The Liberty Party was an
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
before the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. The party experienced its greatest activity during the
1840s, while remnants persisted as late as 1860. It supported
James G. Birney in the
presidential elections
A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President.
Elections by country
Albania
The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public.
Chile
The ...
of
1840
Events
January–March
* January 3 – One of the predecessor papers of the ''Herald Sun'' of Melbourne, Australia, ''The Port Phillip Herald'', is founded.
* January 10 – Uniform Penny Post is introduced in the United Kingdom.
* Janu ...
and
1844
In the Philippines, 1844 had only 365 days, when Tuesday, December 31 was skipped as Monday, December 30 was immediately followed by Wednesday, January 1, 1845, the next day after. The change also applied to Caroline Islands, Guam, Marian ...
. Others who attained prominence as leaders of the Liberty Party included
Gerrit Smith,
Salmon P. Chase,
Henry Highland Garnet,
Henry Bibb, and
William Goodell. They attempted to work within the
federal system created by the
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
to diminish the political influence of the
Slave Power and advance the cause of universal emancipation and an
integrated,
egalitarian
Egalitarianism (; also equalitarianism) is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds on the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all h ...
society.
In the late 1830s, the antislavery movement in the United States was divided between
Garrisonian abolitionists, who advocated
nonresistance and
anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is opposition to clergy, religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historically, anti-clericalism in Christian traditions has been opposed to the influence of Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secul ...
and opposed any involvement in electoral politics, and Anti-Garrisonians, who increasingly argued for the necessity of direct political action and the formation of an anti-slavery
third party. At a meeting of the
American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist society in the United States. AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, ...
in May 1840, the Anti-Garrisonians broke away from the Old Organization to form the
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The New Organization included many political abolitionists who gathered in upstate
New York to organize the Liberty Party ahead of the 1840 elections. They rejected the Garrisonian singular emphasis on
moral suasion
Moral suasion is an appeal to morality, in order to influence or change behavior. A famous example is the attempt by William Lloyd Garrison and his American Anti-Slavery Society to end slavery in the United States by arguing that the practice w ...
and asserted that abolitionists should oppose slavery by all available means, including by coordinating at the ballot box.
The party attracted support from former
Whigs and
Jacksonian Democrats alienated by their parties' proslavery national leaderships, as well as the early involvement of women and
African Americans
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...
. Internal disagreements over whether and how the party should cooperate with abolitionists who remained within the two major parties and to what extent Liberty candidates should address issues beyond slavery intensified after 1844. In 1847 party leaders favoring a coalition with antislavery
Conscience Whigs and
Barnburner Democrats succeeded in nominating
John P. Hale for president over Gerrit Smith, the candidate of the radical Liberty League. Hale was an
Independent Democrat who had opposed the
gag rule in
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
and voted against the
annexation of Texas but stopped short of endorsing immediate emancipation. Following the
1848 convention of antislavery politicians at
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
, Hale withdrew from the race in favor of
Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren ( ; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as Attorney General o ...
, and most of the Liberty Party folded into the larger
Free Soil Party
The Free Soil Party, also called the Free Democratic Party or the Free Democracy, was a political party in the United States from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party. The party was focused o ...
. Smith and the Liberty League continued to maintain an separate organization and supported an independent ticket in each ensuing election until 1860. Many former Liberty leaders subsequently became founders of the
Republican Party, including Salmon Chase.
History
Creation, 1839–41
Efforts by abolitionists to organize politically began in the late 1830s. The earliest attempts were not made with a new party in mind, as abolitionists hoped to influence the two existing parties. Antislavery voters in
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
demanded candidates announce their position on slavery and awarded or withheld their support accordingly. The success of the "questioning system" proved fleeting, however, as abolitionists discovered candidates frequently would issue antislavery pledges during a campaign, only to abandon their commitments once elected. As party organizations resumed their place as the drivers of national politics after 1828, the need for a dedicated antislavery party to effectively oppose the
bipartisan
Bipartisanship, sometimes referred to as nonpartisanship, is a political situation, usually in the context of a two-party system (especially those of the United States and some other western countries), in which opposing Political party, politica ...
proslavery consensus gradually gained recognition. After 1837, the Democratic Party leadership sought actively to expel antislavery Jacksonians such as
Thomas Morris and
John P. Hale whose principled opposition to slavery was seen as a threat to party unity. While the Whig Party sometimes sought to ingratiate itself with abolitionists, the influence of southern
nullifiers and proslavery northern Cotton Whigs prevented the party from taking a strong antislavery stance. Committed to the union of the states, both parties sought to suppress issues such as slavery which threatened to split the country along sectional lines.
The overwhelming hostility of the established parties encouraged a growing opinion in abolitionist circles favoring creation of an independent antislavery party. The first movement toward this object took place at
Warsaw, New York
Warsaw is a town in Wyoming County, in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 5,316 at the 2020 census. It is located approximately 37 miles east southeast of Buffalo and approximately 37 miles southwest of Rochester. The town ma ...
at an abolitionist meeting led by
Myron Holley, formerly one of the commissioners of the
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigability, navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, ...
. The assembly nominated James G. Birney for president and called for a national convention of political abolitionists to meet at
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...
to organize the new party. The Albany convention was attended by 121 delegates from six states who nominated Birney for president and
Thomas Earle for vice president on April 1, 1840. The initial response to the Albany convention was lukewarm; while the Garrisonians continued to oppose any involvement in electoral politics, others felt the nominations were premature and that the political abolitionists needed more time to persuade their colleagues of the necessity of independent political action for the new party to be successful. Nevertheless, electoral tickets pledged to Birney and Earle were organized in every free state. Concerns that the party was still too young to attract the support of most abolitionists proved warranted. Birney polled fewer than 7,000 votes in the 13 states where there were electors pledged to him; in four of these (
Connecticut
Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
,
Indiana
Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
, and
Rhode Island
Rhode Island ( ) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Is ...
), he received fewer than 100 votes. He received no votes from the slave states, where the party had not been organized. The Whig ticket of
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773April 4, 1841) was the ninth president of the United States, serving from March 4 to April 4, 1841, the shortest presidency in U.S. history. He was also the first U.S. president to die in office, causin ...
and
John Tyler
John Tyler (March 29, 1790 – January 18, 1862) was the tenth president of the United States, serving from 1841 to 1845, after briefly holding office as the tenth vice president of the United States, vice president in 1841. He was elected ...
was elected with 234 electoral votes to 60 for the incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren; Harrison's share of the vote in the free states (52.42%) dwarfed Birney's less than one percent showing.
The party initially went by a number of different names, including the Human Rights Party, the Abolition Party, and the Freemen's Party. The 1841 national convention held at Albany selected the "Liberty Party" as the movement's official name.
