, temperance activist.  Member, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Vice President, 1834-1835, and Manager, 1837-1840, AASS.  Member of the Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1844-149.  Founder, leader, Liberty Party.  Founder, New York State Anti-Slavery Society (NYSASS), 1835. 

(Blue, 2005, pp. xiii, 4-5, 9, 13, 15-36, 49, 50, 63, 68, 92-94, 98-145, 266; Dumond, 1961, pp. 225-226, 293-295, 300; Filler, 1960, pp. 151, 177; Harrold, 1995, pp. 54-55, 93; Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 39, 40, 41, 246, 293; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4-5, 9, 13, 15-7, 8, 14, 17, 21, 31, 36, 49, 50, 63, 92, 98; Sernett, 2002, pp. 49, 52, 73, 112, 122, 298n73; Sorin, 1971, pp. 25, 32, 33, 47-52, 60, 103n112, 115, 132; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 218-220; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 683; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 5; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 768-769; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 20, p. 742).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

STEWART, Alvan, reformer, born in South Granville, Washington County, New York, 1 September, 1790; died in New York City, 1 May, 1849. His parents moved when he was five months old to Crown Point, New York, and in 1795, losing their possessions through a defective title, to Westford, Chittenden County, Vermont, where the lad was brought up on a farm. In 1808 he began to teach and to study anatomy and medicine. In 1809 he entered Burlington College, Vermont, supporting himself by teaching in the winters, and, visiting Canada in 1811, he received a commission under Governor Sir George Prevost as professor in the Royal School in the seigniory of St. Armand, but he returned to college in June, 1812. After, the declaration of war he went again to Canada, and was held as a prisoner. On his return he taught and studied law in Cherry Valley, New York, and then in Paris, Kentucky, making his home in the former place, where he practised his profession and won reputation. He was a persistent advocate of protective duties, of internal improvements, and of education. He moved to Utica in 1832, and, though he continued to try causes as counsel, the remainder of his life was given mainly to the temperance and anti-slavery causes. A volume of his speeches was published in 1860. Among the most conspicuous of these was an argument, in 1837, before the New York State Anti-Slavery Convention, to prove that Congress might constitutionally abolish slavery; on the “Right of Petition” at Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, and on the “Great Issues between Right and Wrong” at the same place in 1838; before the joint committee of the legislature of Vermont; and before the supreme court of New Jersey on a habeas corpus to determine the unconstitutionality of slavery under the new state constitution of 1844, which last occupied eleven hours in delivery. His first published speech against slavery was in 1835, under threats of a mob. He then drew a call for a state anti-slavery convention for 21 October, 1835, at Utica. As the clock struck the hour he called the convention to order and addressed it, and the programme of business was completed ere the threatened mob arrived, as it soon did and dispersed the convention by violence. That night the doors and windows of his house were barred with large timbers, and fifty loaded muskets were provided, with determined men to handle them, but the preparations kept off the menaced invasion. “He was the first,” says William Goodell, the historian of abolitionism, “to insist earnestly, in our consultations, in committee and elsewhere, on the necessity of forming a distinct political party to promote the abolition of slavery.” He gradually brought the leaders into it, was its candidate for governor, and this new party grew, year by year, till at last it held the balance of power between the Whigs and Democrats, when, uniting with the former, it constituted the Republican Party. The characteristics of Mr. Stewart's eloquence and conversation were a strange and abounding humor, a memory that held large resources at command, readiness in emergency, a rich philosophy, strong powers of reasoning, and an exuberant imagination. A collection of his speeches, with a memoir, is in preparation by his son-in-law, Luther R. Marsh. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 683.


Birney, James G., 1792-1857, statesman, orator, writer, lawyer, newspaper publisher, the Philanthropist, founded 1836; founder and president of the Liberty Party in 1848, third party presidential candidate, 1840, 1844, founder University of Alabama, Native American rights advocate, member American Colonization Society, executive director American Anti-Slavery Society.

(Birney, 1969; Blue, 2005, pp. 20-21, 25, 30, 32, 48-51, 55, 9-99, 101, 139, 142, 163, 186, 217; Drake, 1950, pp. 141, 149, 159; Dumond, 1938; Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 93, 176, 179, 185, 197, 198, 200-202, 257-262, 286, 297, 300-301, 303; Filler, 1960, pp. 55, 73, 77, 89, 94, 107, 128, 131, 137, 140-141, 148, 152, 156, 176; Fladeland, 1955; Mabee, 1970, pp. 27, 36, 40, 41, 49, 54, 55, 60, 71, 92, 195, 228, 252,293, 301, 323, 328, 350; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4-5, 7, 8, 13-15, 18, 21-31, 35, 50, 101, 199, 225; Pease, 1965, pp. 43-49; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 43-44, 46, 48, 163, 188-189, 364, 522; Sorin, 1971, pp. 25, 47, 51, 52, 65, 70n, 97, 103n; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 267-269; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 291-294; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 79-80; Birney, William, Jas. G. Birney and His Times, 1890; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

