In his travels throughout the region assigned to him, Birney became aware of the aggressive designs of the planters of the Gulf States to secure new slave territories in the Southwest.In view of these facts the methods of the colonization society appeared utterly futile.Birney surrendered his commission and, in 1833, returned to Kentucky with the intention of doing himself what Henry Clay had refused to do three years earlier, still hoping that Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee might be induced to abolish slavery and thus place the slave power in a hopeless minority.His disappointment was extreme at the pro-slavery reaction which had taken place in Kentucky.The condition called for more drastic measures, and Birney decided to forsake entirely the colonization society and cast in his lot with the abolitionists.He freed his slaves in 1834, and in the following year he delivered the principal address at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society held in New York.His gift of leadership was at once recognized.As vice-president of the society he began to travel on its behalf, to address public assemblies, and especially to confer with members of state legislatures and to address the legislative bodies.He now devoted his entire time to the service of the society, and as early as September, 1835, issued the prospectus of a paper devoted to the cause of emancipation.This called forth such a display of force against the movement that he could neither find a printer nor obtain the use of a building in Dansville, Kentucky, for the publication.As a result he transferred his activities to Cincinnati, where he began publication of the Philanthropist in 1836.With the connivance of the authorities and encouragement from leading citizens of Cincinnati, the office of the Philanthropist was three times looted by the mob, and the proprietor's life was greatly endangered.The paper, however, rapidly grew in favor and influence and thoroughly vindicated the right of free discussion of the slavery question.Another editor was installed when Birney, who became secretary of the Anti-slavery Society in 1837, transferred his residence to New York City.
Twenty-three years before Lincoln's famous utterance in which he proclaimed the doctrine that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and before Seward's declaration of an irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom, Birney had said: "There will be no cessation of conflict until slavery shall be exterminated or liberty destroyed.Liberty and slavery cannot live in juxtaposition." He spoke out of the fullness of his own experience.A thoroughly trained lawyer and statesman, well acquainted with the trend of public sentiment in both North and South, he was fully persuaded that the new pro-slavery crusade against liberty boded civil war.He knew that the white men in North and South would not, without a struggle, consent to be permanently deprived of their liberties at the behest of a few Southern planters.Being himself of the slaveholding class, he was peculiarly fitted to appreciate their position.To him the new issue meant war, unless the belligerent leaders should be shown that war was hopeless.By his moderation in speech, his candor in statement, his lack of rancor, his carefully considered, thoroughly fair arguments, he had the rare faculty of convincing opponents of the correctness of his own view.
There could be little sympathy between Birney and William Lloyd Garrison, whose style of denunciation appeared to the former as an incitement to war and an excuse for mob violence.As soon as Birney became the accepted leader in the national society, there was friction between his followers and those of Garrison.To denounce the Constitution and repudiate political action were, from Birney's standpoint, a surrender of the only hope of forestalling a dire calamity.He had always fought slavery by the use of legal and constitutional methods, and he continued so to fight.In this policy he had the support of a large majority of abolitionists in New England and elsewhere.Only a few personal friends accepted Garrison's injunction to forswear politics and repudiate the Constitution.
The followers of Birney, failing to secure recognition for their views in either of the political parties, organized the Liberty party and, while Birney was in Europe in 1840, nominated him as their candidate for the Presidency.The vote which he received was a little over seven thousand, but four years later he was again the candidate of the party and received over sixty thousand votes.He suffered an injury during the following year which condemned him to hopeless invalidism and brought his public career to an end.
Though Lundy and Birney were contemporaries and were engaged in the same great cause, they were wholly independent in their work.
Lundy addressed himself almost entirely to the non-slaveholding class, while all of Birney's early efforts were "those of a slaveholder seeking to induce his own class to support the policy of emancipation.Though a Northern man, Lundy found his chief support in the South until he was driven out by persecution.
Birney also resided in the South until he was forced to leave for the same reason.The two men were in general accord in their main lines of policy: both believed firmly in the use of political means to effect their objects; both were at first colonizationists, though Lundy favored colonization in adjacent territory rather than by deportation to Africa.