Rise, 1841–43

The Liberty Party experienced rapid growth in the years following the
1840 United States elections, particularly in
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
and areas of
Yankee
The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Their various meanings depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, the Northeastern United Stat ...
settlement. Events in
Washington helped drive support for antislavery politics. In April 1841, Harrison died and was succeeded by Vice President Tyler, who became the
10th president of the United States. A
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
n and a slaveholder, Tyler was one of the southern conservatives who joined the Whig Party after 1834 to oppose the expansion of
executive power
The executive branch is the part of government which executes or enforces the law.
Function
The scope of executive power varies greatly depending on the political context in which it emerges, and it can change over time in a given country. In ...
under
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before Presidency of Andrew Jackson, his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses ...
. Tyler broke with Whig congressional leaders over the proposal to recharter the
Bank of the United States, leading to his exit from the Whig Party before the end of 1841; significantly for abolitionists, he was an early and ardent advocate of the
annexation of Texas. Tyler believed American acquisition of
Texas
Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
was necessary to secure the future of slavery in the United States; he, along with
Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, feared that if Texas became aligned with the
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...
, it would become a haven for
freedom seekers and weaken slavery in the
Lower South. Abolitionists drew similar conclusions and opposed Texas annexation as a measure likely to increase the political might of the
Slave Power. The
Tyler-Texas Treaty drew opposition from moderate antislavery congressmen as well, including Hale and
Benjamin Tappan. As northern opposition to annexation mounted, the indecision of the Whigs and Democrats increased the attractiveness of the Liberty Party to antislavery voters as the only principled anti-annexation party.
Between 1841 and 1843, abolitionist opinion shifted perceptibly in favor of independent political action, and the Liberty Party was the recipient of this outpouring of support. While
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
remained a prominent and influential figure, the failure of moral suasion discredited the approach of the AASS, and by 1844, "the Liberty Party was the major vehicle for serious abolitionist sentiment in every state." This support translated to scattered successes in local and state legislative races in areas where abolitionists were an organized and active majority of voters. Elsewhere, Liberty voters could play
kingmaker
A kingmaker is a person or group that has great influence on a monarchy or royal in their political succession, without themselves being a viable candidate. Kingmakers may use political, monetary, religious, and military means to influence the ...
in areas where neither opposing party controlled a majority of the electorate. In the highly competitive and closely divided environment of the
Second Party System, even a modest showing for the Liberty candidates could have deep and lasting effects. Six Liberty members were elected to the
Massachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court, formally the General Court of Massachusetts, is the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts located in the state capital of Boston. Th ...
in 1842, where they held the balance of power in the divided legislature.
That year,
Samuel Sewall polled 5.4 percent as the Liberty candidate for governor, enough to hold both leading candidates below a majority and send the election to the
Massachusetts Senate
The Massachusetts Senate is the upper house of the Massachusetts General Court, the bicameral state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Senate comprises 40 elected members from 40 single-member senatorial districts in the st ...
. The strategy of the Liberty members to leverage their votes to produce a deadlock narrowly failed when one Whig member voted with the Democrats to ensure the abolitionists' defeat, and
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that Sewall "came within a hair's breadth of being governor."
The 1842 campaign in Massachusetts raised significant questions in the internal debate over party strategy. Most Liberty members conceived of the party as a moral crusade to purify American politics from the corrupting influence of the Slave Power. They had renounced their past party allegiances in the belief that the established parties were institutionally committed to slavery and therefore incapable of being converted to abolitionist principles. Many disavowed any cooperation with the established parties, even when local candidates had proven antislavery records. While Independent Democrats like Hale and Conscience Whigs like
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth president of the United States, serving from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diploma ...
and
Joshua Reed Giddings might share some abolitionist priorities, they would still campaign for their parties' proslavery national candidates and did not support immediate, universal emancipation. Editors like
Joshua Leavitt of ''
The Emancipator'' and
James Caleb Jackson of the
Utica ''Liberty Press'' argued that helping to elect such "major party" opponents of slavery ultimately strengthened the Slave Power by extending the life of the established proslavery parties; they called for the Liberty Party to remain an independent organization and work to defeat the proslavery parties outright. Another faction, based in Ohio, sought a coalition with antislavery Whigs and Democrats. Led by Salmon P. Chase and
Gamaliel Bailey, they aimed to broaden the party's appeal beyond the abolitionist movement by emphasizing opposition to slavery's extension and the negative effects of slavery for white northerners.

Strategic disagreements between Leavitt and Chase threatened to divide the party in the approach to the
1844 presidential election. The 1841 national convention had nominated Birney for president and Thomas Morris for vice president. Chase hoped to recruit a nationally prominent politician such as Adams,
New York Governor William Seward, or Judge
William Jay to head the Liberty ticket, and wrote to Birney suggesting that he withdraw from the race. The suggestion offended Birney and enraged Leavitt.
Henry B. Stanton, who supported Birney, reported that many in the Massachusetts Liberty Party preferred Jay, including Sewall and Whittier. When the Liberty National Convention met at
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
in August 1843, however, Birney and Morris were nominated unanimously. The platform adopted by the Buffalo convention showed Chase's influence. Conceding that the
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
lacked the authority to abolish slavery directly, it demanded the "absolute and unqualified divorce" of the federal government from slavery: abolition of slavery in the territories, repeal of the gag rule, and voiding the
Fugitive Slave Clause and other proslavery provisions of the
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
. In this way, the platform writers hoped to contain and ultimately suffocate slavery. The platform sharply criticized the abridgement of
states' rights
In United States, American politics of the United States, political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments of the United States, state governments rather than the federal government of the United States, ...
and
civil liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties of ...
in cases such as
Prigg v. Pennsylvania that upheld the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was an Act of the United States Congress to give effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution ( Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3), which was later superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment, and to al ...
. It attacked the proslavery bias of the national government and demanded "the example and influence of national authority ought to be arrayed on the side of liberty and free labor."
Crisis, 1844–47

Birney received 62,000 votes in the free states, a nearly tenfold increase over his 1840 result. In five states (
Maine
Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
, Massachusetts,
Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
,
New Hampshire
New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
, and
Vermont
Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...
), his share of the total vote exceeded five percent. He received no votes in the slave states. The major issue in the campaign was the annexation of Texas. Martin Van Buren, the early presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, opposed annexation on the grounds that it would inflame sectional tensions between the free and slave states. This position cost him the support of the southern Democrats, and
James K. Polk was
nominated for president on a pro-annexation platform.
Henry Clay
Henry Clay (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate, U.S. Senate and United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives. He was the seventh Spea ...