BIRNEY, James Gillespie, statesman, born in Danville, Kentucky, 4 February, 1792; died in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 25 November, 1857. His ancestors were Protestants of the province of Ulster, Ireland. His father, migrating to the United States at sixteen years of age, settled in Kentucky, became a wealthy merchant, manufacturer, and farmer, and for many years was president of the Danville bank. His mother died when he was three years old, and his early boyhood was passed under the care of a pious aunt. Giving promise of talent and force of character, he was liberally educated with a view to his becoming a lawyer and statesman. After preparation at good schools and at Transylvania University he was sent to Princeton, where he was graduated with honors in 1810. Having studied law for three years, chiefly under Alexander J. Dallas, of Philadelphia, he returned to his native place in 1814 and began practice. In 1816 he married a daughter of William McDowell, judge of the U. S. Circuit Court and one of several brothers who, with their relatives, connections, and descendants, were the most influential family in Kentucky. In the same year he was elected to the legislature, in which body he opposed and defeated in its original form a proposition to demand of the states of Ohio and Indiana the enactment of laws for the seizure, imprisonment, and delivery to owners of slaves escaping into their limits. His education in New Jersey and Pennsylvania at the time when the gradual emancipation laws of those states were in operation had led him to favor that solution of the slavery problem. In the year 1818 he moved to Alabama, bought a cotton plantation near Huntsville, and served as a member of the first legislature that assembled under the constitution of 1819. Though he was not a member of the convention that framed the instrument, it was chiefly through his influence that a provision of the Kentucky Constitution, empowering the general assembly to emancipate slaves on making compensation to the owners, and to prohibit the bringing of slaves into the state for sale, was copied into it, with amendments designed to secure humane treatment for that unfortunate class. In the legislature, he voted against a resolution of honor to General Jackson, assigning his reasons in a forcible speech. This placed him politically in a small minority. In 1823, having found planting unprofitable, partly because of his refusal to permit his overseer to use the lash, he resumed at Huntsville the practice of his profession, was appointed solicitor of the northern circuit, and soon gained a large and lucrative practice. In 1826 he made a public profession of religion, united with the Presbyterian Church, and was ever afterward a devout Christian. About the same time he began to contribute to the American Colonization Society, regarding it as preparing the way for gradual emancipation. In 1827 he procured the enactment by the Alabama legislature of a statute "to prohibit the importation of slaves into this state for sale or hire." In 1828 he was a candidate for presidential elector on the Adams ticket in Alabama, canvassed the state for the Adams party, and was regarded as its most prominent member. He was repeatedly elected mayor of Huntsville, and was recognized as the leader in educational movements and local improvements. In 1830 he was deputed by the trustees of the state university to select and recommend to them five persons as president and professors of that institution, also by the trustees of the Huntsville female seminary to select and employ three teachers. In the performance of these trusts he spent several months in the Atlantic states, extending his tour as far north as Massachusetts. His selections were approved. Returning home by way of Kentucky, he called on Henry Clay, with whom he had been on terms of friendship and political sympathy, and urged that statesman to place himself at the head of the gradual emancipation movement in Kentucky. The result of the interview was the final alienation in public matters and politics of the parties to it, though their friendly personal relations remained unchanged. Mr. Birney did not support Mr. Clay politically after 1830 or vote for him in 1832. For several years he was the confidential adviser and counsel of the Cherokee nation, an experience that led him to sympathize with bodies of men who were wronged under color of law. In 1831 he had become so sensible of the evil influences of slavery that he determined to remove his large family to a free state, and in the winter of that year visited Illinois and selected Jacksonville as the place of his future residence. Returning to Alabama, he was winding up his law business and selling his property with a view to removal, when he received, most unexpectedly, an appointment from the American Colonization Society as its agent for the southwest. From motives of duty he accepted and devoted himself for one year to the promotion of the objects of that society. Having become convinced that the slave-holders of the gulf states, with few exceptions, were hostile to the idea of emancipation in the future, he lost faith in the efficacy of colonization in that region. In his conversations about that time with southern politicians and men of influence he learned enough to satisfy him that, although the secret negotiations in 1829 of the Jackson administration for the purchase of Texas had failed, the project of annexing that province to the United States and forming several slave states out of its territory had not been abandoned; that a powerful combination existed at the south for the purpose of sending armed adventurers to Texas; and that southern politicians were united in the design to secure for the south a majority in the U. S. Senate. The situation seemed to him to portend the permanence of slavery, with grave danger of Civil War and disunion of the states. Resigning his agency and relinquishing his Illinois project, he moved, in November, 1833, to Kentucky for the purpose of separating it from the slave states by effecting the adoption of a system of gradual emancipation. He thought its example might be followed by Virginia and Tennessee, and that thus the slave states would be placed in a hopeless minority, and slavery in process of extinction. But public opinion in his native state had greatly changed since he had left it; the once powerful emancipation element had been weakened by the opposition of political leaders, and especially of Henry Clay. His efforts were sustained by very few. In June, 1834, he set free his own slaves and severed his connection with the Colonization Society, the practical effect of which, he had found, was to afford a pretext for postponing emancipation indefinitely. From this time he devoted himself with untiring zeal to the advocacy in Kentucky of the abolition of slavery. On 19 March, 1835, he formed the Kentucky Anti-Slavery Society, consisting of forty members, several of whom had freed their slaves. In May, at New York, he made the principal speech at the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and thenceforward he was identified with the Tappans, Judge William Jay, Theodore D. Weld, Alvan Stewart, Thomas Morris, and other northern abolitionists, who pursued their object by constitutional methods. In June, 1835, he issued a prospectus for the publication, beginning in August, of an anti-slavery weekly paper, at Danville, Kentucky; but before the time fixed for issuing the first number the era of mob violence and social persecutions, directed against the opponents of slavery, set in. This was contemporaneous with the renewed organization of revolts in Texas; the beginning of the war for breaking up the refuge for fugitive slaves, waged for years against the Florida Seminoles; and the exclusion, by connivance of the postmaster-general, of anti-slavery papers from the U. S. mails; and it preceded, by a few months only, President Jackson's message, recommending not only the refusal of the use of the mails, but the passage of laws by Congress and also by the non-slaveholding states for the suppression of “incendiary” (anti- slavery) publications. Mr. Birney found it impossible to obtain a publisher or printer; and as his own residence in Kentucky had become disagreeable and dangerous, he moved to Cincinnati, where he established his paper. His press was repeatedly destroyed by mobs; but he met all opposition with courage and succeeded finally in maintaining the freedom of the press in Cincinnati, exhibiting great personal courage, firmness, and judgment. On 22 January, 1836, a mob assembled at the court-house for the purpose of destroying his property and seizing his person; the city and county authorities had notified him of their inability to protect him; he attended the meeting, obtained leave to speak, and succeeded in defeating its object. As an editor, he was distinguished by a thorough knowledge of his subject, courtesy, candor, and large attainments as a jurist and statesman. The “Philanthropist” gained rapidly an extensive circulation. Having associated with him as editor Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, he devoted most of his own time to public speaking, visiting in this work most of the cities and towns in the free states and addressing committees of legislative bodies. His object was to awaken the people of the north to the danger menacing the freedom of speech and of the press, the trial by jury, the system of free labor, and the national constitution, from the encroachments of the slave-power and the plotted annexation of new slave states in the southwest. In recognition of his prominence as an anti-slavery leader, the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society unanimously elected him, in the summer of 1837, to the office of secretary. Having accepted, he moved to New York City, 20 September, 1837. In his new position he was the executive officer of the society, conducted its correspondence, selected and employed lecturers, directed the organization of auxiliaries, and prepared its reports. He attended the principal anti-slavery conventions, and his wise and conservative counsel had a marked influence on their action. He was faithful to the church, while he exposed and rebuked the ecclesiastical bodies that sustained slavery; and true to the constitution, while he denounced the constructions that severed it from the principles contained in its preamble and in the declaration of independence. To secession, whether of the north or south, he was inflexibly opposed. The toleration or establishment of slavery in any district or territory belonging to the United States, and its abolition in the slave states, except under the war power, he held was not within the legal power of Congress; slavery was local, and freedom national. To vote he considered the duty of every citizen, and more especially of every member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the constitution of which recognized the duty of using both moral and political action for the removal of slavery. In the beginning of the agitation the abolitionists voted for such anti-slavery candidates as were nominated by the leading parties; but as the issues grew, under the aggressive action of the slave power, to include the right of petition, the freedom of speech and of the press, the trial by jury, the equality of all men before the law, the right of the free states to legislate for their own territory, and the right of Congress to exclude slavery from the territories, the old parties ceased to nominate anti-slavery candidates, and the abolitionists were forced to make independent nominations for state officers and Congress, and finally to form a national and constitutional party. Mr. Birney was their first and only choice as candidate for the presidency. During his absence in England, in 1840, and again in 1844, he was unanimously nominated by national conventions of the Liberty Party. At the former election he received 7,369 votes; and at the latter, 62,263. This number, it was claimed by his friends, would have been much larger if the electioneering agents of the Whig Party had not circulated, three days before the election and too late for denial and exposure, a forged letter purporting to be from Mr. Birney, announcing his withdrawal from the canvass, and advising anti-slavery men to vote for Mr. Clay. This is known as “the Garland forgery.” Its circulation in Ohio and New York probably gave the former state to Mr. Clay, and greatly diminished Mr. Birney's vote in the latter. In its essential doctrines the platform of the Liberty Party in 1840 and 1844 was identical with those that were subsequently adopted by the Free-Soil and Republican parties. In the summer of 1845 Mr. Birney was disabled physically by partial paralysis, caused by a fall from a horse, and from that time he withdrew from active participation in politics, though he continued his contributions to the press. In September, 1839, he emancipated twenty-one slaves that belonged to his late father's estate, setting off to his co-heir $20,000, in compensation for her interest in them. In 1839 Mr. Birney lost his wife, and in the autumn of 1841 he married Miss Fitzhugh, sister of Mrs. Gerrit Smith, of New York. In 1842 he took up his residence in Bay City, Michigan In person he was of medium height, robust build, and handsome countenance. His manners were those of a polished man of the world, free from eccentricities, and marked with dignity. He had neither vices nor bad habits. As a presiding officer in a public meeting he was said to have no superior. As a public speaker he was generally calm and judicial in tone; but when under strong excitement he rose to eloquence. His chief writings were as follows: “Ten Letters on Slavery and Colonization,” addressed to R. R. Gurley (the first dated 12 July, 1832, the last 11 December, 1833); “Six Essays on Slavery and Colonization,” published in the Huntsville (Alabama) “Advocate” (May, June, and July, 1833); “Letter on Colonization,” resigning vice-presidency of Kentucky Colonization Society (15 July, 1834); “Letters to the Presbyterian Church” (1834); “Addresses and Speeches” (1835); “Vindication of the Abolitionists” (1835); “The Philanthropist,” a weekly newspaper (1836 and to September, 1837); “Letter to Colonel Stone” (May, 1836); “Address to Slaveholders” (October, 1836); “Argument on Fugitive Slave Case” (1837); “Letter to F. H. Elmore,” of South Carolina (1838); “Political Obligations of Abolitionists” (1839); “Report on the Duty of Political Action,” for Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society (May, 1839); “American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery” (1840); “Speeches in England” (1840); “Letter of Acceptance”; “Articles in Q. A. S. Magazine and Emancipator” (1837-'44); “Examination of the Decision of the U. S. Supreme Court,” in the case of Strader et al., v. Graham (1850).


Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874, New York, large landowner, reformer, philanthropist, radical abolitionist, supporter of the American Colonization Society, Anti-Slavery Society, active in the Underground Railroad, member Liberty Party, Pennsylvania Free Produce Association, secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown.  Liberty Party candidate for U.S. President, 1848 (lost).

