A-B: Ackley through Burrit

See below for annotated biographies of Liberty Party leaders and members. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

ACKLEY, A. A., Indiana, officer in the Liberty party. (Minutes General Liberty Convention Buffalo, New York, October 20, 1847).



ADDINGTON, New York, officer in the liberty party. (Minutes General Liberty Convention Buffalo, New York, October 20, 1847).



ALBERTY, John W., Illinois, officer Liberty party. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).



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

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 92-93, 160-164, 185-186; Filler, 1960, p. 68)



ALLEY, John B., 1817-1896, Lynn, Massachusetts, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1876, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Alley was an Anti-slavery member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Co-Edited the “Free-Soiler Newspaper.

(Congressional Globe; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872 Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927
(1928).



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


(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 301, 405n12; Wiley, 1886; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York: Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 327)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 327:

APPLETON, JAMES (February 14, 1785-August 25, 1862), reformer, was one of the first to propose state prohibition as a remedy for intemperance. He was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a descendant of Samuel Appleton, who came there from England in 1635. His father also bore the name Samuel. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of Reverend Timothy White of Haverhill, Massachusetts. He had only ordinary educational advantages, but possessed business ability and a gift for public speaking. Removing to Gloucester, Massachusetts, he engaged in the jewelry business and also kept a public house. Here, November 19, 1807 (Vital Records of Gloucester, Massachusetts; November 15, according to Waters's "Genealogy of the Ipswich Descendants of Samuel Appleton," in Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, XV), he married Sarah, daughter of Reverend Daniel and Hannah Bowers Fuller, by whom he had ten children. Though a Federalist in politics, as soon as the government had committed itself to war with England in 1812 he volunteered for service in the field. As lieutenant-colonel of the Gloucester regiment, " he twice, at the engagements of Sandy Bay and of Gallup's Folly, in 1814, repelled attacks of the British fleet under Sir George Colyer upon the city and forts of Gloucester, for which service he was borne as of the same rank upon the rolls of the Regular Army of the United States. He subsequently was promoted Colonel and Brigadier- General of the First Brigade, Second Division, of the Massachusetts Line" (The Diary of the Revd. Daniel Fuller, ed. by D. F. Appleton, 1894, pp. 5, 6). He represented Gloucester in the General Court in 1813 and 1814. In 1832 he prepared and presented to that body a petition asking for a law prohibiting sales of liquor in less quantities than thirty gallons. In reply to opposition, he wrote three letters, which were published in the Salem Gazette during February 1832. This pioneer attempt to secure state prohibition failed, and the following year he left Massachusetts for Portland, Maine. In 1836 he was elected a member of the legislature of that state and the following year he was chairman of a special committee appointed to consider the license system. Its report, which was written by him, was, according to Neal Dow [q.v.], "the first official document in the history of Maine in which prohibition is suggested as the true method of dealing with the liquor traffic" (Reminiscences, 1898, p. 243). In 1838 he was chairman of a similar committee which presented a bill in favor of prohibition and provided for the submission of the matter to popular vote. In the legislature of 1839 he was again chairman of the committee on license laws and sought, without success, to secure the passage of a prohibitory law.

His interest was not confined to temperance reform, however; he was also an ardent antislavery advocate. Among the tracts published by the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association is one (No. 3) written by him on the Missouri Compromise. In 1842, 1843, and 1844 he was the candidate of the Liberty party for governor of Maine. In his later years he returned to Ipswich and lived on the ancestral farm, but continued his interest in public affairs. He was active in his support of war measures during 1861, but died without seeing the cause for which he had labored victorious. His portrait shows clear cut features, a high forehead, thick, waving hair, keen but kindly eyes with the suggestion of the dreamer in them, and a mouth and jaw indicative of grim determination. He is described as belonging "to the class of men known as fanatics. From business he turned to politics that he might encourage legislation to remedy a number of social ills. ... He indorsed Birney's views on slavery, advocated generous and systematic relief of the pauper and championed the cause of popular education. But his real hobby was temperance" (J. A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition, 1925).

[Origin of the Maine Law and of Prohibitory Legislation, with a brief memoir of James Appleton, pub. by the National Temp. Society, New York, 1886-this contains the letters pub. in the Salem Gazette; John J. Babson, History of the Town of Gloucester (1860); Austin Willey, History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation (1886); John G. Woolley and Wm. E. Johnson, Temperance Progress of the Century (1903); D. L. Colvin, Prohibition in the U. S. (1926).]

H. E. S.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 82:

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



BABBITT, W. D. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).