, the candidate of the Whigs, assumed an ambivalent stance on Texas in an effort to hold together his party's fracturing coalition. He initially opposed annexation, then supported it late in the campaign, only to subsequently clarify that he favored annexation only if it could be achieved without war with
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. Abolitionists mistrusted Clay because of his status as a slaveholder as well as his previous interactions with the abolitionist movement. In a campaign visit to
Richmond, Indiana
Richmond () is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana, United States. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County. In the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 35,720. It is the principal c ...
in 1842, Clay angrily denounced a group of
Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...
who called on him to
manumit his slaves. He distanced himself from his cousin
Cassius Clay, a prominent antislavery editor, and repeatedly attacked the abolitionist movement as divisive and incendiary. A
popular abolitionist song, published in 1844, included the lines, "Railroads to emancipation, / Cannot rest on ''Clay'' foundation." Polk won the election with 170 electoral votes to 105 for Clay. Polk carried
New York and
Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
with less than a majority; if the Liberty voters in these states had all voted for Clay, Clay would have gained both states and thus the presidency. This has led some historians to suggest that the Liberty Party was a
spoiler in 1844, diverting votes that would otherwise have gone to Clay. However, a substantial minority of Liberty voters in 1844 (including vice presidential candidate Thomas Morris) were former Democrats and had no love for Clay. Liberty Party leaders such as Chase and Gerrit Smith aligned more closely with the Jacksonians on national issues apart from slavery, and Birney himself accepted the Democratic nomination for a seat in the
Michigan Legislature
The Michigan Legislature is the legislature of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is organized as a bicameral body composed of the Senate (the upper chamber) and the House of Representatives (the lower chamber). Article IV of the Michigan Con ...
while running as the Liberty candidate for president. Reinhard Johnson notes that most Liberty voters considered the Whigs no less proslavery that the Democrats and likely would not have voted for Clay in any case. Birney's result in 1844 was consistent with or slightly reduced from the Liberty Party's showing in the 1843 state elections, suggesting ex-Whig support for Birney represented voters who had abandoned Clay long before the 1844 campaign.

Birney's defeat reopened the debate over strategy that had troubled the party in 1843. While Birney improved substantially on his result from 1840, his showing compared less favorably to more recent Liberty Party performances in state and local elections. Birney had damaged his credibility by accepting the Democratic nomination for the Michigan Legislature, which allowed Whigs to portray him as a stooge for the Democrats. In the aftermath of the election, Chase and Bailey redoubled their calls for cooperation among antislavery men of all parties. This strategy was most successful in
New Hampshire
New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
, where in
1846
Events
January–March
* January 5 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Country with the United Kingdom.
* January 13 – The Milan–Venice railway's bridge, over the Venetian Lagoon betwee ...
a coalition of antislavery Whigs, Democrats, and Liberty men won a majority in the
legislature
A legislature (, ) is a deliberative assembly with the legal authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country, nation or city on behalf of the people therein. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial power ...
. They elected Hale to the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and ...
, where he served as an Independent Democrat. Another group, including Smith and William Goodell, continued to eschew cross-party cooperation. Instead, they proposed that the Liberty Party should embrace other popular reform causes in order to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate. This group organized the Liberty League to promote their platform and candidates within the Liberty Party. The core disagreement between these two groups was whether Liberty members should consider themselves a "temporary" or "permanent" party. Chase, Bailey, Stanton, and Whittier saw the party as a temporary organization whose role was to initiate a political realignment, with Liberty members joining antislavery Whigs and Democrats in a new, broad-tent anti-extension party. Smith, Goodell, Leavitt, and Birney, meanwhile, insisted that the Liberty Party was a permanent project whose objective was to defeat rather than convert the two established parties.
Increasingly, some Liberty members began to articulate an antislavery legal theory at odds with the accepted Garrisonian interpretation of the Constitution. Garrison, who memorably described the Constitution as "a covenant with death" and "an agreement with Hell," held it to be a proslavery document that committed the national government to slavery's defense. The 1843 Liberty platform accepted this argument in part, demanding the "divorce" of the national government from slavery, but conceding that Congress lacked the authority to abolish slavery directly. After 1844, Liberty leaders including Smith and Goodell began to argue that the Constitution was in fact antislavery and had been wrongly construed by proslavery judges and elected officials.
Lysander Spooner claimed that slavery had been abolished by the
Declaration of Independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another state or failed state, or are breaka ...
and that its continuance after 1776 was unlawful. The antislavery interpretation of the Constitution became a core position of the Liberty League; Chase and Bailey (who after 1847 served as the editor of ''
The National Era'') continued to assert slavery's constitutional status and the need for abolitionists to work within the system of states' rights.
In June 1847, the Liberty League held a convention at
Macedon, New York. The delegates nominated Smith for president and
Elihu Burritt for vice president. Birney,
Lydia Child, and
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott (née Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quakers, Quaker, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position ...
also received votes for president. The purpose of the convention was not to organize a new party, but to influence the upcoming Liberty National Convention. Meanwhile, Chase was working intently to promote Hale as the candidate likeliest to attract support from antislavery voters outside the Liberty Party. Hale was an unconventional choice for most Liberty members. Many had admired his protest against the gag rule and his opposition to the annexation of Texas. He shared many of the Liberty Party's immediate goals, including the
abolition of slavery in the territories. Nevertheless, Hale was not a member of the Liberty Party, nor did he call himself an abolitionist. When the Liberty Party delegates at Buffalo voted overwhelmingly to nominate Hale over Smith, it represented a victory for Chase and the coalitionists. By nominating Hale, the delegates had chosen to fight the next campaign on the narrow ground of opposition to slavery's westward extension, rather than the broader reform agenda advocated by the Liberty League. This position had the advantage of appealing to a wider range of voters than the Liberty Party had previously been able to reach. For the Liberty Leaguers, however, this represented a retreat from the broader evangelical reform spirit that had led them into the abolitionist movement. Their opposition to slavery grew out of a comprehensive ethic of
social justice
Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has of ...
that opposed all forms of inequity and oppression. By nominating Hale, the Liberty Party, in their view, had surrendered its long-term social agenda for the sake of short-term political gain.
Fusion, 1847–48

The struggle between the Liberty League and the coalitionists for control of the Liberty Party occurred as events were rapidly transforming the national context for political antislavery. Following the
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War (Spanish language, Spanish: ''guerra de Estados Unidos-México, guerra mexicano-estadounidense''), also known in the United States as the Mexican War, and in Mexico as the United States intervention in Mexico, ...
, the United States
acquired a
vast tract of land in the southwest comprising the present-day states of
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
,
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
,
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...
,
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
, and parts of
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
,
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
, and
Wyoming
Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...
. Congressional efforts to organize this new territory soon became mired in controversy over the westward extension of slavery. Antislavery Whigs and Democrats united behind a proposal by
David Wilmot to outlaw slavery in the entire Mexican Cession. The Wilmot Proviso easily passed the
House
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air c ...
but stalled in the Senate, where the free and slave states had equal representation. As the debate dragged on into 1848, the issue of slavery's extension promised to be the major issue in the
upcoming presidential election. Once again snubbing Martin Van Buren, the
Democratic National Convention
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 18 ...
nominated
Lewis Cass
Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782June 17, 1866) was a United States Army officer and politician. He represented Michigan in the United States Senate and served in the Cabinets of two U.S. Presidents, Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan. He was also the 1 ...
of Michigan on a platform endorsing
popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state.
In the case of its broad associativ ...
. Clay was again a candidate for the Whigs, but the
convention passed him over in favor of General
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military officer and politician who was the 12th president of the United States, serving from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States ...