(Blue, 2005, pp. 19, 20, 25, 26, 32-36, 50, 53, 54, 68, 101, 102, 105, 112, 132, 170; Dumond, 1961, pp. 200, 221, 231, 295, 301, 339, 352; Friedman, 1982; Frothingham, 1876; Mabee, 1970, pp. 37, 47, 55, 56, 71, 72, 104, 106, 131, 135, 150, 154, 156, 187-189, 195, 202, 204, 219, 220, 226, 227, 237, 239, 246, 252, 253, 258, 307, 308, 315, 320, 321, 327, 342, 346; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 5, 8, 13, 16, 22, 29, 31, 36, 112, 117-121, 137, 163, 167, 199, 224-225, 243; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 46, 50, 51, 56, 138, 163, 206, 207, 327, 338, 452-454; Sernett, 2002, pp. 22, 36, 49-55, 122-126, 129-132, 143-146, 169, 171, 173-174, 205-206, 208-217, 219-230; Sorin, 1971, pp. 25-38, 47, 49, 52, 66, 95, 96, 102, 126, 130; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 583-584; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 270; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 20; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 322-323; Harlow, Ralph Volney. Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer. New York: Holt, 1939.).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

SMITH, Gerrit, philanthropist, born in Utica, New York, 6 March, 1797; died in New York City, 28 December, 1874, was graduated at Hamilton College in 1818, and devoted himself to the care of his father's estate, a large part of which was given to him when he attained his majority. At the age of fifty-six he studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was elected to Congress as an independent candidate in 1852, but resigned after serving through one session. During his boyhood slavery still existed in the state of New York, and his father was a slave-holder. One of the earliest forms of the philanthropy that marked his long life appeared in his opposition to the institution of slavery, and his friendship for the oppressed race. He acted for ten years with the American Colonization Society, contributing largely to its funds, until he became convinced that it was merely a scheme of the slave-holders for getting the free colored people out of the country. Thenceforth he gave his support to the Anti-Slavery Society, not only writing for the cause and contributing money, but taking part in conventions, and personally assisting fugitives. He was temperate in all the discussion, holding that the north was a partner in the guilt, and in the event of emancipation without war should bear a portion of the expense; but the attempt to force slavery upon Kansas convinced him that the day for peaceful emancipation was past, and he then advocated whatever measure of force might be necessary. He gave large sums of money to send free-soil settlers to Kansas, and was a personal friend of John Brown, to whom he had given a farm in Essex County, New York, that he might instruct a colony of colored people, to whom Mr. Smith had given farms in the same neighborhood. He was supposed to be implicated in the Harper's Ferry affair, but it was shown that he had only given pecuniary aid to Brown as he had to scores of other men, and so far as he knew Brown's plans had tried to dissuade him from them. Mr. Smith was deeply interested in the cause of temperance, and organized an anti-dramshop party in February, 1842. In the village of Peterboro, Madison County, where he had his home, he built a good hotel, and gave it rent-free to a tenant who agreed that no liquor should be sold there. This is believed to have been the first temperance hotel ever established. But it was not pecuniarily successful. He had been nominated for president by an industrial congress at Philadelphia in 1848, and by the land-reformers in 1856, but declined. In 1840, and again in 1858, he was nominated for governor of New York. The last nomination, on a platform of abolition and prohibition, he accepted, and canvassed the state. In the election he received 5,446 votes. Among the other reforms in which he was interested were those relating to the property-rights of married women and female suffrage and abstention from tobacco. In religion he was originally a Presbyterian, but became very liberal in his views, and built a non-sectarian church in Peterboro, in which he often occupied the pulpit himself. He could not conceive of religion as anything apart from the affairs of daily life, and in one of his published letters he wrote: “No man's religion is better than his politics; his religion is pure whose politics are pure; whilst his religion is rascally whose politics are rascally.” He disbelieved in the right of men to monopolize land, and gave away thousands of acres of that which he had inherited, some of it to colleges and charitable institutions, and some in the form of small farms to men who would settle upon them. He also gave away by far the greater part of his income, for charitable purposes, to institutions and individuals. In the financial crisis of 1837 he borrowed of John Jacob Astor a quarter of a million dollars, on his verbal agreement to give Mr. Astor mortgages to that amount on real estate. The mortgages were executed as soon as Mr. Smith reached his home, but through the carelessness of a clerk were not delivered, and Mr. Astor waited six months before inquiring for them. Mr. Smith had for many years anticipated that the system of slavery would be brought to an end only through violence, and when the Civil War began he hastened to the support of the government with his money and his influence. At a war-meeting in April, 1861, he made a speech in which he said: “The end of American slavery is at hand. The first gun fired at Fort Sumter announced the fact that the last fugitive slave had been returned. . . . The armed men who go south should go more in sorrow than in anger. The sad necessity should be their only excuse for going. They must still love the south; we must all still love her. As her chiefs shall, one after another, fall into our hands, let us be restrained from dealing revengefully, and moved to deal tenderly with them, by our remembrance of the large share which the north has had in blinding them.” In accordance with this sentiment, two years after the war, he united with Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt in signing the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis. At the outset he offered to equip a regiment of colored men, if the government would accept them. Mr. Smith left an estate of about $1,000,000, having given away eight times that amount during his life. He wrote a great deal for print, most of which appeared in the form of pamphlets and broadsides, printed on his own press in Peterboro. His publications in book-form were “Speeches in Congress” (1855); “Sermons and Speeches” (1861); “The Religion of Reason” (1864); “Speeches and Letters” (1865); “The Theologies” (2d ed., 1866); “Nature the Base of a Free Theology” (1867); and “Correspondence with Albert Barnes” (1868). His authorized biography has been written by Octavius BORN Frothingham (New York, 1878).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 583-584.


Hale, John P., 806-1873, New Hampshire, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator.  Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  Liberty Party candidate for U.S. President, 1847 (lost).  President of the Free Soil Party, 1852.  Elected to Congress in 1842, he opposed the 21^st Rule suppressing anti-slavery petition to Congress.  Refused to support the annexation of Texas in 1845.  Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1846, he was the first distinctively anti-slavery Senator.  Adamantly opposed slavery for his 16 years in office.  U.S. Senator, 1847-1853, 1855-1865.  In 1851, served as Counsel in the trial of rescued slave Shadrach.  In 1852, he was nominated for President of the United States, representing the Free Soil Party.  As U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 8, 35, 51-54, 74, 100-102, 121, 126, 152, 164, 170, 205, 220; Filler, 1960, pp. 187, 189, 213, 247; Goodell, 1852, p. 478; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 20, 28, 29, 33-37, 43-46, 51, 60, 63-65, 68, 72, 254n; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 50, 54, 298; Sorin, 1971, pp. 130, 132; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 33-34; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 105; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 862; Congressional Globe).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