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

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 21, 25-26, 28, 30, 34, 52, 55, 67, 148-149, 166, 192, 202, 223, 248; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 163, 223, 264, 301; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 78, 150, 194-195, 245, 252; Harrold, 1995; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 4, 5, 14, 23, 24, 26, 27, 44, 46, 54, 61, 63, 69, 88-89, 91, 103, 106; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 50, 185; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 136; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 496-497; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 1, p. 881; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 496-497:

BAILEY, GAMALIEL (December 3, 1807-June 5, 1859), journalist, anti-slavery agitator, was born at Mount Holly, New Jersey., the son of Reverend Gamaliel Bailey, a Methodist clergyman. Soon after his son's birth, his father removed to Philadelphia, where the boy, after attending private schools, entered the Jefferson Medical College, graduating in 1827. For a few months he taught in a New Jersey country school. Then, suffering in health, he shipped before the mast on a trading vessel bound for China. At Canton so much sickness developed among the sailors that he became temporarily ship's surgeon. On returning to America he opened a physician's office, but was soon installed as editor, in Baltimore, of the Methodist Protestant, the short-lived organ of the sect so styled-an unusual appointment considering that Bailey had then no experience in writing and was not a church-member. This position soon failing him, he departed to St. Louis to join an expedition to Oregon, only to find the venture a fraud. Practically penniless, he walked back to Cincinnati. Here a severe epidemic of cholera broke out soon after his arrival (1831), and through friendly influence he became physician in charge of the "Hospital for Strangers," where by his heroic work he gained favorable introduction to the city. In 1833 he married Margaret Lucy Shands of Virginia. In 1834 occurred the Lane Seminary debates on slavery, which immediately enlisted the interest of Bailey, who was lecturing there on physiology. After due reflection he became an ardent abolitionist and associated himself (1836) with J. G. Birney in editing the Cincinnati Philanthropist, the first anti-slavery organ in the West. A year later Bailey became sole editor and proprietor. The influence of his pen in the ensuing years is evidenced by the fact that his office was thrice mobbed; on one occasion printing outfit and building were entirely destroyed but three weeks later new presses were turning out the Cincinnati Philanthropist as usual-a remarkable accomplishment for that time. The third assault (1843) was suppressed by the police and a reaction in Bailey's favor followed; on the strength of this he launched a daily, the Herald. When the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society decided to publish a national periodical in Washington he was the logical choice for editor-in-chief. Disposing of his Cincinnati journals, he assumed his new duties at the nation's capital in January, 1847, and for twelve years efficiently served the Anti-Slavery cause through the National Era, a weekly journal, of which during the Fremont campaign of 1856 Bailey issued a daily edition at considerable personal sacrifice. In 1848 he again faced a mob, which for three days threatened his printing-plant and even his house, the rioters erroneously assuming his connection with the escape of certain slaves. His conduct at this time was thoroughly characteristic. Unarmed he appeared at the door of his house, and calmly entered on a frank statement of his innocence of the charge preferred and his right as an American citizen to complete freedom of utterance. His angry auditors yielded to his persuasive logic and, as he finished his appeal, dispersed. He was not molested again.

The career of the Era was remarkably successful. Whittier, Theodore Parker, Mrs. Southworth, Grace Greenwood, and particularly Mrs. Stowe, with Uncle Tom's Cabin, were contributors, but the directing mind and will were Bailey's. He exerted a wide moral and political influence for the Anti-Slavery movement, the more so because, besides integrity, good business judgment, and determination, he possessed literary ability and a fair-minded tolerance that compelled the respect even of opponents. He condemned the Know-Nothing movement, though it cost him money and friends.

Physically he was delicate-looking, but possessed a good physique, with well-shaped head, intellectual face, and magnetic manner. Political and social Washington flocked to the gatherings at the Bailey home, where the charm and wit of host, hostess, and guests added friends to their cause. In 1853 his health necessitated a trip to Europe, and in 1859, again ill, he embarked on a second voyage thither. He died at sea but his body was brought back to Washington for burial.

[The Atlantic Monthly, June 1866, XVII, pp. 743-51, contains an anonymous article "A Pioneer Editor," dealing with Bailey's career. A more intimate sketch is "An American Salon," by Grace Greenwood, in the Cosmopolitan, February 1890, VIII, 437-47. The files of the National Era (1847-59) reflect the mind and heart of the man. His obituary appeared in the issue of June 30, 1859, and an account of his funeral in that of July 7, 1859, with a tribute by Whittier entitled "Gamaliel Bailey."]

R.S.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 136;

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



BAILEY, Wesley, editor (Sernett, 2002, p. 123). New York, abolitionist leader

(Sorin, 1971).



