The American Antislavery Movement as a Political Phenomenon: The Birney Presidential Campaign of 1844

The American Antislavery Movement as a Political Phenomenon: The Birney Presidential Campaign of 1844

Jerry Falwell Library, Terrace Conference Room B

As slavery consolidated itself as a commercial and political institution in the mid-19^th century, opposition to it began mobilizing on moral grounds. The Second Great Awakening was essential in positioning abolitionism as a moral crusade against evil, and abolitionist press such as William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator contributed to the unification of abolitionists as a politically relevant community. This presentation would trace the initial attempts by abolitionists to “inform” slaveholders of the evils of slavery using moral suasion. Once this failed, many abolitionists concluded that the only way to engage the evil of slavery was through the political sphere. This presentation would center on James G. Birney’s subsequent presidential campaign of 1844 under the auspices of the Liberty Party, founded on the sole issue of slavery, and would look at the political ramifications thereof. It would examine the ways that politics and morality were wedded together inside and outside the campaign, and the manners in which their combination galvanized or weakened antislavery’s relevancy as a social movement. Finally, the presentation would touch on how this movement set a precedent for later moral campaigns, such as early feminist activism.