HALE, John Parker, senator, born in Rochester, New Hampshire, 31 March, 1806; died in Dover, New Hampshire, 19 November, 1873. He studied at Phillips Exeter academy, and was graduated at Bowdoin in 1827. He began his law studies in Rochester with Jeremiah H. Woodman, and continued them with Daniel M. Christie in Dover, where he was admitted to the bar, 20 August, 1830. In March, 1832, he was elected to the state house of representatives as a Democrat. On 22 March, 1834, he was appointed U. S. District Attorney by President Jackson, was reappointed by President Van Buren, 5 April, 1838, and was moved, 17 June, 1841, by President Tyler on party grounds. On 8 March, 1842, he was elected to congress, and took his seat, 4 December, 1843. He opposed the 21st rule suppressing anti-slavery petitions, but supported Polk and Dallas in the presidential canvass of 1844, and was nominated for re-election on a general ticket with three associates. The New Hampshire legislature, 28 December, 1844, passed resolutions instructing their representatives to vote for the annexation of Texas, and President Polk, in his message of that year, advocated annexation. On 7 January, 1845, Mr. Hale wrote his noted Texas letter, refusing to support annexation. The state convention of his party was reassembled at Concord, 12 February, 1845, and under the lead of Franklin Pierce struck Mr. Hale's name from the ticket, and substituted that of John Woodbury. Mr. Hale was supported as an independent candidate. On 11 March, 1845, three Democratic members were elected, but there was no choice of a fourth. Subsequent trials, with the same result, took place 23 September and 29 November, 1845, and 10 March, 1846. During the repeated contests, Mr. Hale thoroughly canvassed the state. At his North Church meeting in Concord, 5 June, 1845. Mr. Pierce was called out to reply, and the debate is memorable in the political history of New Hampshire. At the election of 10 March, 1846, the Whigs and Independent Democrats also defeated a choice for governor, and elected a majority of the state legislature. On 3 June, 1846, Mr. Hale was elected speaker; on 5 June, the Whig candidate, Anthony Colby, was elected governor; and on 9 June. Mr. Hale was elected U. S. Senator for the term to begin 4 March, 1847. In a letter from John G. Whittier, dated Andover, Massachusetts, 3d mo., 18th, 1846, he says of Mr. Hale: “He has succeeded, and his success has broken the spell which has hitherto held reluctant Democracy in the embraces of slavery. The tide of anti-slavery feeling, long held back by the dams and dykes of party, has at last broken over all barriers, and is washing down from your northern mountains upon the slave-cursed south, as if Niagara stretched its foam and thunder along the whole length of Mason and Dixon's line. Let the first wave of that northern flood, as it dashes against the walls of the capitol, bear thither for the first time an anti-slavery senator.” On 20 October, 1847, he was nominated for president by a National Liberty Convention at Buffalo, with Leicester King, of Ohio, for vice-president, but declined, and supported Mr. Van Buren, who was nominated at the Buffalo Convention of 9 August, 1848. On 6 December, 1847, he took his seat in the Senate with thirty-two Democrats and twenty-one Whigs, and remained the only distinctively anti-slavery senator until joined by Salmon P. Chase, 3 December, 1849, and by Charles Sumner, 1 December, 1851. Mr. Hale began the agitation of the slavery question almost immediately upon his entrance into the Senate, and continued it in frequent speeches during his sixteen years of service in that body. He was an orator of handsome person, clear voice, and winning manners, and his speeches were replete with humor and pathos. His success was due to his powers of natural oratory, which, being exerted against American chattel-slavery, seldom failed to arouse sympathetic sentiments in his audiences. Mr. Hale opposed flogging and the spirit-ration in the navy, and secured the abolition of the former by law of 28 September, 1850, and of the latter by law of 14 July, 1862. He served as counsel in 1851 in the important trials that arose out of the forcible rescue of the fugitive slave Shadrach from the custody of the U. S. marshal in Boston. In 1852 he was nominated at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, by the Free-Soil Party for president, with George W. Julian as vice-president, and they received 157,685 votes. His first senatorial term ended, and he was succeeded by Charles G. Atherton, a Democrat, on 4 March, 1853, on which day Franklin Pierce was inaugurated president. The following winter Mr. Hale began practising law in New York City. But the repeal of the Missouri Compromise measures again overthrew the Democrats of New Hampshire; they failed duly to elect U. S. Senators in the legislature of June, 1854, and in March, 1855, they completely lost the state. On 13 June, 1855, James Bell, a Whig, was elected U. S. Senator for six years from 3 March, 1855, and Mr. Hale was chosen for the four years of the unexpired term of Mr. Atherton, deceased. On 9 June, 1858, he was re-elected for a full term of six years, which ended on 4 March, 1865. On 10 March, 1865, he was commissioned minister to Spain, and went immediately to Madrid. Mr. Hale was recalled in due course, 5 April, 1869, took leave, 29 July, 1869, and returned home in the summer of 1870. Mr. Hale, without sufficient cause, attributed his recall to a quarrel between himself and Horatio J. Perry, his secretary of legation, in the course of which a charge had been made that Mr. Hale's privilege, as minister, of importing free of duty merchandize for his official or personal use, had been exceeded and some goods put upon the market and sold. Mr. Hale's answer was, that he had been misled by a commission-merchant, instigated by Mr. Perry. The latter was moved 28 June, 1869. Mr. Hale had been one of the victims of the “National hotel disease,” and his physical and mental faculties were much impaired for several years before his death. Immediately upon his arrival home he was prostrated by paralysis, and shortly afterward received a fracture of one of the small bones of the leg when thrown down by a runaway horse. In the summer of 1873 his condition was further aggravated by a fall that dislocated his hip. Appleton’s 1892 p. 29.


Goodell, William, Reverend 1792-1878, New York City, reformer, temperance activist, radical abolitionist.  Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Published anti-slavery newspaper, The Investigator, founded 1829 in Providence, Rhode Island; merged with the National Philanthropist the same year.  Wrote Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1852. Co-founder of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, 1833.  Editor of The Emancipator, and The Friend of Man, in Utica, New York, the paper of the New York Anti-Slavery Society.  Co-founded the Anti-Slavery Liberty Party in 1840.  Was its nominee for President in 1852 (lost) and 1860 (lost).  In 1850, edited American Jubilee, later called The Radical Abolitionist.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 19, 20, 23, 25, 32, 34, 50, 53, 54, 101; Drake, 1950, p. 177; Dumond, 1961, pp. 167, 182, 264-265, 295; Goodell, 1852; Harrold, 1995, pp. 11-13, 34, 36, 38, 58-59, 104-105, 147-148; Mabee, 1970, pp. 48, 107, 187, 228, 246, 249, 252, 300, 333, 341, 387n11, 388n27; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 1, 7, 22, 29, 31, 35, 46, 63, 64, 71, 72, 162-163, 199, 225, 257n; Pease, 1965, pp. 411-417; Sorin, 1971, pp. 411-417; Van Broekhoven, 2001, pp. 30-31, 35-36, 87; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 384; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 236; Sernett, 2002, pp. 32, 36, 40-41, 53, 73-74, 93, 97-98, 120-121, 123, 153, 204, 275, 303n62, 341-342n68; Sorin, 1971, pp. 25, 57-62, 113-114, 126, 130)


Holley, Myron, 1779-1841, Rochester, New York, abolitionist leader, political leader, reformer. Founder of the Liberty Party. Published the anti-slavery newspaper, Rochester Freeman.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 20, 23, 25, 26; Chadwick, 1899; Dumond, 1961, pp. 295-296, 404n16; Goodell, 1852, pp. 470, 474, 556; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 16-17, 21; Sernett, 2002, pp. 107-109, 112, 180, 305-306n17; Sorin, 1971; Wright, 1882; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 236; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 150; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 11, p. 62).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

HOLLEY, Myron, reformer, born in Salisbury, Connecticut, 29 April, 1779; died in Rochester, New York, 4 March, 1841. He was graduated at Williams in 1799, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1802. He began practice in Salisbury, but in 1803 settled in Canandaigua, New York. Finding the law uncongenial, he purchased the stock of a local bookseller and became the literary purveyor of the town. In 1810-'14 he was county-clerk, and in 1816 was sent to Albany as an assemblyman. The project of the Erie Canal was at that time the great subject of interest, and through the efforts of Mr. Holley a board of commissioners was appointed, of whom he was one. His work thenceforth, until its completion, was on the Erie Canal. For eight years his practical wisdom, energy, and self-sacrifice made him the executive power, without which this great enterprise would probably have been a failure. On the expiration of his term of office, in 1824, as canal-commissioner and treasurer of the board, he retired to Lyons, where with his family he had previously moved. The anti-Masonic excitement of western New York, arising from the abduction of William Morgan, soon drove Mr. Holley into prominence again. This movement culminated in a national convention being held in Philadelphia in 1830, where Henry D. Ward, Francis Granger, William H. Seward, and Myron Holley were the representatives from New York. An "Address to the People of the United States," written by Holley, was adopted and signed by 112 delegates. The anti-Masonic adherents presented a candidate in the next gubernatorial canvass of New York, and continued to do so for several years, until the Whigs, appreciating the advantages of their support, nominated candidates that were not Masons. This action resulted, in 1838, in the election of William H. Seward. Meanwhile, in 1831, Mr. Holley became editor of the Lyons "Countryman," a journal devoted to the opposition and suppression of Masonry; but after three years, this enterprise not having been successful, he went to Hartford, and there conducted the "Free Elector" for one year. He then returned to Lyons, but soon disposed of his property and settled near Rochester, where for a time he lived in quiet, devoting his attention to horticulture. When the anti-slavery feeling began to manifest itself Mr. Holley became one of its adherents. At this time he was offered a nomination to Congress by the Whig Party, provided he would not agitate this question; but this proposition he declined. He participated in the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention held in Cleveland in 1839, and was prominent in the call for a national convention to meet in Albany, to take into consideration the formation of a Liberty Party. At this gathering the nomination of James G. Birney was made, and during the subsequent canvass Mr. Holley was active in support of the candidate, both by continual speaking and by his incessant labors as editor of the Rochester "Freeman." Mr. Holley's remains rest in Mount Hope cemetery, at Rochester, and the grave is marked by an obelisk, with a fine medallion portrait in white marble, the whole having been paid for in one-cent contributions by members of the Liberty Party, at the suggestion of Gerrit Smith. See "Myron Holley; and What he did for Liberty and True Religion," by Elizur Wright (Boston," 1882).  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 236.