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



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



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

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



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

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


BEMAN, Mrs. Jehiel C., African American, abolitionist.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 58n40)



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

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 338; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 220, 447, 489, 618-619, 632-634; Sinha, 2016; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 2, p. 717; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 1, p. 532; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



BIRNEY, James Gillespie, 1792-1857, abolitionist leader, statesman, orator, writer, lawyer, jurist, newspaper publisher and editor, the Philanthropist, founded 1836. On two occasions, mobs in Cincinnati attacked and wrecked his newspaper office. Founder and president of the Liberty Party in 1848. Third party presidential candidate, 1840, 1844. Founder University of Alabama. Native American rights advocate. Member of the American Colonization Society. American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1836, Vice President, 1835-1836, 1836-1838, Executive Committee, 1838-1840, Corresponding Secretary, 1838-1840. American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Secretary, 1840-1841, Executive Committee, 1840-1842. His writings include: “Ten Letters on Slavery and Colonization,” (1832-1833), “Addresses and Speeches,” (1835), “Vindication of the Abolitionists,” (1835), “The Philanthropist,” a weekly newspaper (1836-1837), “Address of Slaveholders,” (1836), “Argument on Fugitive Slave Case,” (1837), “Political Obligations of Abolitionists,” (1839), “American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery,” (1840), and “Speeches in England,” (1840).

(Birney, 1969; Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 20-21, 25, 30, 32, 48-51, 55, 9-99, 101, 139, 142, 163, 186, 217; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 141, 149, 159; Dumond, 1938; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 90, 93, 176, 179, 185, 197, 198, 200-202, 257-262, 286, 297, 300-301, 303; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 55, 73, 77, 89, 94, 107, 128, 131, 137, 140-141, 148, 152, 156, 176; Fladeland, 1955; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 27, 36, 40, 41, 49, 54, 55, 60, 71, 92, 195, 228, 252,293, 301, 323, 328, 350; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 4-5, 7, 8, 13-15, 18, 21-31, 35, 50, 101, 199, 225; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 43-49; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 43-44, 46, 48, 163, 188-189, 364, 522; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 25, 47, 51, 52, 65, 70n, 97, 103n; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 267-269; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 291-294; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 79-80; Birney, William, Jas. G. Birney and His Times, 1890; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 2; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 312-313).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 291-294:

