In the late 1830s, relatively few abolitionists supported the formation of an antislavery party to challenge the Democratic and Whig parties, and the African Americans in favor of such a party, such as Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet, were a minority within a minority. However, a new possibility presented itself for independent black political action. On April 1, 1840, abolitionists from across the Northeast and West came together in Albany, New York, to decide on a platform and select national candidates for the fall election for what would be the first antislavery party in the nation’s history, the Liberty Party. The party had been founded the year before by a group of white antislavery advocates from New York who, as Eric Foner writes, “recognized that the tactics of moral suasion and questioning candidates of the major parties had failed to produce tangible results.”16 Prominent white abolitionists Lewis Tappan and Gerrit Smith would soon lend their support to the third party, while African Americans like Garnett jumped on the opportunity of such an electoral vehicle to advance the abolitionist cause.17
Although the Liberty Party’s early leaders were largely ministers, not politicians, giving it a distinctly religious and crusading character, its formation was, as Charles Wesley notes, “an organized political effort to overthrow slavery.”18 It is not clear whether African Americans were at the founding convention; however, the party was clear in its goal, which was decidedly pro-black. It called for immediate abolition of slavery wherever constitutionally possible—that is, “within the limits of national jurisdiction”—and for the repeal of all racially discriminatory legislation. Delegates nominated James G. Birney, a Michigan attorney, as its presidential candidate and Thomas Earle, a journalist from Pennsylvania, as its vice-presidential candidate. Birney, who was originally from Kentucky, had freed all twenty-one of the slaves he had inherited from his father. Initially he supported gradual emancipation and emigration (specifically, colonization in Liberia), but changed his position as he met and became active in abolitionist circles in the North. His contact with the white antislavery orator Theodore D. Weld, who led an important series of student debates at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1834, had a profound influence on him. In 1837, Birney was elected secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, where he became known for his opposition to the use of violence in the abolitionist cause, placing his faith in the U.S. Constitution instead. The new party was readily supported by a group of African Americans in Albany who met in the city’s First Baptist Church. The convention, chaired by the church’s pastor Benjamin Paul, would be the first of a number of local, state, and national meetings in which African Americans would explicitly urge independent black political action.19
The Liberty Party’s formation would help revive the national black conventions, as many African Americans were intrigued, if not invigorated by, the possibility of third-party politics. The proabolitionist party offered a new alternative (or additional tactic) to the moral suasion of the Garrisonians, to emigration, and to taking up arms. African Americans would debate the pros and cons of independent political action: Was it not immoral to mix with politicians who were avowedly proslavery? If the goal was to abolish slavery and electoral politics was a possible path toward that end, should not independent political action be embraced? Who would bear the financial costs and physical dangers in campaigning in open forums for the third party? Moreover, even if every single eligible black voter in the North voted for the third party, what possible difference would it make since there were so few black voters? Were there enough white voters willing to support an antislavery party? Was it even desirable to work in the same party as white abolitionists, many of whom, after all, excluded black people from their own organizations? If offices could not be won, then what was the purpose of supporting any single party?
Most African Americans, despite the debating at conventions, remained neutral toward the Liberty Party; many, however, opposed it, not wanting to tie their allegiance to any single party, even if the party’s stated purpose was abolition. After all, in the North and West there were individual Whigs and Democrats who supported abolitionism. The moral suasionists had their reasons for opposition, and the desire to emigrate continued, as did calls for armed insurrection. But the balance-of-power voting strategy—that is, supporting individual candidates with antislavery sentiments to swing elections—slowly began to take hold among African Americans, even some Garrisonians. The premier black abolitionist of the 1840s and 1850s, Frederick Douglass, would remain firmly within the Garrison moral suasion camp for several more years before deciding to back the independent political strategy.
Douglass had fled from slavery in Maryland in 1838 and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He met Garrison at an abolitionist meeting and was quickly recruited as an antislavery lecturer, like a number of fugitives from the South. His autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, first published in 1845, became the most popular of all fugitive slave narratives in the nineteenth century. By the early 1840s, Douglass had become a popular speaker on the abolitionist lecturing circuit. While he vigorously opposed entering the electoral arena at this time, other leading lights in the black community actively pursued independent politics.20
Among the handful of black abolitionists who quickly allied themselves with the Liberty Party was Samuel Ringgold Ward. Born in Maryland, Ward escaped to New Jersey with his slave parents in 1820. In 1826, they moved to New York, where the young Ward was educated by Quakers. He would complete his education and go on to teach in local black schools. He became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 while serving as a Congregationalist minister.21 According to Douglass’s later account, Ward had no peer when it came to “depth of thought, fluency in speech, readiness of wit, logical exactness, and general intelligence.” In his Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, published in 1855, Ward recounts how in 1840 he “became for the first time a member of [the Liberty] party.” He goes on to say that “with it I cast my first vote; to it I devoted my political activity.”22
Like Douglass and Ward, Henry Highland Garnet (whose grandfather was said to have been an African military leader who was captured and sold into slavery) was a fugitive from Maryland. As a child, he escaped to Pennsylvania with his family, and they moved to New York City in the mid-1820s. Garnet studied at the Oneida Theological Institute in upstate New York and joined the American Anti-Slavery Society after graduating. He participated in abolitionist meetings and began to develop a reputation as a fiery speaker. Upon the formation of the Liberty Party, he proudly declared himself “a Liberty Party man.”23 He was not alone in his support for the third party: New York’s leading black newspaper would throw its support behind the Liberty Party as well. In 1840, the Colored American asked, “For whom shall we vote … is the question?” And then urged “the Liberty Ticket, with James G. Birney at the head.”24
The Liberty Party challenged the proslavery Democratic and Whig parties in the national election of 1840. President Martin Van Buren, the Democratic nominee from New York, was seeking reelection. In the 1820s, he was responsible for helping to make the Democratic Party the first national modern party organization, featuring nationally delegated conventions to nominate candidates and a patronage system that enabled elected officials to appoint their supporters to administrative offices. In the run-up to the presidential election, Van Buren was heavily blamed for the nation’s economic depression (beginning with the Panic of 1837) by the Whig’s nominee William Henry Harrison, a former U.S. senator from Ohio. Harrison would go on to win the election with 52.9 percent of the total vote, 6.1 percent more than Van Buren received, and 234 of 294 electoral college votes. The Liberty Party’s Birney received 7,069