. Though publicly neutral on the slavery question, Taylor was a slaveholder and a career military man who had risen to prominence in a war many northern Whigs had fervently opposed. Faced with a choice between a proslavery Democrat and a slaveholding Whig, the moment seemed ripe for a union of antislavery men of all parties like what Chase and the coalitionists had long anticipated.
The Van Buren men were the first to bolt. On June 22, a mass demonstration of
Barnburner Democrats in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
summoned delegates to Utica to nominate an antislavery Democrat to run against the nominees of the two established parties. Simultaneously, Conscience Whigs anticipating the selection of a proslavery national candidate made plans to lead their voters out of the Whig tent. With the rupture of both established party coalitions seemingly imminent, Chase quickly organized a Free Territory Convention that could provide the basis for a coordinated effort by antislavery men of all parties in opposition to the nominees of the Slave Power. Events in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
soon brought these plans to fruition. Taylor secured the Whig nomination on June 9; that evening, a group of fifteen dissident Whig delegates led by
Henry Wilson met and issued the long-awaited call for a new antislavery party. The following day, the Utica Barnburner convention nominated Van Buren for president and
Henry Dodge
Moses Henry Dodge (October 12, 1782 – June 19, 1867) was an American politician and military officer who was Democratic member to the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, Territorial Governor of Wisconsin and a veteran of the Bla ...
for vice president. When Dodge declined the vice presidential nomination, it opened the door for the Barnburners to join the emerging
Free Soil coalition. Representatives of the three factions
met at Buffalo on August 9, 1848, to organize the national Free Soil Party and nominate candidates for president and vice president. Approximately 20,000 men and women were in attendance at the convention, which lasted two days. Hale was still the preferred choice of most Liberty members, but the importance of the Barnburners—by far the largest element of the coalition—required Van Buren be the presidential candidate. Conscience Whig
Charles Francis Adams Sr., the son of the late John Quincy Adams, was nominated for vice president. Hale promptly withdrew from the presidential race, and the large majority of the Liberty Party was subsumed into the Free Soil movement.
The platform of the Free Soil Party was notably more conservative than earlier Liberty Party documents. It confined itself to opposing the extension of slavery into new states and expressly denied the authority of Congress to abolish slavery where it already existed. This, so far, was consistent with the position of the Liberty Party in 1844; but the Free Soil Party rejected the racial egalitarianism of the Liberty Party and the antislavery construction of the
Fifth Amendment for which Chase had argued persistently over the previous decade. It embraced traditional Democratic economic policies many in the Liberty Party had long supported, including a federal
homestead act
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of Federal lands, government land or the American frontier, public domain, typically called a Homestead (buildings), homestead. In all, mo ...
. These points were wholly insufficient for the Liberty League, who revived Gerrit Smith's candidacy under the banner of the reconstituted Liberty Party. An ad hoc national convention held at Buffalo nominated Smith and
Charles C. Foote on a platform embracing the radical implications of the Liberty League's "one idea" philosophy. Declaring themselves unalterably committed to the cause of human freedom and the destruction of all arbitrary distinctions of race, class, and gender, they endorsed the extension of
universal suffrage
Universal suffrage or universal franchise ensures the right to vote for as many people bound by a government's laws as possible, as supported by the " one person, one vote" principle. For many, the term universal suffrage assumes the exclusion ...
,
temperance,
land reform
Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution.
Lan ...
, the
abolition of the army and navy, and a general
boycott of all consumer goods connected with slavery. They expressed solidarity with the
French Revolution of 1848
The French Revolution of 1848 (), also known as the February Revolution (), was a period of civil unrest in France, in February 1848, that led to the collapse of the July Monarchy and the foundation of the French Second Republic. It sparked t ...
and the recent
escape attempt by 177 enslaved people in Washington, D.C.

Almost all Liberty members, however, eventually followed Joshua Leavitt into the Free Soil Party. Early successes in Upper New England encouraged hopes for a political earthquake, as the Free Soilers made strong gains in the Maine and Vermont state elections ahead of November and in Vermont actually replaced the Democrats as the main opposition to the Whigs. In the first presidential election to be held on the same day in every state, Van Buren received 291,000 popular votes, or slightly more than 10 percent. In three states (
Massachusetts
Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
,
New York, and
Vermont
Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...
), the Free Soil Party eclipsed the Democrats as the second-largest party. Most of the new converts were former Democrats attracted by the presence of Van Buren on the top of the ticket; Johnson estimates that even if the New York Barnburners are discounted, "Democrats contributed proportionally more support than the Whigs" to the new party. Twelve Free Soilers were elected to the House of Representatives, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in Ohio elected Chase to the Senate. Downballot the party performed respectably, electing several dozen state legislators across the Upper North. The Liberty ticket of Smith and Foote received fewer than 3,000 votes, almost all from New York. The Free Soil coalition thus spelled the death of the Liberty Party as an independent political force.
Decline, 1849–60

The Buffalo Convention in effect marked the end of the Liberty Party as a significant force in electoral politics. After 1848, the party's grassroots infrastructure was absorbed into the Free Soil Party, and the loyalty of most Liberty leaders and voters transferred to the new organization. A remnant led by Smith and Goodell persisted until 1860 under various names. From his seat in the Senate, Chase emerged as one of the leaders of the Free Soil Party. In 1854, during the vitriolic debates over the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he penned the ''
Appeal of the Independent Democrats The Appeal of the Independent Democrats (the full title was "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States") was a manifesto issued in January 1854, in response to the introduction into the United States Senate o ...
'' and helped to arrange the fusion of the Free Soilers with
other opponents of the Kansas–Nebraska Act to form the
Republican Party. He was a candidate for president at the
1860 Republican National Convention
The 1860 Republican National Convention was a United States presidential nominating convention, presidential nominating convention that met May 16–18 in Chicago, Illinois. It was held to nominate the Republican Party (United States), Republic ...
, but the nomination went to
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
.
Smith was a delegate to the
1852 Free Soil National Convention in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
that nominated Hale for president and
George Washington Julian for vice president. In an open letter "to the Liberty Party of the
County of Madison," he declared that while the platform adopted by the Pittsburgh convention was lacking in certain respects, most notably in its failure to declare slavery unconstitutional, "I, nevertheless, regard myself as a member of that party. It is a good party—and it will, rapidly, grow better." He urged the Liberty Party not to disband, but to maintain a separate organization in hopes of reforming the Free Soil Party through outside pressure. When the Liberty Party met in convention at
Canastota, New York later that year, Smith opposed the motion to nominate a separate presidential ticket and advocated cooperation with the Free Soil Party. Smith's motion carried by a vote of 55–41, whereupon the convention adjourned until October 1; the minority remained behind and nominated Goodell for president. A committee was appointed to interview Hale to determine his views on the constitutionality of slavery. Hale, however, ignored these entreaties. When the Liberty National Convention reconvened on September 30, Smith switched his support to Goodell, and the latter was nominated on a ticket with S. M. Bell. Other Liberty men continued to support Hale.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
warned abolitionists not to desert the Free Soil Party and continued to display the names of Hale and Julian in the masthead of his publication, ''Frederick Douglass' Newspaper'', through the campaign. In the fall election, Goodell received 72 votes in New York, and Smith was elected to Congress from
New York's 22nd congressional district as an independent antislavery candidate.