Allan, William T., 1810-1882, born in Tennessee, Alabama, clergyman, abolitionist leader, Oberlin College, Illinois, anti-slavery agent.  His father, John Allan, was a pastor in Huntsville, Alabama, who owned 15 slaves.  John Allan supported the Colonization movement and was a member and co-founder of the Alabama Society for the Emancipation of Slavery.  William Allan became a Lecturing Agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Charter Member of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in April 1835.  He graduated from Oberlin College in 1836.  He lectured in New York, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois.  He organized chapters of the new Liberty Party in Iowa and Illinois in 1840.  His home in Illinois was a station on the Underground Railroad.  His father died in 1843, and freed his slaves in his will. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 92-93, 160-164, 185-186; Filler, 1960, p. 68)


Alley, John B., 1817-1896, Lynn, Massachusetts, politician.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Alley was a member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. (Congressional Directory; Congressional Globe).


Appleton, James, General, 1786-1862, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, soldier, clergyman.  Leader of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  Nominee in Liberty Party for Governor of Maine.

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 301, 405n12; Wiley, 1886; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 327; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

APPLETON, James, temperance reformer, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 14 February, 1786; died there, 25 August, 1862. When a young man he was elected to the legislature of his native state, and during the war with Great Britain he served as a colonel of Massachusetts militia, and after the close of the war was made a brigadier-general. During his subsequent residence at Portland, Maine, he was elected to the legislature in 1836-'37, but he returned finally to his native town, where he died. By his speeches and publications he exercised great influence upon public sentiment in favor of abolition and total abstinence. In his report to the Maine legislature in 1837 he was the first to expound the principle embodied in the Maine law. See his “Life,” by S. H. Gay. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 82. 


Bailey, Gamaliel, 1807-1859, Maryland, abolitionist leader, journalist, newspaper publisher and editor.  Publisher and editor of National Era (founded 1847), of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Co-founded Cincinnati Anti-Slavery Society in 1835.  Corresponding Secretary, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Assistant and Co-Editor, The Abolitionist newspaper.  Liberty Party.  Publisher of Liberty Party paper, the Philanthropist, in Ohio.  Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1851-1852.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 21, 25-26, 28, 30, 34, 52, 55, 67, 148-149, 166, 192, 202, 223, 248; Dumond, 1961, pp. 163, 223, 264, 301; Filler, 1960, pp. 78, 150, 194-195, 245, 252; Harrold, 1995; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4, 5, 14, 23, 24, 26, 27, 44, 46, 54, 61, 63, 69, 88-89, 91, 103, 106; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 50, 185; Sinha, 2016, p. 466; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 136; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 496-497; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 1, p. 881; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

BAILEY, Gamaliel, journalist, born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, 3 December, 1807; died at sea, 5 June, 1859. He studied medicine in Philadelphia, and after obtaining his degree in 1828 sailed as a ship's doctor to China. He began his editorial career in the office of the “Methodist Protestant” in Baltimore, but in 1831 he moved to Cincinnati, where he served as hospital physician during the cholera epidemic. His sympathies being excited on the occasion of the expulsion of a number of students on account of anti-slavery views from Lane Seminary, he became an active agitator against slavery, and in 1836 he associated himself with James G. Birney in the conduct of the “Cincinnati Philanthropist,” the earliest anti-slavery newspaper in the west, of which in 1837 he became sole editor. Twice in that year, and again in 1841, the printing-office was sacked by a mob. He issued the paper regularly until after the presidential election of 1844, when he was selected to direct the publication of a new abolitionist organ at Washington. The first number of the “National Era,” published under the auspices of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, appeared 1 January, 1847. In 1848 an angry mob laid siege to the office for three days, and finally separated under the influence of an eloquent harangue by the editor. The “Era,” in which “Uncle Tom's Cabin” originally appeared, ably presented the opinions of the anti-slavery party. Dr. Bailey died while on a voyage to Europe for his health.   Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 136.


Bailey, Wesley, editor (Sernett, 2002, p. 123). New York, abolitionist leader (Sorin, 1971).


Barnett, James, Madison County, New York (New York Civil List). 1810-1875, Oneida, Madison county, New York.  Political leader.  Member, Liberty party, Republican Party, 1856.  Friend of abolitionist Gerrit Smith. (New York Civil List).


Bell, S. M., Liberty Party candidate for U.S. Vice President, 1852 (lost). Virginia.  Vice Presidential candidate for the Liberty Party in 1852 (lost).  Opposed slavery.


Beman, Amos Geary, 1812-1874, New Haven, Connecticut, African American clergyman, abolitionist, speaker, temperance advocate, community leader.  Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society 1833-1840.  Later, founding member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Traveled extensively and lectured on abolition.  Leader, Negro Convention Movement.  Founder and first Secretary of Anti-Slavery Union Missionary Society.  Later organized as American Missionary Association (AMA), 1846.  Championed Black civil rights.  Promoted anti-slavery causes and African American civil rights causes, worked with Frederick Douglass and wrote for his newspaper, The North Star. 

(Sinha, 2016, p. 467; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 540; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 1, p. 463; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Beman, Jehiel C., c. 1789-1858, Connecticut, Boston, Massachusetts, African American, clergyman, abolitionist, temperance activist.  Manger, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1839.  Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1841-1843.

(Sinha, 2016, p. 467; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 1, p. 477; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Bibb, Henry Walton, 1815-1854, African American, author, newspaper publisher, fugitive slave, anti-slavery lecturer, abolitioinst.  Wrote Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, 1849.  Published Voice of the Fugitive: An Anti-Slavery Journal, in 1851.  Organized the North American League.  Lectured for Michigan Liberty Party. 

(Dumond, 1961, p. 338; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 220, 447, 489, 618-619, 632-634; Sinha, 2016, p. 468; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 717; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 1, p. 532; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Booth, Sherman M., 1812-1904, Wisconsin, abolitionist leader, orator, politician, temperance activist.  Editor of anti-slavery newspaper, the Wisconsin Freeman, in Racine, Wisconsin.  Member, Free Soil Party, and helped found the Liberty Party.  Published Libery Party newspaper, American Freedman.  Assisted runaway slave Joshua Glover.  Was arrested, tried and convicted for violation of Fugitive Slave Law.  Booth was acquitted under Wisconsin State law.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 6-7, 13, 117-137, 267, 268; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 62, 151; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Bradburn, George, 1806-1880, Nantucket, Massachusetts, politician, US Congressman representing the Free Soil Party, newspaper editor, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, lecturer.  Member, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-1845.  Vice President, Liberty Party.  Attended World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in June 1840, where he protested the exclusion of women from the conference.  Lectured for the American Anti-Slavery Society with fellow abolitionists William A. White and Frederick Douglass in 1843.  Editor, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom from 1846 to 1849 in Lynn, Massachusetts.

(Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 345; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Bradley, Henry, gubernatorial candidate (Sernett, 2002, p. 123), New York, abolitionist leader (Sorin, 1971).


Brainerd, Lawrence, 1794-1870, anti-slavery activist, temperance activist, capitalist, statesman, U.S. Senator, elected 1854, member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833-1839.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 358; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, p. 594)


Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

BRAINERD, Lawrence, senator, born in 1794; died in St. Albans, Vermont, 9 May, 1870. He was active in forwarding the political, commercial, and railroad interests of Vermont, and was for several years candidate for governor. After the death of Senator Upham, Mr. Brainerd was chosen to the Senate as a Free-Soiler for the remainder of the term, serving from 5 December, 1854, till 3 March, 1855. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 358.