BIRNEY, JAMES GILLESPIE (February 4, 1792- November 25, 1857), anti-slavery leader, was the son of James Birney, an Irish expatriate who migrated to America in 1783 and in 1788 removed to Kentucky, where he eventually became one of the richest men in the state. Although a slaveholder, the elder Birney advocated a free state constitution for Kentucky and favored emancipation. He married about 1790 a daughter of John Read, also an Irish exile; she died in 1795. James Gillespie, the only son of the marriage, was born at Danville. He was educated at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, and at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), where he graduated in 1810. He read law in the office of Alexander J. Dallas [q.v.] at Philadelphia, was admitted to the bar in 1814, and began what presently became an important practise at Danville. On February 1, 1816, he married Agatha, daughter of William McDowell, United States district judge, and niece of Governor George McDowell of Kentucky. The marriage brought him some slaves. In August 1816 he was elected to the lower house of the legislature. Two years later he removed to Madison County, Alabama. He was not a member of the Alabama constitutional convention, but he seems to have been largely responsible for the inclusion in the state constitution, in amended form, of certain provisions of the Kentucky constitution permitting the legislature to emancipate slaves and prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the state for sale. In October 1819 he took his seat as a representative in the first General Assembly of Alabama, but his opposition to a resolution indorsing the candidacy of Andrew Jackson for president was unpopular, and he was not reelected. He had already attained marked prominence as a lawyer, but by 1820 neglect of his plantation, together with gambling, brought financial embarrassment, and in January 1823 he removed to Huntsville, later selling his plantation with its slaves. At Huntsville his legal practise shortly recouped his finances, and thereafter, for most of his life, he was comparatively wealthy. For several years he acted as counsel for the Cherokee Nation. He had been brought up an Episcopalian, but in 1826, mainly through the influence of his wife, he became a Presbyterian. From about this time dated his interest in the colonization movement and the restriction of slavery and the domestic, slave trade. A bill which he drafted to give effect to the provision of the Alabama constitution prohibiting the importation of slaves for sale, although passed by the General Assembly in January 1827, was repealed in 1829, following the election of Jackson. He was nominated a presidential elector on the Adams ticket in 1828, but Birney strongly disapproved of the policy of attacking Jackson personally, and urged the Northern element of the party to direct their opposition to the annexation of Texas and the issue of nullification. A visit to New York and New England in the fall of 1829 impressed him with the superiority of free institutions, economic and social, to those of the slave states, but he was not yet an abolitionist, and his growing reputation as an anti-slavery supporter rested upon his repugnance to slavery in general and his advocacy of gradual emancipation. For reasons not divulged he parted company politically with Henry Clay, one of his father's intimate friends, in October 1830. Another antislavery bill, the passage of which in Alabama he secured in January 1832, was repealed in December. In August of that year he accepted a commission as agent of the American Colonization Society, and for some months traveled and lectured in the South in behalf of that organization. An idea that Kentucky was "the best site in our whole country for taking a stand against slavery" (letter to Gerrit Smith, in W. Birney, Life and Times of James G. Birney, p. 131) led him in November to return to Danville. Several of his occasional writings, among them two letters on slavery and colonization addressed to Reverend R. R. Gurley (1832), essays on slavery and colonization contributed to the Huntsville Advocate (1833), and two letters to the Presbyterian Church (1834), belong to this period. The emancipation of his six slaves in 1834 was later described in detail in a letter (1836) to Colonel Stone, editor of the New York Spectator (Birney, op. cit., Appendix D). Convinced that colonization would increase the interstate slave-trade, and unable to reconcile it with his views of religion and justice, he resigned in 1834 the vice-presidency of the Kentucky Colonization Society, stating his reasons in a Letter on Colonization (first published in the Lexington Western Luminary and later reprinted in several editions), which added to his reputation and definitely allied him with the more aggressive anti-slavery forces. March 1835 saw him active in forming the Kentucky Anti-Slavery Society, but the membership of the American Anti-Slavery Society, whose meeting at Cincinnati he attended, did not seem to him effective. In a speech at the New York meeting of the Society in May 1835 he forcibly urged united action by all opponents of slavery. A second visit to New England, after the New York meeting, was interrupted by news of outspoken hostility to the publication in Kentucky of an anti-slavery weekly, the first number of which he had planned to issue on August 1. An attempt to mob him on his return was defeated, but the publication of the paper was delayed and his mail was repeatedly rifled. The continuance of opposition determined him to remove to Ohio, and at the beginning of January 1836 he issued at New Richmond, near Cincinnati, the first number of the Philanthropist, continuing the publication, with the editorial assistance of Gamaliel Bailey, until September 1837, when he removed to New York. In the Philanthropist Birney not only attacked both Democrats and Whigs for their attitude toward slavery, but also urged upon the abolitionists the necessity of political action. On July 30 another plan to assault him at a public meeting was frustrated; his Narrative of the Late Riotous Proceedings, published soon after, described the episode, and was followed in October by a letter To the Slaveholders of the South. On several occasions later he was exposed to personal danger, meetings at which he spoke were interrupted, and his paper suffered; his son and biographer, however, is authority for the statement that "no man ever laid an unfriendly hand upon him during his public career" (Birney, op. cit., p. 252). The convention of the New England Anti-Slavery Society at Boston, May 30-June 2, 1837, which he attended, found him an open dissenter from the "no government" or political abstention views of Garrison's followers, and a champion of organized political action and voting. For harboring in his home an escaped slave, Matilda, who was subsequently claimed and returned as a fugitive, he was indicted in Cincinnati, was acquitted after pleading his own case, and presently published his argument. In September, having been elected executive secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he removed to New York, and spent the winter of 1837-38 in visiting such of the state legislatures as were in session. A published letter to Representative F. H. Elmore of South Carolina, in response to a request for information regarding anti-slavery organizations, separated him still farther from the Garrisonians by establishing his position as an upholder of the Federal Constitution. A Letter on the Political Obligations of Abolitionists, prepared as a "report on the duty of political action" for the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society in May 1839 (published in the Boston Emancipator May 2; replied to at much length by Garrison May 31; the two reprinted as a pamphlet), was an incisive criticism of the constitution of the Society and of the Garrisonian policy, and brought appreciably nearer the ultimate breach in the abolition ranks. For the next few years Birney was the most conspicuous representative and the ablest spokesman of those who sought to get rid of slavery by political means as well as by moral suasion. On November 13, 1839, a state convention at Warsaw, New York, unanimously nominated him for president, but the nomination was declined, partly because the convention was not national in character, and partly because he thought it inexpedient to make an independent nomination until the candidate of the Whigs had been selected. In April 1840, the Whigs having nominated William Henry Harrison, Birney was again nominated at Albany, New York, by an anti-slavery convention representing six states. The new party, generally known as the Liberty party, had at first no name and adopted no platform. The popular vote polled was 7,069, drawn from the six New England states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan (Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency, I, 203). In the same year Birney went to England, where he was one of the vice-presidents of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. His best known work, The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery, was written and published in England (1840; 2nd, and first American, edition, "By an American," 1842; 3rd ed., 1885). He had already, in 1839, emancipated twenty-one slaves, a part of his father's estate, at a cost of $20,000 in the form of compensation for the interest of a co-heir. His wife died in 1839, and in 1841 he married Miss Fitzhugh, sister-in-law of Gerrit Smith. The next year he removed to Bay City, Michigan. In August 1843 he was again nominated for president, this time by a convention at Buffalo, New York, comprising 148 delegates from twelve states. The platform, by far the longest that any party had yet adopted, added to its denunciation of slavery an announcement of the purpose of the abolitionists, "whether as private citizens or as public functionaries sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, to regard and to treat the third clause of the fourth article of that instrument, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void, and consequently as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States, whenever we are called upon or sworn to support it." No electoral votes were won, but the popular vote of the Liberty party, drawn from the same states that voted for Birney in 1840, with the addition of Indiana, was 62,300. The "Garland Letter," issued on the eve of the election and purporting to solicit for Birney a Democratic nomination for the Michigan legislature and stating his intention to defeat Clay, was a forgery. Horace Greeley's charge in the New York Tribune that Birney had sought a Democratic nomination in New York and tried to catch the Democratic vote was widely believed at the time but appears improbable (Stanwood, op. cit., I, 224). In the summer of 1845 a fall from a horse, resulting in partial paralysis, made Birney an invalid and brought his public career to a close. His Examination of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Strader et al. v. Graham, concluding with an Address to the Free Colored People, advising them to remove to Liberia (1852), was written in 1850: the decision in question was one much relied upon by Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case (1857). About 1853 Birney removed from Michigan to Eagleswood, near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and died there November 25, 1857. In the history of the American anti-slavery movement he occupies a peculiar position. Never a supporter of slavery in principle, notwithstanding that he owned slaves, he accepted the institution for a time as he found it and worked earnestly to ameliorate its conditions. He early manifested an almost insuperable repugnance to selling slaves, and was at pains to explain and defend his course in disposing of the few that he held. Acquaintance with the North convinced him that the overthrow of slavery was as necessary for the whites as for the negroes, and he passed gradually, but on the whole rapidly, from advocacy of gradual emancipation, reinforced by colonization in Africa, to a conviction that abolition must be secured by constitutional political means. He was too reasonable, and perhaps too good a lawyer, to follow Garrison in the latter's denunciation of the Constitution, but he was nevertheless willing at last, as the party platform on which he stood in 1844 showed, to nullify so much of the Constitution as gave countenance to fugitive slave legislation or identified the federal government with the support or extension of slavery. The assertion of his biographer that he "voted Free Soil or Republican tickets, state and national, except Van Buren, as long as he lived," helps ------ to explain the distrust with which Garrison and other radical abolitionists regarded him, although the statement could hardly have applied to the elections of 1840 and 1844.