In 1855, as the Free Soil movement was in the process of being absorbed into the growing Republican Party,
Smith and other Liberty Party veterans met at
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States. With a population of 148,620 and a Syracuse metropolitan area, metropolitan area of 662,057, it is the fifth-most populated city and 13 ...
; lamenting the inadequacy of free soilism and the inefficacy of Garrisonian moral suasion, they declared, "the Liberty Party is the only political party in the land, that insists on the right and duty to wield the political power of the nation for the overthrow of every part and parcel of American Slavery." The convention narrowly decided against arming
antislavery militants in Kansas and approved a declaration demanding the immediate abolition of slavery by the national government, affirming the antislavery character of the Constitution, and promising an "aggressive
..contest with the slave power." The party nominated Smith for president in
1856
Events
January–March
* January 8 – Borax deposits are discovered in large quantities by John Veatch in California.
* January 23 – The American sidewheel steamer SS ''Pacific'' leaves Liverpool (England) for a transatl ...
; Samuel McFarland was nominated for vice president. The pair received 321 popular votes, all from New York and Ohio. Smith made his final bid for the presidency in
1860
Events
January
* January 2 – The astronomer Urbain Le Verrier announces the discovery of a hypothetical planet Vulcan (hypothetical planet), Vulcan at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, France.
* January 10 &ndas ...
; once again, McFarland was the party's vice presidential candidate. They received 176 votes in three states: 35 from
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
, five from
Indiana
Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
, and 136 from Ohio. The election was won by Abraham Lincoln, who went on to serve as president during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. In later years, Smith, Douglass, and other veterans of the Liberty League would join Lincoln's Republican Party, driving the party to ratify the
Thirteenth Amendment and to support the rights of
freed people during
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
.
Ideology and policies
In 1843, Gerrit Smith described the Liberty Party as he understood it to be, "a union of men of all shades of opinion on other subjects, embracing all who are willing to co-operate for the one object of abolishing slavery." By 1847, he had come to amend this view. Despite the electoral success of the New Hampshire coalitionists, Smith judged the prospects of converting the two major parties to antislavery principles were more hopeless than ever, and that the Liberty Party must therefore cease to be a "temporary" party and become a "permanent" party with a comprehensive political program extending beyond the immediate aims of the abolitionist movement. Whether and how the Liberty Party should address issues apart from slavery, and the nature of their relationship to antislavery members of the two established parties, were key points of contention in the internal struggle to define the ideology and character of the Liberty Party prior to 1848.
Political abolitionism
Unlike the later Free Soil and Republican parties, whose leaders disavowed any intent to interfere directly with slavery in the states, the Liberty Party was explicitly abolitionist in its outlook and leadership. The 1841 convention that formed the national party organization and selected the Liberty moniker announced the party's "paramount objects" as namely, "emancipation, abolition,
ndhuman freedom" for all people held in bondage. While moderate critics of slavery frequently sought to distinguish between opposition to the negative social, political, and economic conditions created by slavery and support for the human rights of enslaved people, the Liberty Party made no such distinction. The express aim of the Liberty Party's political program was to bring about the swift, unconditional, and universal emancipation of all enslaved people in the United States. While the Liberty leaders' embrace of direct political action eventually drew them into conflict with William Lloyd Garrison, they shared the immediatist perspective of the AASS and rejected the equivocal position maintained by the
American Colonization Society.
Nonetheless, the
electoralism of the Liberty leaders reflected significant pragmatic and philosophical differences with the Garrisonians respecting the fundamental nature of the United States Constitution and the problem of slavery itself that split the AASS in 1840. Garrison held that the Constitution was an irredeemably proslavery document and strongly opposed abolitionist entry into politics, remaining wholly committed to the strategy of moral suasion. Frederick Douglass initially rejected a political solution to slavery, arguing that emancipation was only practicable by directly challenging anti-Black
prejudice
Prejudice can be an affect (psychology), affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived In-group and out-group, social group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classifi ...
. In contrast, the Liberty leaders increasingly came to see the Constitution as an antislavery document and slavery as a political as well as a moral problem. They noted the absence of any explicit mention of slavery in the Constitution, a fact they interpreted as highly significant in light of the
Somerset case, which had found that slavery could not exist without positive legal sanction. After 1844, Liberty propagandists began arguing that slavery had been ''de jure'' abolished during the
American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
and that its continued existence had no constitutional basis. Douglass came ultimately to accept this view by the time of his celebrated
Fourth of July oration in 1852, when he described the Constitution as a "glorious liberty document" whose true reading had been subverted by corrupt proslavery officials.

Additionally, the experience of the 1830s had persuaded the Liberty leaders that moral suasion alone could not abolish slavery, because "slaveholders did not care for moral suasion abolitionists." Having experienced political persecution at the hands of the United States government through instruments such as the gag rule, they became convinced of the necessity of direct political action to counteract the influence of the Slave Power. Liberty members also clashed with Garrisonians over the issue of nonresistance. Influenced by the involvement of Black abolitionists like Henry Highland Garnet, Liberty meetings sometimes adopted resolutions expressing support for
slave rebellion
A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of slaves have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past. A desire for freedom and the dream o ...
s such as the
Creole case, a step which the Garrisonians were not willing to endorse. While some political abolitionists opposed the involvement of women in the abolitionist movement in leadership roles, including James G. Birney, feminists like Smith, Henry B. Stanton, and Joshua Leavitt who supported an equal role for women in antislavery societies also joined the Liberty Party.
Outside influences shaped the intellectual attitude of the Liberty Party, especially after 1844. The abolitionist movement existed within what Ronald G. Walters called a "reform tradition" in American history; many abolitionists, including Liberty leaders, were active in the early feminist, temperance, nonresistant, and utopian socialist movements. Waters sees the influence of the liberal concept of "possessive individualism" on the abolitionist movement, its language
"an interesting mixture of Christianity and commerce" with roots in 17th century English political thought. In contrast to the nationalist Whig Party, but in line with the Jacksonian Democratic Party, Liberty leaders took a generally skeptical view of
state power consistent with
classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited governmen ...
; the 1848 platform of the Liberty League urged that "what the people can do, it, and in no instance, the Government, should do," and added with respect to public charity that "there would, if not for the abuses and oppressions of Government, be comparatively few poor." The same document praised the policies of the
French democratic socialists, including the
National Workshops.