Brisbane, William Henry, 1803-1878, South Carolina, physician, abolitionist leader.  Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Clergyman, Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin.  Chief Clerk of the Wisconsin State Senate.  He inherited slaves, however he realized slavery was wrong.  In 1835, Brisbane freed 33 of his slaves, bringing them to the North where he helped them settle.  As a result, he was criticized by his family and friends.  He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked for the abolitionist cause.  He founded the Baptist Anti-Slavery Society in 1841.  He was fired for being too anti-slavery.  Leader in the Liberty Party in the Cincinnati area in early 1840s.  He was active with Levi Coffin in the Underground Railroad.  He was publisher of the Crisis, an abolitionist newspaper, which was widely distributed.  He wrote two anti-slavery books. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 93, 286; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 378)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

BRISBANE, William H., clergyman, born about 1803; died in Arena, Wisconsin, in 1878. He inherited a large number of slaves, but became convinced that slavery was wrong, and in 1835 brought thirty-three of them to the north, manumitting them and aiding them to settle in life. In consequence of this, he was obliged to take rank among the poor men of the country. Making his home in Cincinnati, he became the associate of prominent abolitionists, and a constant worker in their cause. In the early days of the anti-slavery agitation he was among its foremost advocates. In 1855 he moved to Wisconsin, was chief clerk of the state senate in 1857, became pastor of the Baptist Church in Madison, and early in the Civil War was tax commissioner of South Carolina. In June, 1874, he took an active part in the reunion of the old abolition guards in Chicago. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 378.


BUFFUM, Arnold, 1782-1859, Smithfield, Rhode Island, Indiana, New York, New York, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, temperance reformer, philanthropist.  Mayor of Lynn, Massachusetts.  Member, Massachusetts House of Representatives.  Co-founder (with William Lloyd Garrison) and first president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, in 1832.  Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833.  Manager, Massachusetts, 1833-1837; Manager, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1835-1837; Vice President, 1834-1836.  Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1846-1855. Active in support of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  Lectured extensively against slavery.  Visited England to promote abolitionism.  Was influenced by English anti-slavery leaders Clarkson and Wilberforce. (Drake, 1950, pp. 137, 157-158, 162-163, 178; Pease, 1965, pp. 418-427; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 218, 401, 433; Staudenraus, 1961, pp. 195-198, 209-210; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 18, 20, 22, 58, 62, 66, 67; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Buffum, Arnold, Lectures Showing the Necessity for a Liberty Party, and Setting Forth its Principles, Measures and Object, 1844; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 241; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 320)


Burchard, Charles, political leader, 1810-1879, New York, Wisconsin, political leader, opposed slavery.  Member of the Whig and Liberty Parties.  Major in the Civil War.


Burleigh, William Henry, 1812-1871, Connecticut, journalist.  Active in temperance, peace and women’s rights movements.  Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society. Editor of the anti-slavery newspapers Christian Freeman, newspaper of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, and the Charter Oak.  Leader of the Liberty Party.  In 1836, he was appointed a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  In 1840-1841, Burleigh was a Manager of the AASS.  As a result of his protesting the war against Mexico, which he felt was being fought for the “slave power,” Burleigh was attacked by mobs and barely escaped being hurt.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 186, 265, 273, 301; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 455; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 280; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 961)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

BURLEIGH, William Henry, journalist, born in Woodstock, Connecticut, 2 February, 1812 ; died in Brooklyn, New York, 18 March, 1871. He was a lineal descendant, on his mother's side, of Governor Bradford. His father, a graduate of Yale in 1803, had been a popular and successful teacher, but in 1827 became totally blind. William, who had been bred on a farm and educated principally by his father, was now apprenticed to a clothier and afterward to a village printer. He contributed to the columns of the newspaper it was a part of his duty to print, not in written communications, but by setting up his articles without the intervention of writing. From the autumn of 1832 till 1835 he was almost constantly engaged in editorial duties and in charge of papers advocating one or all of the great reforms then agitating the public mind—anti-slavery, temperance, and peace. Though naturally one of the most genial and amiable of men, Mr. Burleigh was stern in his adherence to principle. In 1836 he added to his editorial duties the labor of lecturing in behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and defending their views. For a time, he had charge of the “Literary Journal” in Schenectady, then became in 1837 editor of the Pittsburg “Temperance Banner,” afterward called the “Christian Witness,” the organ of the Western Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. In 1843 he was invited to Hartford by the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, and took charge of its organ, the “Christian Freeman,” which soon became the “Charter Oak,” a vigorously edited and brilliant defender of the anti-slavery and temperance reforms. Mr. Burleigh afterward took charge of the Washington “Banner.” He struck trenchant blows at popular vices and political depravity in his papers, and received his reward more than once in mob violence. But while he deemed this heroic defence of unpopular doctrines a duty, and maintained it with unfaltering heart, he disliked controversy, and, whenever he could command the means for it, he would establish a purely literary paper, which, though generally short-lived, always contained gems of poetry and prose from his prolific pen, and avoided controversial topics. In 1850 he disposed of the “Charter Oak” to the Free-Soilers, the nucleus of the Democratic Party, and moved to Syracuse, and subsequently to Albany, New York, to be the general agent and lecturer of the New York State Temperance Society and-editor of the “Prohibitionist.” When in 1855 Governor Clark offered him, unsolicited, the place of harbor-master of the port of New York, he accepted it and moved to Brooklyn. For the next fifteen years he was either harbor-master or port-warden, but found time for much literary and some political labor. In the political campaigns he was in demand as a speaker, and his thorough knowledge of all the questions before the people, together with his eloquence, made him popular. He was also in request as a lyceum lecturer, especially on anti-slavery subjects. A collection of his poems was published in 1841, followed by enlarged editions in 1845 and 1850. A part of these were after his death published, with a memoir by his widow (Boston, 1871).—His wife, Celia, reformer, born in Cazenovia, New York, in 1825; died in Syracuse, 26 July, 1875. She was a teacher, and in 1844 married C. B. Kellum and moved with him to Cincinnati. She was divorced from him, and in 1851 married Charles Chaucey Burr; was again divorced, and in 1865 married Mr. Burleigh. She was the first president of the Woman’s club, Brooklyn, and took an active part in advocating woman suffrage and other reform movements. After Mr. Burleigh's death she prepared herself for the ministry, and was pastor of a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, Connecticut, until 1873; but failing health compelled her to resign in October, 1871, when she went to the water-cure establishment of Dr. Jackson in Danville, New York Mrs. Burleigh had a wide reputation as an able writer and an eloquent speaker. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 455.


Burrit, Elihu, vice presidential candidate

(Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 195, 202, 203, 236, 257, 327, 329, 334, 340, 343, 363, 365, 366, 369, 372, 278, 420n1; Sernett, 2002, p. 123). 1810-1879, reformer, free produce activist, advocate of compensated emancipation (Burritt, 1856, pp. 11-18, 30-33; Dumond, 1961, p. 350; Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 195, 202, 203, 236, 257, 327, 329, 334, 340, 343, 363, 365, 366, 369, 372, 378, 420n1; Pease, 1965, pp. 200-205, 427; Appletons’, 1888, Vol. 1, p. 469; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 328)


Carey, Shepard, 1805-1866, Maine, abolitionist, political leader.  U.S. House of Representatives, 1843, 1850-1853.  Candidate for Governor in Liberty Party in Maine in 1854, lost. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Chaplin, William L., 1796-1871, abolitionist leader, Farmington, New York.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839-1840.  Agent of the New York Anti-Slavery Society.  He was known as “The General.”

(Dumond, 1961, p. 297; Goodell, 1852, pp. 246, 445, 463, 556; Harrold, 1995, pp. 60, 70-74, 110; Sernett, 2002, pp. 122, 130, 132-133, 310nn3,4; Sorin, 1971, p. 113; Radical Abolitionist)


Chase, Salmon P., 1808-1873, statesman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1864-1873, abolitionist, member, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, Anti-Slavery Republican Party.  “A slave is a person held, as property, by legalized force, against natural right.” – Chase.

“The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character.  It did not make it a national institution… Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you?...Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery?  It is, fellow citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government.  We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.”

“Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated.  Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability… It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.”