[The chief authority, except for the presidential campaigns of 1840 and 1844, is Jas. G. Birney and His Times (1890), by his son, Wm. Birney. The book was inspired by what the writer believed to be the misrepresentations of W. P. and F. J. Garrison's William Lloyd Garrison (1885-89), with which its statements and comments should be compared; it is extremely hostile to Garrison and to much of the view of the abolition movement which Garrison's biographers present. The latter, in turn, are persistently hostile to Birney. A review of Wm. Birney's book in the Nation (New York), L, 206, is informing. An earlier life by Beriah Green, Sketches of the Life and Writings of las. Gillespie Birney 1844), written as a campaign document and laudatory, contains many extracts from Birney's writings; see especially pp. 100-04, a summary of Birney's letter of acceptance in 1840, and pp. 105-15, virtually the whole of the letter of acceptance in 1843, dissecting the claims of John Quincy Adams to the support of abolitionists. See also the anonymous Tribute to Jas. G. Birney (Detroit, Michigan, n. d., c. 1865). References in the voluminous literature of the anti-slavery movement are many, but usually brief. Most of Birney's writings appeared first as contributions to newspapers or magazines, subsequently in pamphlets to those already mentioned are to be added Vindication of the Abolitionists (1835), a reply to resolutions of an Alabama committee proposing drastic dealings with abolition agitators; Addresses and Speeches (1835); various articles in the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine and the Emancipator (1837-44), and Speeches in England (1840).]

W.M.