Liberty literature expressed a general egalitarian outlook with implications extending beyond the abolition of slavery. The platform adopted by the 1843 National Liberty Convention declared, "the Liberty party has not been organized merely for the overthrow of slavery ... but it will also carry out the principle of equal rights into all its practical consequences and applications, and support every just measure conducive to individual and social freedom." This egalitarianism formed the core principle of the Liberty Party and was sometimes called by contemporary participants the movement's unifying "one idea." As the party was tearing itself apart in 1848, the rump National Liberty Convention that nominated Smith and Foote expressed, "the Liberty Party is not a temporary but a permanent party—not a piece-of-an-idea party, but the whole-of-an-idea party—not bound to carry out the one idea of political justice against slavery only, but against wars, tariffs, the traffic in intoxicating drinks, land monopolies, and secret societies, and whatever else is opposed to that comprehensive, great and glorious One Idea."
Whether the Liberty Party should be considered a temporary or permanent party remained a contentious issue up to and after the national convention of the Free Soil Party in 1848, when the majority of Liberty members were subsumed into the larger organization. One group favored a single-minded focus on the abolition of slavery to the exclusion of all other goals and opening the party to all who shared this objective, regardless of their positions on temperance, land reform, or other causes. This included those like Chase who saw the role of the Liberty Party as fundamentally to reform the established parties through outside pressure, prompting an electoral realignment in which Liberty voters would join antislavery Whigs and Democrats in a new, broad-tent anti-extension party. Like the earlier
Anti-Masonic Party
The Anti-Masonic Party was the earliest Third party (United States), third party in the United States. Formally a Single-issue politics, single-issue party, it strongly opposed Freemasonry in the United States. It was active from the late 1820s, ...
, they imagined the Liberty Party would dissolve once its immediate aims were accomplished. Others, namely the Liberty League, understood the Liberty Party as a continuous reform movement animated by a comprehensive political theory embodied by the party's "one idea." In this view, cooperation with factions who shared certain immediate policy objectives with the Liberty Party but rejected its larger egalitarian ethic ultimately weakened the movement and destroyed the usefulness of the Liberty Party as a transformational agent in national politics. These conflicting interpretations of the role of political abolitionism reflected the range of attitudes towards politics and political parties in the
Early Republic and the interaction of various reform causes in the 19th century United States.
Slave Power thesis
Core to the Liberty Party's perspective and political program was the belief, expressed in party literature and resolutions by Liberty meetings and conventions, that the United States government was controlled by a corrupt proslavery
faction who used their political influence to protect slavery and the interests of slaveholders. Liberty members observed that slaveholders had controlled the presidency for all but 12 years between 1789 and 1849, while the national leaders of both established political parties were either slaveholders or held proslavery views. They alleged that major political events such as the
Missouri Crisis, the
Nullification Crisis, the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican–American War had been instigated by slaveholders to increase their political power, and that federal measures such as the gag rule and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 demonstrated the influence of the Slave Power posed a threat to the civil liberties of white northerners as well as
free people of color
In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (; ) were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who we ...
. The ability of the Slave Power thesis to explain the actions of governments and political parties in relation to slavery made it a potent weapon in the hands of political abolitionists, who argued persuasively that proslavery political corruption required organized antislavery political resistance. The cooption of the Whig and Democratic parties by the Slave Power meant that the Liberty Party was the only practical vehicle for political opposition to slavery.
Reinhard Johnson notes that from 1841, the Liberty Party "avoided much of the religious rhetoric and imagery" commonly associated with the abolitionist movement and instead emphasized its opposition to the political influence of the Slave Power. Chase in particular sought to moderate the party's public image and win support from a skeptical northern electorate by casting the anti-Slave Power stance as the party's signature issue. Chase assumed that the national government lacked the authority to abolish slavery in the states and that abolition would therefore necessarily be accomplished by the states themselves; the role of an antislavery party was to weaken slavery by denying it the support of the national government, while persuading the large majority of whites who were not large slaveholders of the benefits of abolition. He assessed that moral arguments appealed to only a narrow swath of the electorate, concentrated in areas of Yankee settlement, while the constitutional violations and economic malaise associated with the domination of the Slave Power posed more compelling reasons for white voters to abandon their former partisan allegiances. Simultaneously, Chase sincerely believed that the domination of the national government by the Slave Power threatened the foundations of republican institutions. By his estimation, large slaveholders accounted for roughly one percent of the population of the United States; considering this, that slaveholders were able to so effectively keep control of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and leadership of both established political parties made a mockery of democratic self-government. In a letter to Joshua Leavitt, Chase and other Ohio Liberty leaders wrote that "the proper end of a Liberty Party
sthe deliverance of the government from the control of the slave power. ... If slavery should cease tomorrow, this great aim would still remain." The destruction of the Slave Power thus appeared as at once the most immediate and practical means of stopping the spread of slavery nationally, a politically useful argument for recruiting new voters to the antislavery cause, and a desirable object in its own right.
Platform

Garrisonian and Anti-Garrisonian abolitionists shared the goal of immediate, unconditional, and universal emancipation for all enslaved people in the United States. While the AASS used moral suasion to work toward this goal, political abolitionists put forward a series of policy proposals designed to isolate and weaken slavery, protect the rights of free and freed people of color, and undermine support for slavery among non-slaveholders.
The platform adopted by the 1843 National Liberty Convention, prepared by Chase, pledged the party to "do all in their power for immediate emancipation." The platform did not call on the national government to abolish slavery in the states, in keeping with Chase's view that Congress lacked constitutional authority for such an action. Instead, it demanded "the absolute and unqualified divorce of the General Government from slavery:" the abolition of slavery in the territories and in the District of Columbia, and in
national waters; the repeal of the Three-Fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution; the repeal of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act; preference for free labor in dispensing federal patronage and contracts; and repeal of the congressional gag rule. The convention expressed support for the efforts of free people of color to achieve equal political and civil rights and declared that the United States military should not be used to suppress an enslaved rebellion. It declared the Fugitive Slave Clause to be null and void, on the reasoning that "any contract, covenant or agreement to do an act derogatory to natural rights is vitiated and annulled by its inherent immorality," and called on the free states to adopt legislation to protect the rights of people of color accused under the national fugitive slave law.
The platform adopted by the 1847 National Liberty Convention reaffirmed that "the paramount object of the Liberty party is the abolition of slavery in the United States by the constitutional acts of the Federal and State Governments." It repeated the demands of the 1843 platform with respect to slavery and the rights of free people of color; the planks relating to slave revolts and the novel legal theory around the Fugitive Slave Clause, however, were dropped. In closing, the delegates expressed their firm conviction that "the measures which we propose ... will result, at no distant day, in the establishment of peaceful emancipation throughout the Union."
Liberty League
Smith was among those dissatisfied by the narrowness of the 1847 platform. In his remarks to the convention, he chastised the delegates for limiting themselves to antislavery agitation and neglecting other pressing issues before the nation. A resolution declaring the Liberty Party a "permanent party" was defeated by a vote of 26 to 103. Smith observed ruefully that "many Liberty men repose a measure of confidence in the pro-slavery parties; and thereby hinder themselves from rightly deciding what should be the character and work of the Liberty party."