(Blue, 2005, pp. 19, 30, 34, 61, 70-73, 76-78, 84, 99, 100, 121, 122, 123, 124, 177, 178, 209, 220, 225, 226, 228, 247, 248, 259; Dumond, 1961; Filler, 1960, pp. 142, 176, 187, 197-198, 229, 246; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4-5, 8-9, 23, 24, 25-32, 33-36, 61-64, 67, 68, 70-72, 76, 87, 89, 94, 118, 129, 136, 156, 165, 166, 168-169, 177, 187, 191, 193, 195-196, 224, 228, 248; Pease, 1965, pp. 384-394; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 46, 56, 58, 136, 173, 298, 353-354, 421, 655-656; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 585-588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 34; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 739; Hart, Albert Bushnell, Salmon Portland Chase, 1899)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CHASE, Salmon Portland, statesman, b, in Cornish, New Hampshire, 13 January, 1808; died in New York City, 7 May, 1873. He was named for his uncle, Salmon, who died in Portland, and he used to say that he was his uncle's monument. He was a descendant in the ninth generation of Thomas Chase, of Chesham, England, and in the sixth of Aquila Chase, who came from England and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. Salmon Portland was the eighth of the eleven children of Ithamar Chase and his wife Jannette Ralston, who was of Scottish blood. He was born in the house built by his grandfather, which still stands overlooking Connecticut River and in the afternoon shadow of Ascutney Mountain. Of his father's seven brothers, three were lawyers, Dudley becoming a U. S. Senator; two were physicians; Philander became a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and one, like his father, was a farmer. His earliest teacher was Daniel Breck, afterward a jurist in Kentucky. When the boy was eight years old his parents moved to Keene, where his mother had inherited a little property. This was invested in a glass-factory; but a revision of the tariff, by which the duty on glass was lowered, ruined the business, and soon afterward the father died. Salmon was sent to school at Windsor, and made considerable progress in Latin and Greek. In 1820 his uncle, the bishop of Ohio, offered to take him into his family, and the boy set out in the spring, with his brother and the afterward famous Henry R. Schoolcraft, to make the journey to what was then considered the distant west. They were taken from Buffalo to Cleveland by the “Walk-in-the-Water,” the first steamboat on the great lakes. He spent three years in Worthington and Cincinnati with his uncle, who attended to his education personally till he went to England in 1823, when the boy returned home, the next year entered Dartmouth as a junior, and was graduated in 1826. He at once established a classical school for boys in Washington, D. C., which he conducted with success, at the same time studying law with William Wirt. Mr. Chase gave much of his leisure to light literature, and a poem that was addressed by him to Mr. Wirt's daughters was printed and is still extant. In 1830, having completed his studies, he closed the school, was admitted to the bar in Washington, and settled in Cincinnati, where he soon obtained a large practice. In politics he did not identify himself with either of the great parties; but on one point he was clear from the first: he was unalterably opposed to slavery, and in this sentiment he was confirmed by witnessing the destruction of the “Philanthropist” office by a pro-slavery mob in 1836. In 1837 he defended a fugitive slave woman, claimed under the law of 1793, and took the highest ground against the constitutionality of that law. One of the oldest lawyers in the court-room was heard to remark concerning him: “There is a promising young man who has just ruined himself.” In 1837 Mr. Chase also defended his friend James G. Birney in a suit for harboring a Negro slave, and in 1838 he reviewed with great severity a report of the judiciary committee of the state senate, refusing trial by jury to slaves, and in a second suit defended Mr. Birney. When it became evident, after the brief administration of Harrison was over and that of Tyler begun, that no more effective opposition to the encroachments of slavery was to be expected from the Whig than from the Democratic Party, a Liberty Party was organized in Ohio in December, 1841, and Mr. Chase was foremost among its founders. The address, which was written by Mr. Chase, contained these passages, clearly setting forth the issues of a mighty struggle that was to continue for twenty-five years and be closed only by a bloody war: “The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution. . . . Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you? . . . Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow-citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.” Writing of this late in life Mr. Chase said: “Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, and the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability. . . . It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.” Mr. Chase acted as counsel for so many blacks who were claimed as fugitives that he was at length called by Kentuckians the “attorney-general for runaway Negroes,” and the colored people of Cincinnati presented him with a silver pitcher “for his various public services in behalf of the oppressed.” One of his most noted cases was the defence of John Van Zandt (the original of John Van Trompe in “Uncle Tom's Cabin”) in 1842, who was prosecuted for harboring fugitive slaves because he had overtaken a party of them on the road and given them a ride in his wagon. In the final hearing, 1846, William H. Seward was associated with Mr. Chase, neither of them receiving any compensation. 

When the Liberty Party, in a national convention held in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, nominated James G. Birney for president, the platform was almost entirely the composition of Mr. Chase. But he vigorously opposed the resolution, offered by John Pierpont, declaring that the fugitive-slave-law clause of the constitution was not binding in conscience, but might be mentally excepted in any oath to support the constitution. In 1840 the Liberty Party had cast but one in 360 of the entire popular vote of the country. In 1844 it cast one in forty, and caused the defeat of Mr. Clay. The Free-Soil Convention that met in Buffalo in 1848 and nominated Martin Van Buren for president, with Charles Francis Adams for vice-president, was presided over by Mr. Chase. This time the party cast one in nine of the whole number of votes. In February, 1849, the Democrats and the Free-Soilers in the Ohio legislature formed a coalition, one result of which was the election of Mr. Chase to the U. S. Senate. Agreeing with the Democracy of Ohio, which, by resolution in convention, had declared slavery to be an evil, he supported its state policy and nominees, but declared that he would desert it if it deserted the anti-slavery position. In the Senate, 26 and 27 March, 1850, he made a notable speech against the so-called “compromise measures,” which included the fugitive-slave law, and offered several amendments, all of which were voted down. When the Democratic Convention at Baltimore nominated Franklin Pierce for president in 1852, and approved of the compromise acts of 1850, Senator Chase dissolved his connection with the Democratic Party in Ohio. At this time he addressed a letter to Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, suggesting and vindicating the idea of an independent democracy. He made a platform, which was substantially that adopted at the Pittsburg Convention, in the same year. He continued his support to the independent Democrats until the Kansas-Nebraska bill came up, when he vigorously opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, wrote an appeal to the people against it, and made the first elaborate exposure of its character. His persistent attacks upon it in the Senate thoroughly roused the north, and are admitted to have influenced in a remarkable degree the subsequent struggle. During his senatorial career Mr. Chase also advocated economy in the national finances, a Pacific Railroad by the shortest and best route, the homestead law (which was intended to develop the northern territories), and cheap postage, and held that the national treasury should defray the expense of providing for safe navigation of the lakes, as well as of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

In 1855 he was elected governor of Ohio by the opponents of the Pierce administration. His inaugural address recommended single districts for legislative representation, annual instead of biennial sessions of the legislature, and an extended educational system. Soon after his inauguration occurred the Garner tragedy, so called, in which a fugitive slave mother, near Cincinnati, attempted to kill all of her children, and did kill one, to prevent them from being borne back to slave-life in Kentucky. This and other slave-hunts in Ohio so roused and increased the anti-slavery sentiment in that place that Governor Chase was re-nominated by acclamation, and was re-elected by a small majority, though the American or Know-Nothing Party had a candidate in the field. In the National Republican Convention, held at Chicago in 1860, the vote on the first ballot stood: Seward, 173½; Lincoln, 102; Cameron, 50½; Chase, 49. On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln lacked but four of the number necessary to nominate, and these were given by Mr. Chase's friends before the result was declared. When Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated president, 4 March, 1861, he made Governor Chase secretary of the treasury. The difficulty that he was immediately called upon to grapple with is thus described by Mr. Greeley: “When he accepted the office of secretary of the treasury the finances were already in chaos; the current revenue being inadequate, even in the absence of all expenditure or preparation for war, his predecessor (Cobb, of Georgia) having attempted to borrow $10,000,000, in October, 1860, and obtained only $7,022,000—the bidders to whom the balance was awarded choosing to forfeit their initial deposit rather than take and pay for their bonds. Thenceforth he had tided over, till his resignation, by selling treasury notes, payable a year from date, at 6 to 12 per cent. discount; and when, after he had retired from the scene, General Dix, who succeeded him in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, attempted (February, 1861) to borrow a small sum on twenty-year bonds at 6 per cent., he was obliged to sell those bonds at an average discount of 9½ per cent. Hence, of Mr. Chase's first loan of $8,000,000, for which bids were opened (2 April) ten days before Beauregard first fired on Fort Sumter, the offerings ranged from 5 to 10 per cent. discount; and only $3,099,000 were tendered at or under 6 per cent. discount—he, in the face of a vehement clamor, declining all bids at higher rates of discount than 6 per cent., and placing soon afterward the balance of the $8,000,000 in two-year treasury notes at par or a fraction over.” When the secretary went to New York for his first loan, the London “Times” declared that he had “coerced $50,000,000 from the banks, but would not fare so well at the London Exchange.” Three years later it said “the hundredth part of Mr. Chase's embarrassments would tax Mr. Gladstone's ingenuity to the utmost, and set the [British] public mind in a ferment of excitement.” In his conference with the bankers the secretary said he hoped they would be able to take the loans on such terms as could be admitted. “If you cannot,” said he, “I shall go back to Washington and issue notes for circulation; for it is certain that the war must go on until the rebellion is put down, if we have to put out paper until it takes a thousand dollars to buy a breakfast.” At this time the amount of coin in circulation in the country was estimated at $210,000,000; and it soon became evident that this was insufficient for carrying on the war. The banks could not sell the bonds for coin, and could not meet their obligations in coin, and on 27 December, 1861, they agreed to suspend specie payment at the close of the year. In his first report, submitted on the 9th of that month, Secretary Chase recommended retrenchment of expenses wherever possible, confiscation of the property of those in arms against the government, an increase of duties and of the tax on spirits, and a national currency, with a system of national banking associations. This last recommendation was carried out in the issue of “greenbacks,” which were made a legal tender for everything but customs duties, and the establishment of the national banking law. His management of the finances of the government during the first three years of the great war has received nothing but the highest praise. He resigned the secretaryship on 30 June, 1864, and was succeeded a few days later by William P. Fessenden. On 6 December, 1864, President Lincoln nominated him to be chief justice of the United States, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Roger B. Taney, and the nomination was immediately confirmed by the Senate. In this office he presided at the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868. In that year his name was frequently mentioned in connection with the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and in answer to a letter from the chairman of the Democratic National committee he wrote: 