His chief writings were as follows: “Ten Letters on Slavery and Colonization,” addressed to R. R. Gurley (the first dated 12 July, 1832, the last 11 December, 1833); “Six Essays on Slavery and Colonization,” published in the Huntsville (Alabama) “Advocate” (May, June, and July, 1833); “Letter on Colonization,” resigning vice-presidency of Kentucky colonization society (15 July, 1834); “Letters to the Presbyterian Church” (1834); “Addresses and Speeches” (1835); “Vindication of the Abolitionists” (1835); “The Philanthropist,” a weekly newspaper (1836 and to September, 1837); “Letter to Colonel Stone” (May, 1836); “Address to Slaveholders” (October, 1836); “Argument on Fugitive Slave Case” (1837); “Letter to F. H. Elmore,” of South Carolina (1838); “Political Obligations of Abolitionists” (1839); “Report on the Duty of Political Action,” for executive committee of the American anti-slavery society (May, 1839); “American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery” (1840); “Speeches in England” (1840); “Letter of Acceptance”; “Articles in Q. A. S. Magazine and Emancipator” (1837-'44); “Examination of the Decision of the U. S. Supreme Court,” in the case of Strader et al., v. Graham (1850). —His son, James, born in Danville, Kentucky, 7 June, 1817; was a state senator in Michigan in 1859, and was lieutenant-governor of the state and acting governor in 1861-'3. He was appointed by President Grant, in 1876, minister at the Hague, and held that office until 1882.—Another son, William, lawyer, born near Huntsville, Alabama, 28 May, 1819. While pursuing his studies in Paris, in February, 1848, he took an active part in the revolution, and he was appointed on public competition professor of English literature in the college at Bourges. He entered the U. S. national service as captain in April, 1861, and rose through all the grades to the rank of brevet major-general of volunteers, commanding a division for the last two years of the civil war. He participated in the principal battles in Virginia, and, being sent for a short time to Florida after the battle of Olustee, regained possession of the principal parts of the state and of several of the confederate strongholds. ln 1863-'4, having been detailed by the war department as one of three superintendents of the organization of U. S. colored troops, he enlisted, mustered in, armed, equipped, drilled, and sent to the field seven regiments of those troops. In this work he opened all the slave-prisons in Baltimore, and freed their inmates, including many slaves belonging to men in the confederate armies. The result of his operations was to hasten the abolition of slavery in Maryland. He passed four years in Florida after the war, and in 1874 removed to Washington, D. C., where he practised his profession and became attorney for the District of Columbia.— The third son, Dion, physician, entered the army as lieutenant at the beginning of the civil war, rose to the rank of captain, and died in 1864 of disease contracted in the service.—The fourth son, David Bell, born in Huntsville, Alabama, 29 May, 1825; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 18 October, 1864, studied law in Cincinnati, and, after engaging in business in Michigan, began the practice of law in Philadelphia in 1848. He entered the army as lieutenant-colonel at the beginning of the civil war, and was made colonel of the 23d Pennsylvania volunteers, which regiment he raised, principally at his own expense, in the summer of 1861. He was promoted successively to brigadier and major-general of volunteers, and distinguished himself in the battles of Yorktown, Williamsburg, the second battle of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. After the death of General Berry he commanded the division, receiving his commission as major-general, 23 May, 1863. He commanded the 3d corps at Gettysburg, after General Sickles was wounded, and on 23 July, 1864, was given the command of the 10th corps. He died of disease contracted in the service.—A fifth son, Fitzhugh, died, in 1864, of wounds and disease, in the service with the rank of colonel—A grandson, James Gillespie, was lieutenant and captain of cavalry, served as staff officer under Custer and Sheridan, was appointed lieutenant in the regular army at the close of the war; and died soon afterward of disease contracted in the service. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 267-269.


Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 267-269:

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



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

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 6-7, 13, 117-137, 267, 268; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 62, 151; (Minutes General Liberty Convention Buffalo, New York, October 20, 1847).




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

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



BRADLEY, Henry, gubernatorial candidate

(Sernett, 2002, p. 123), New York, abolitionist leader;
Sorin, 1971).


BRAINERD, Lawrence, 1794-1870, anti-slavery activist, capitalist, statesman, U.S. Senator, member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833-1839. Originally a Democrat, he was affiliated with the Free-Soil wing of the party. In 1834 he was a member of the legislature and in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1852, and 1854, he was a candidate of the Free-Soil Democratic party for governor. He was elected United States senator in 1854.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 358; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, p. 594)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, p. 594:

BRAINERD, LAWRENCE (March 16, 1794- May 9, 1870), capitalist, senator, one of twelve children born to Ezra and Mabel (Porter) Brainerd, was a native of East Hartford, Connecticut. At the age of nine years he went to Troy, New York, to live with Joseph S. Brainerd, an uncle. Five years later, he removed with this uncle to St. Albans, Vermont. He attended the St. Albans Academy for two years and entered the store of a local merchant as clerk. At the age of twenty-two he established a mercantile business of his own in which he was very successful. He bought a large tract of swamp land near Lake Champlain, drained and improved it, and developed it into a 1,200-acre farm, one of the best in Vermont. When the Bank of St. Albans was established in 1826, he became a heavy stockholder, a director, and later its president. He was active in steamboat enterprises in the early days of that method of transportation, in 1847 superintending the building at Shelburne Harbor of the United States, then considered one of the finest steamboats ever built. He became interested early in railroad development and the construction of the Vermont & Canada line was due largely to his energy and aid, in cooperation with John Smith and Joseph Clark. He pledged practically his entire fortune to make possible the building of the railroad. From the construction of the road until his death he was a director and in later years was associated with his son-in-law, Governor John Gregory Smith, in the management of the corporation. He was also engaged in railroad building in Canada and was a promoter of the Missisquoi Railroad. He took an active interest in public affairs, being particularly interested in the anti-slavery cause and in temperance reform. Originally a Democrat, he was affiliated with the Free-Soil wing of the party. In 1834 he was a member of the legislature and in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1852, and 1854, he was a candidate of the Free-Soil Democratic party for governor. He was elected United States senator in 1854 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Upham, was president of the convention called to organize the Republican party in Vermont, was a delegate to a preliminary national Republican convention at Pittsburgh in February 1856, and called to order the first Republican national convention, held at Philadelphia in June 1856. Much interested in agricultural development, he was a president of the Vermont Agricultural Society. In 1819 he married Fidelia B. Gadcomb and twelve children were born to them. He was a man of large frame and great physical strength. [St. Albans Daily Messenger, May 9, 1870; W. H. Crockett, Vermont, Volume III (1921); H. C. Williams, ed., Biography Encyclopedia of Vermont (1885).]

W.H.C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 358:

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



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

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 93, 286; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 378)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 378:

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



BUFFUM, Arnold, 1782-1859, Smithfield, Rhode Island, Indiana, New York, New York, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, temperance reformer, philanthropist. Co-founder (with William Lloyd Garrison) and first president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, in 1832. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833. Manager, Massachusetts, 1833-1837; Manager, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1835-1837; Vice President, 1834-1836. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1846-1855. Lectured extensively against slavery. Visited England to promote abolitionism. Was influenced by English anti-slavery leaders Clarkson and Wilberforce.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 137, 157-158, 162-163, 178; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 418-427; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 218, 401, 433; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 18, 20, 22, 58, 62, 66, 67; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Buffum, Arnold, Lectures Showing the Necessity for a Liberty Party, and Setting Forth its Principles, Measures and Object, 1844; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 241; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 320)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 241:

BUFFUM, ARNOLD (December 13, 1782-March 13, 1859), Quaker, anti-slavery lecturer, was the grandson of Joseph Buffum, of the second or third generation of his family in America, who moved from Massachusetts to Smithfield, Rhode Island, in 1715. There Arnold, second son among eight children of William and Lydia (Arnold) Buffum, was born. William Buffum was a farmer and merchant, a Quaker, and a member of the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Fugitive slaves sheltered in his household enlisted his son's sympathies for anti-slavery. Without extensive education, Arnold became a hatter; but having an inventive mind, he conceived and patented various mechanical contrivances. Until he was fifty he was but partially successful at his trade, residing now at Smithfield or Providence, now in Massachusetts or Connecticut. Between 1825 and 1831 business led him twice to Europe, where he met Thomas Clarkson, Amelia Opie, and Lafayette. Returning, he established in Fall River certain "infant schools," based on some foreign educational theory.

As president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society from its organization in January 1832, Buffum was commissioned as its lecturing agent, thereafter devoting what time he could to forwarding emancipation. This meant personal danger and sacrifice of friends and business interests, but his moral courage, eloquence, and telling appeals for the negro's freedom made a deep impression. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833. Thither he moved about 1834, establishing himself in the hatting industry. In 1840-41 he aroused serious reflection, ripening into antislavery sentiment, throughout Ohio and Indiana by lecturing and by editing at New Garden (now Fountain City), Ind., the Protectionist. Rejecting Garrison's and Phillips's radical principles, Buffum, by voice and vote, supported successively the Liberty, Free-Soil, and Republican parties. He also exerted himself in behalf of temperance.

Buffum married (1803) Rebecca Gould, from near Newport, Rhode Island. His daughter, Elizabeth (Buffum) Chace [q.v.], became a Garrisonian anti-slavery worker, his younger son, Edward Gould Buffum, Paris correspondent of the New York Herald. Muhlenberg, Arnold Buffum's fellow passenger on a European trip (1843), thus describes him: "An Old Hickory Abolitionist ... a tall, gray-headed, gold-spectacled patriarch . . . a very sharp old fellow [who] has all his facts ready, . . . abuses his country outrageously" as being pro-slavery, but still a "genuine democratic American." Buffum was of religious nature, and had high literary tastes. In 1854 he entered the Raritan Bay Union, Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he died.