When the Liberty League refused to be absorbed into the Free Soil Party in the summer of 1848 and nominated Smith for president as the "genuine" Liberty Party candidate, the adopted a platform and address embracing a comprehensive interpretation of the "one idea" principle. Affirming "the most glaring instance, in which, in our own country, Government fails to afford protection to its own subjects, is slavery," the address positively asserted that the national government "has power, under its Constitution, to abolish every part of American slavery" and declared state laws recognizing slavery to be null and void. It endorsed universal suffrage, a progressive income tax, an end to private ownership of land, prohibition against extrajudicial oaths administered by
secret societies
A secret society is an organization about which the activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...
, temperance, abolition of the army and navy, free trade, a ten-hour workday, and a
homestead exemption
The homestead exemption is a legal regime to protect the value of the homes of residents from property taxes, creditors, and circumstances that arise from the death of the homeowner's spouse, disability, or other situations.
Such laws are found ...
. It opposed public interference in schools and seminaries and publicly funded
internal improvements
Internal improvements is the term used historically in the United States for public works from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century, mainly for the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, can ...
and supported
trade union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
s as an alternative to state intervention in the economy. In addition to these causes, the platform condemned the conduct of the
Polk Administration in the Mexican–American War and expressed support for the free produce movement.
Bases of support
Like the larger antislavery movement from which it sprang, the Liberty Party's strength lay with Protestant evangelicals of Yankee extraction and free people of color. Lee Benson described the profile of the Liberty electorate in western New York as men from "small, moderately prosperous Yankee farming communities," typically individuals of "considerable standing" and "much better than average education," who "shared a common set of 'radical religious beliefs.'" However, Reinhard Johnson notes that Protestant evangelicals in the Liberty Party were "liturgically indistinguishable" from their brethren who did not become political abolitionists, while local leaders struggled to make ends meet and "often lived on the edge of poverty." The party attracted strong support from women and African-Americans, who were involved at the highest levels of the party as delegates, campaign surrogates, and officers in the national organization.
A study of voters in the Liberty Party stronghold of
Smithfield, New York found that Liberty members were substantially less likely to be farmers than non-abolitionists and similarly more likely to be professionals, skilled artisans, or laborers. Most had been born in New York, but a proportionally larger share came from New England compared to the overall population. While some leading citizens joined the Liberty Party, in aggregate Liberty voters were not wealthier or better educated than non-abolitionists. These findings contradict Benson's description of the Liberty electorate but are consistent with the self-portrait of the Liberty Party drawn by contemporary abolitionist writers, who considered themselves the representatives of the "honest, hard-handed, clear-headed free laborers and mechanics of the north."
The intense religiosity of Liberty members was reflected by the involvement of Protestant clergy in the party; Johnson states that at least one-third of Liberty editors and a substantial share of Liberty candidates were ministers. The party drew from evangelical as well as mainline Protestant churches, although Liberty members represented a minority of both groups. Alan M. Kraut speculates that evangelical abolitionists responded to the anti-institutionalism of the
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a k ...
by joining the Liberty Party, a course that was consistent with a religious philosophy that called on Christians to "come out" of corrupt churches, governments, and political parties whose leaders were mired in sin.
Initially, former Whigs made up a large majority of Liberty voters; as the party gained greater support after 1842, it added large numbers of antislavery Democrats, who eventually came to predominate. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of men who cast Liberty ballots in Connecticut gubernatorial elections between 1841 and 1843 had at one time been Whigs. Alienated by the events of the Tyler presidency and the equivocating rhetoric of Whig slaveholders like Henry Clay, they turned to the Liberty Party to vindicate the emancipationist hopes they had once placed in William Henry Harrison. After 1843, the nomination and election of James K. Polk, the Mexican–American War, and the overt hostility of national party leaders to antislavery politics drove many Democrats into the waiting arms of the Liberty Party. Simultaneously, the Whigs regained some support with antislavery voters through the efforts of those like William H. Seward and Joshua Reed Giddings. Resultantly, as the Liberty vote increased in annual elections, it also grew increasingly Democratic. Former Democrats predominated the Liberty Party by the time of its subsumption into the Free Soil Party, and the new organization was sometimes called the Free Democratic Party.
African-Americans

Although legally disenfranchised in most states, free people of color were early, active, and vital supporters of the Liberty Party. Black men served as accredited delegates to the 1843 Liberty National Convention and John J. Zuille,
Theodore S. Wright, and
Charles Bennett Ray served on the nominating committee.
Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet were among the nationally renowned Black abolitionists to address the convention. In Connecticut, the state Liberty Party was founded by
James W. C. Pennington and
Amos Beman, two locally prominent Black abolitionists. As Garrisonianism fell out of favor with Black abolitionists in the 1840s, Black support for the Liberty Party increased. Garnett, Ward, and Henry Bibb were among the party's foremost advocates and regularly clashed with Black Garrisonians who question the motives and strategy of political abolitionists. Frederick Douglass was one such early critic of the Liberty Party, but by 1848 had become involved in political abolitionism and was present at the Buffalo Convention that established the Free Soil Party.
Martin Delany supported the Liberty Party via his newspaper, ''
The Mystery'', and participated in Liberty Party activities in Pittsburgh. In places where state law or local opinion was favorable to Black suffrage, men of color supported the Liberty Party with their ballots. Black men in Michigan voted the Liberty ticket in 1844 despite the whites-only suffrage clause in the
state constitution, and
Colored Conventions in New York and New England frequently adopted resolutions urging the Black community to vote for Liberty candidates.
Black involvement was critical to the success of the Liberty Party. Black abolitionists like Garnet, Ward, and Bibb were effective messengers for the party and their national reputations attracted much-needed publicity. The testimony of freed people was particularly effective in winning over skeptical white audiences. Their presence simultaneously legitimized the Liberty Party in the eyes of the abolitionist movement and pressured the party to take seriously the needs of the Black community. Black abolitionists were the driving force behind the movement in favor of
Black suffrage and the repeal of the
Black Codes; they argued Liberty members should be willing to cooperate with the established parties if they could secure meaningful commitments to support Black suffrage. Liberty meetings and conventions were racially integrated, and Black attendees were "treated equally and mingled freely" with white members. While Black members were rarely candidates for elected office, Ward received 12 votes for vice president at the 1848 convention of the Liberty League, finishing third out of a field of nine candidates.
Women

Women were indispensable participants in the Liberty Party; their involvement in Liberty campaigns and conventions mirrored their importance to the larger abolitionist movement. While the
Cult of Domesticity consigned formal politics to the male sphere, women's role as guardians of morality in their homes and communities allowed them to enter Liberty meetings and speak on behalf of Liberty candidates in their public activism. Most Liberty members considered the party a moral crusade against slavery; an interest in Liberty activities thus appeared a natural extension of the female sphere. Women were frequently present for Liberty conventions and sometimes served as voting delegates. In the
Old Northwest
The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from part of the unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established ...