“For more than a quarter of a century I have been, in my political views and sentiments, a Democrat, and I still think that upon questions of finance, commerce, and administration generally, the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance. What separated me in former times from both parties was the depth and positiveness of my convictions on the slavery question. On that question I thought the Democratic Party failed to make a just application of Democratic principles, and regarded myself as more democratic than the Democrats. In 1849 I was elected to the Senate by the united votes of the old-line Democrats and independent Democrats, and subsequently made earnest efforts to bring about a union of all Democrats on the ground of the limitation of slavery to the states in which it then existed, and non-intervention in these states by Congress. Had that union been effected, it is my firm belief that the country would have escaped the late Civil War and all its evils. I never favored interference by Congress with slavery, but as a war measure Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation had my hearty assent, and I united, as a member of his administration, in the pledge made to maintain the freedom of the enfranchised people. I have been, and am, in favor of so much of the reconstruction policy of Congress as based the re-organization of the state governments of the south upon universal suffrage. I think that President Johnson was right in regarding the southern states, except Virginia and Tennessee, as being, at the close of the war, without governments which the U.S. government could properly recognize—without governors, judges, legislators, or other state functionaries; but wrong in limiting, by his reconstruction proclamations, the right of suffrage to whites, and only such whites as had the qualification he required. On the other hand, it seemed to me, Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to the whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens, and of all unable to take a prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of arbitrary military governments for the states, and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions, no classes excluded from suffrage, and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the constitution and laws, and sincere attachment to the constitutional government of the United States. I am glad to know that many intelligent southern Democrats agree with me in these views, and are willing to accept universal suffrage and universal amnesty as the basis of reconstruction and restoration. They see that the shortest way to revive prosperity, possible only with contented industry, is universal suffrage now, and universal amnesty, with removal of all disabilities, as speedily as possible through the action of the state and national governments. I have long been a believer in the wisdom and justice of securing the right of suffrage to all citizens by state constitutions and legislation. It is the best guarantee of the stability of institutions, and the prosperity of communities. My views on this subject were well known when the Democrats elected me to the Senate in 1849. I have now answered your letter as I think I ought to answer it. I beg you to believe me—for I say it in all sincerity—that I do not desire the office of president, nor a nomination for it. Nor do I know that, with my views and convictions, I am a suitable candidate for any party. Of that my countrymen must judge.” 

Judge Chase subsequently prepared a declaration of principles, embodying the ideas of his letter, and submitted it to those Democrats who desired his nomination, as a platform in that event. But this was not adopted by the convention, and the plan to nominate him, if there was such a plan, failed. In June, 1870, he suffered an attack of paralysis, and from that time till his death he was an invalid. As in the case of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, his integrity was shown by the fact that, though he had been a member of the administration when the government was spending millions of dollars a day, he died comparatively poor. His remains were buried in Washington; but in October, 1886, were removed, with appropriate ceremony, to Cincinnati, Ohio, and deposited in Spring Grove cemetery near that city. Besides his reports and decisions, Mr. Chase published a compilation of the statutes of Ohio, with annotations and an historical sketch (3 vols., Cincinnati, 1832). See “Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase,” by J. W. Schuckers (New York, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 585-588.


Childs, William H., New York, abolitionist leader, officer, Liberty Party, June 1848. (Sorin, 1971; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Clark, G. W., New York, Business Committee, Buffalo Convention, June 1848. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Clarke, Cyrus, fugitive slave, abolitionist. (Sinha, 2016, p. 468; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Clarke, Lewis, fugitive slave, abolitionist. (Sinha, 2016, p. 468; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Codding, Ichabod, 1810-1866, born in Bristol, New York, clergyman, weaver, abolitionist, orator.  Anti-slavery agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, commissioned in 1836.  He traveled on anti-slavery lecture tour from 1838-1843, in New England.  He helped co-found and edit anti-slavery newspapers.  He organized state organizations for the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  After 1843, he lectured in Illinois.  He was active in the Anti-Nebraska Convention, Connecticut, in 1843.  He worked with anti-slavery leaders Owen Lovejoy, William Allan, and others.  Lectured against slavery.  (Blue, 2005, pp. 119, 120; Dumond, 1961, p. 186; Filler, 1960, pp. 152, 232, 247; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 673; Codding papers are in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CODDING, Ichabod, clergyman, born in Bristol, New York, in 1811; died in Baraboo, Wisconsin, 17 June, 1866. He became a popular temperance lecturer at the age of seventeen, and during his junior year at Middlebury, where he entered in 1834, interested himself so much in the anti-slavery movement that he obtained leave to speak publicly in its behalf. His addresses raised such a storm of opposition that his life was several times in danger, and the college faculty, fearing the popular fury, represented that his absence was without permission. Codding compelled them to retract this statement, and then; leaving the college, served for five years as agent and lecturer of the Anti-slavery Society, speaking continually in New England and New York. It is said that he never lost his self-command, though often assailed by mobs. He moved to the west in 1842, entered the Congregational ministry, and held pastorates in Princeton, Lockport, Joliet, and elsewhere. He also continued to lecture in the west, where he was greatly admired and loved. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 673


Cole, A. N., New York, Business Committee, 1848 (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Cooley, L. D. L., Brownhelm. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Crozier, Hiram P., Secretary, Liberty Party, June 1848. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Curtis, John, Ohio, President, Liberty Party, June 1848, Chairman Pro Tem. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York) 

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References

(Blue, 2005, pp. ix, 2, 4, 5, 9, 16, 23-35, 49-50, 52, 53, 63, 66, 67, 91, 97-101, 116-118, 144, 163, 214, 218, 236, 265, 267; Dumond, 1961, pp. 285-286, 291, 295-304; Filler, 1960, pp. 145, 152, 155, 176, 178, 181, 213; Goodell, 1855; Harrold, 1995, pp. 10, 41, 55-57, 59, 91, 127, 131, 134-141, 174n10; Mabee, 1970, pp. 40, 56, 72, 227, 228, 246, 247, 252, 387n5; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4, 6-16, 25-29, 31, 44-48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 74, 71, 98, 139, 167, 188, 196, 212, 215, 216, 225, 245, 254n; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 46, 48, 50, 57, 132, 185, 189, 298, 514, 522; Sernett, 2002, pp. 105, 112-125; Sorin, 1971, pp. 18, 21, 22, 27, 35, 31n, 38, 47, 60, 70, 77, 80, 106, 126, 130, 133; Willey, 1897; Wilson, 1872, Vol. 1, pp. 545-555, Vol. 2, pp. 109-113; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York; Johnson, The History of the Liberty Party; Smith, Theodore Clark, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest, New York, 1897)