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James G. Birney

James Gillespie Birney (February 4, 1792–November 25, 1857) was an American presidential candidate for the Liberty Party in the 1840 and 1844 elections. He received 7,069 votes in the 1840 election and 62,273 votes in 1844, in which he likely swung the results of the election from Henry Clay to the winner, James K. Polk, by his capture of anti-slavery votes in the western regions of New York state, flipping the state -- and the electoral college -- to Polk.

James G. Birney was born in Danville, Kentucky. After studying at Transylvania College and Princeton, where he graduated in 1810, he studied law under Alexander J. Dallas in Philadelphia. He then began practice in Danville in 1814, and was elected to the State Legislature two years later. In 1818, Birney moved to the vicinity of Huntsville, Alabama. He had long opposed slavery, and had debated against it at Princeton, but was content with a gradual approach. While living in Alabama, he acted as agent for The National Colonization Society of America in 1832–33, which sought to send freed slaves to Liberia. In 1833, Birney returned to Kentucky, where he freed his own slaves. In 1839, he inherited 21 slaves from his father, all of whom he freed.

Birney by now had resolved that slavery should be brought to an immediate end. He organized the Kentucky Antislavery Society in 1835. Unable to find a publisher for an antislavery paper at Danville, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where he published the first issue of The Philanthropist on January 1, 1836. Hostile mobs destroyed his press several times over the next few years and Birney was himself repeatedly threatened.

Birney opposed all violence and supported the Constitution. He was elected secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. He gave many speeches before large assemblages of people, and became widely known as the leader of the Abolitionists who opposed violent or revolutionary measures. In 1845, he was disabled by a fall from his horse and spent the last twelve years of his life as an invalid.

His sons, William Birney (1819–1907) and David B. Birney (1825–64), both served as generals in the Union Army during the Civil War. His oldest son, James Birney, served as lieutenant-governor of the state of Michigan in 1860.

• American Colonization Society
• Ohio History Central