, with its tradition of women's political involvement, female abolitionists were prominent movers and drivers of the Liberty Party. The
Henry County Female Anti-Slavery Society was the foremost Liberty mouthpiece in Indiana; the preamble and resolutions adopted by the society at its 1841 meeting expressly affirmed "that it is our duty to endeavor by all reasonable means to persuade our fathers, husbands and brothers to make use of their elective franchise to place men in office who will remove these evils
lavery and racial prejudiceby the introduction of righteous and just laws into the civil code of our country." Michigan Liberty women raised funds to support Liberty Party activities. The Illinois Female Anti-Slavery Society coordinated with the state Liberty Party, and female editorialists like Mary Brown Davis promoted the congressional candidacy of
Owen Lovejoy. As the decade progressed, male abolitionists increasingly sought women's involvement in Liberty organizations and conventions.
Abby Kelley attended the 1843 National Liberty Convention despite her Garrisonian leanings and made an impassioned address to the delegates, becoming the first woman to address the national convention of an American political party.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
became involved in Liberty activism through her husband, Henry B. Stanton, and first cousin, Gerrit Smith.
Antoinette Brown was a prominent female Anti-Garrisonian who took an active role in the New York Liberty Party and worked on Smith's 1852 congressional campaign. Lydia Child and Lucretia Mott each received one vote for president at the 1847 convention of the Liberty League, and Mott received five votes for vice president at the 1848 rump convention that nominated Smith and Foote.
[Johnson, 283–83.]
Electoral history
Presidential tickets
Gubernatorial races
From 1842, the Liberty Party was organized in every free state except
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
and fielded candidates for governor and other statewide offices. The following table displays the result for Liberty gubernatorial candidates in these states as a share of the total number of votes cast.
Other prominent members
This is a representative sample of Liberty Party leaders not listed above as presidential or vice presidential candidates.
*
William G. Allen
*
John Albion Andrew
*
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews (March 22, 1812 – May 21, 1886) was an American libertarian socialist, individualist anarchist, linguist, political philosopher, and outspoken Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist.
Life
Andrews was born ...
*
James Appleton
*
Gamaliel Bailey
*
Wesley Bailey
*
Guy Beckley
*
Amos Beman
*
Jehiel Beman
*
Nathaniel S. Berry
*
Henry Bibb
*
Jacob Bigelow
*
James M. Birney
*
William Birney
*
Jonathan Blanchard
*
Sherman Booth
*
Henry Ingersoll Bowditch
*
George Bradburn
*
Lawrence Brainerd
*
William Henry Brisbane
*
Antoinette Brown
*
William Burleigh
*
Elihu Burritt
*
Alexander Campbell
*
Philo Carpenter
*
James G. Carter
*
William L. Chaplin
*
Salmon P. Chase
*
Oren Burbank Cheney
*
Joseph Cilley
*
Lewis Clarke
* Ichabod Codding
*
Levi Coffin
*
Nathaniel Colver
*
Alexander Crummell
* Mary Brown Davis
*
William H. Day
*
George DeBaptiste
*
Martin Delany
* Elizur Deming
*
Charles Wheeler Denison
*
Charles Durkee
*
Charles V. Dyer
*
Russell Errett
*
George Henry Evans
*
James Fairchild
*
Samuel Fessenden
*
Asahel Finch Jr.
*
Charles Grandison Finney
*
George Washington Gale
*
Elon Galusha
*
Henry Highland Garnet
*
Seth M. Gates
*
Edward D. Gazzam
*
Francis Gillette
*
Beriah Green
*
John Grimes
*
Josiah B. Grinnell
*
Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor
*
Stephen S. Harding
*
Samuel D. Hastings
*
Joseph R. Hawley
*
Joel Hayden
*
Richard Hildreth
Richard Hildreth (June 28, 1807 – July 11, 1865), was an American journalist, author and historian. He is best known for writing his six-volume ''History of the United States of America'' covering 1497–1821 and published 1840-1853. Historian ...
*
Myron Holley
*
Silas M. Holmes
*
Edward D. Holton
*
John Hooker
*
Samuel Gridley Howe
*
Erastus Hussey
*
John Hutchins
*
Titus Hutchinson
*
James Caleb Jackson
*
William Jackson
*
William Jay
*
John Jones
*
John Keep
*
Hiram Huntington Kellogg Sr.
*
Chauncey L. Knapp
*
William Lambert
*
Lunsford Lane
*
Charles Henry Langston
*
John Mercer Langston
*
William Larimer Jr.
*
George Latimer
*
Dewitt C. Leach
*
Joshua Leavitt
*
Francis Julius LeMoyne
*
Samuel Lewis
*
Jermain Wesley Loguen
*
Joseph Cammett Lovejoy
*
Owen Lovejoy
*
William Pitt Lynde
*
Asa Mahan
Asa Mahan (; November 9, 1799April 4, 1889) was an American Congregational minister and educator and the first president of both the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) and Adrian College. He described himself as "a religious te ...
*
Stanley Matthews
Sir Stanley Matthews (1 February 1915 – 23 February 2000) was an English Association football, footballer who played as an Forward (association football)#Outside forward, outside right. Often regarded as one of the greatest players of the Br ...
*
Samuel Joseph May
Samuel Joseph May (September 12, 1797 – July 1, 1871) was an American reformer during the nineteenth century who championed education, women's rights, and Abolitionism in the United States, abolition of slavery. May argued on behalf of all ...
*
James Miller McKim
*
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, comedian and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 19 ...
*
Joseph Trotter Mills
*
James Monroe
James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American Founding Father of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. He was the last Founding Father to serve as presiden ...
*
John Monteith
*
David Nelson
*
James W. C. Pennington
*
Abraham L. Pennock
*
John Pierpont
*
Allan Pinkerton
*
Ralph Plumb
*
David Potts Jr.
*
John Rankin
*
Charles Bennett Ray
*
Alvah Sabin
*
Orange Scott
*
Samuel Edmund Sewall
*
Oscar L. Shafter
*
John Jay Shipherd
*
James McCune Smith
*
William Smyth
*
Benjamin Stanton
*
Henry B. Stanton
*
Stephen Stevens
* Alvan Stewart
*
George Storrs
*
Jane Swisshelm
*
Arthur Tappan
*
Lewis Tappan
*
Charles Turner Torrey
*
Norton Strange Townshend
*
Amos Tuck
*
George Boyer Vashon
*
Edward Wade
*
Amasa Walker
*
Samuel Ringgold Ward
*
Laban Wheaton
*
William Whipper
*
John Greenleaf Whittier
*
Austin Willey
*
Austin F. Williams
*
Charles K. Williams
*
Samuel Newitt Wood
*
Lewis Woodson
*
Elizur Wright
*
Theodore S. Wright
*
Levi Yale
* John J. Zuille
Notes
References
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External links
The Liberator Files– items concerning the Liberty Party from Horace Seldon's collection and summary of research of William Lloyd Garrison's ''The Liberator'' original copies at the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
{{Authority control
Defunct political parties in the United States
Political parties established in 1840
Slavery in the United States
American abolitionist organizations