[Lillie B. C. Wyman and Arthur C. Wyman, Elizabeth Buffum Chace (1914); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1889); Anne Ayres, The Life and Work of Wm. A. Muhlenberg (1880); information from Mrs. L. B. C. Wyman, Buffum's grand-daughter.]

R.S.B.



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



BURLEIGH, William Henry, 1812-1871, Connecticut, journalist. Active in temperance, peace and women’s rights movements. Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society. Editor of the anti-slavery newspapers Christian Freeman, newspaper of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, and the Charter Oak. Leader of the Liberty Party. In 1836, he was appointed a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). In 1840-1841, Burleigh was a Manager of the AASS. As a result of his protesting the war against Mexico, which he felt was being fought for the “slave power,” Burleigh was attacked by mobs and barely escaped being hurt.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 186, 265, 273, 301; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 455; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 286; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 3, p. 961)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 286:

BURLEIGH, WILLIAM HENRY (February 2, 1812-March 18, 1871), journalist, reformer, was the fourth of the six sons of Rinaldo Burleigh, a Yale graduate and a classical teacher until failing sight forced him to retire, and his wife Lydia Bradford, a descendant of Governor William Bradford. He was born at Woodstock, Connecticut, but spent most of his boyhood on his father's farm at Plainfield, Connecticut, where he early became a sharer in the family responsibilities, which meant hard work and few recreations. His education was received at the district. school and the Plainfield Academy, of which his father was in charge until William was eleven. Winter schooling and summer work alternated for a number of years: He was apprenticed to a dyer, then to a printer, in order that he might quickly become self-supporting. In 1830 he became a journeyman on the Stonington Phenix, where he was soon setting up articles of his own composition. In 1832 he was printer and contributor to the Schenectady (New York) Cabinet and in 1833 assisted his brother, Charles Calistus Burleigh [q.v.], in editing the Unionist, Brooklyn, Connecticut, a paper founded to support Prudence Crandall's colored school in which William Burleigh also taught for a time. He was married to Harriet Adelia Frink of Stonington, Connecticut, by whom he had seven children. He early felt interest in reform causes, especially anti-slavery, temperance, peace, and woman suffrage, and in 1836 began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society. At about the same time he was editor of the Literary Journal, Schenectady, but left that in 1837 to become editor of the Christian Witness and afterward the Temperance Banner, in Pittsburgh. In 1843 he went to Hartford at the invitation of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, to take charge of its organ, the Christian Freeman, afterward the Charter Oak. In 1849 he was employed by the New York State Temperance Society, with headquarters at Albany and Syracuse, as corresponding secretary, lecturer, and editor of the Prohibitionist. He remained in this position until 1855, when he was appointed harbor master of the port of New York and went to live in Brooklyn. Later he was made a port warden, but in 1870 was displaced for a Democrat. His first wife died in 1864 and in 1865 he married Mrs. Celia Burr of Troy, a teacher, prominent in woman suffrage work, and afterward a Unitarian minister. Burleigh's fiery tilts against the evils of his day often made life hard for himself and his family. He denounced the Mexican War, as waged in the interest of the slave power, and for this and on other occasions narrowly escaped mob violence. Yet he really disliked controversy and preferred purely literary work. Poetry was the form he chose for personal literary expression, apart from editorial and lecture composition. A volume of Poems was published in 1841 and enlarged editions appeared in 1845 and 1850. After his death his wife collected these poems in a new edition (1871). His poetry is not without beauty and vigor and shows his longing for the quiet, studious life which, because of his goading conscience, he was never able to enjoy. This conscience also dictated a certain amount of propaganda verse, such as The Rum Fiend and Other Poems (1871). His picture, taken shortly before his death, shows a worn, kindly face, with high cheek bones, unusually alert dark eyes, heavy, drooping, white mustache, and white hair worn long and brushed straight back. He was brought up by his parents a strict Presbyterian but later became a Unitarian. He died in Brooklyn, New York, as a result of what were called epileptic attacks, and his funeral was held at the Second Unitarian Church, where Samuel Longfellow had preached and where John White Chadwick was then pastor. His old friend John G. Whittier visited him shortly before his death.

[The chief source of information about Burleigh is the memoir by his wife Celia Burleigh, which forms the preface to his collected Poems (1871). A long obituary appeared in the New York Tribune, March 20, 1871, and an obituary notice in the New York Times, March 19, 1871. See also Chas. Burleigh, The Genealogy of the Burley or Burleigh Family of America (1880), p. 141.)

S.G.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 455:

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


BURRIT, Elihu, vice presidential candidate Liberty party.

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

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.