James G. Birney

James Gillespie Birney (February 4, 1792 – November 18, 1857) was an American abolitionist, politician, and attorney born in Danville, Kentucky. He changed from being a planter and slave owner to abolitionism, publishing the abolitionist weekly The Philanthropist. He twice served as the presidential nominee for the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

Birney pursued a legal career in Danville after graduating from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) and studying under Alexander J. Dallas. He volunteered for the campaigns of Henry Clay, served on the town council, and became a Freemason. In 1816, he won election to the Kentucky House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. In 1818, he established a cotton plantation in Madison County, Alabama, and he won election to the Alabama House of Representatives the following year. Birney eventually sold the plantation and established a legal practice in Huntsville, Alabama, becoming one of the most successful lawyers in the region.

During the 1820s, Birney became increasingly troubled by the issue of slavery. He became a member of the American Colonization Society, which advocated for the migration of African Americans to the continent of Africa. After serving in various roles for the organization, Birney began calling for the immediate abolition of slavery. In 1835, he moved to Cincinnati, founding The Philanthropist the following year. He also became a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but resigned from that group due to his opposition to connecting the anti-slavery struggle to the movement for equal rights for women, although Birney endorsed the cause of women's suffrage. Birney accepted the Liberty Party's nomination in 1840 and received 0.3% of the popular vote. He accepted the Liberty Party nomination again in 1844 and received 2.3% of the popular vote, finishing behind James K. Polk and Clay. Birney moved to Michigan in 1841 and helped establish the town of Bay City, Michigan.

Youth

Born to an affluent Irish Episcopalian slaveholder of the same name in Danville, Kentucky, James G. Birney lost his mother, Martha Reed, when he was three. He was the society's employee, one of its agents. "No man has a better knowledge of colonization and its practical effects at the South."

In 1833, he read a paper signed by several Christian organizations that repudiated the tenets of the American Colonization Society and, instead, called for the immediate abolition of slavery. Almost the entirety of the following number of the society's magazine, African Repository, was devoted to an answer or "review" of him. This, along with life experience and education, brought Birney to the realization that slavery must be abolished once and for all. Inspired by correspondence and discussions with Theodore Weld, the organizer of the Lane Seminary debates, he freed his remaining slaves and declared himself an abolitionist in 1834.

Birney's abolitionist writings

Abolitionist newspaper "What ought to be done with them?" asked the Post. "We would say: Send them back to the place from whence they came, and if any of their authors, or the agents of them, should be found here, lynch them." In September we find that he "has abandoned the project of publishing an Abolition paper in Danville, Ky., and has removed to Cincinnati. A very good idea."

When Birney began publication of his abolitionist weekly, The Philanthropist, in Cincinnati, he and the paper were from the first the subject of controversy, with the majority of local newspapers and others doing everything they could to make him feel unwelcome. The Louisville Journal wrote a scathing editorial that all but directly threatened his paper. (quoted at left).

On July 14, 1836, a mob destroyed Birney's press. On July 30 the press was attacked again; the printing press was broken into pieces and the largest piece dragged through the streets and dumped in the river. The mob attempted to tar and feather Birney but could not find him. They went on to destroy houses of Blacks; the whole constitutes the Cincinnati riots of 1836.

However, writing for his newspaper helped him develop ideas for fighting slavery legislatively. He used them as he worked with Salmon P. Chase to protect slaves who escaped to Ohio. In 1837, he was fined $50 for harboring a slave. That same year, the American Anti-Slavery Society recruited him as an officer and corresponding secretary, and he moved his family to New York.

Liberty Party

Michigan In 1841, Birney moved to Saginaw, Michigan, with his new wife and family. He lived at the Webster House in Saginaw for a few months until his home in Bay City, Michigan, was ready. Birney was in the land development business in Bay City. He was a trustee of the reorganized Saginaw Bay Company and was deeply involved in the planning of Bay City, Michigan, where Birney Park is named after him. Birney and the other developers supported churches in their community and set aside money for their construction. In addition to running for the presidency in 1840 and 1844, Birney received 3023 votes for Governor of Michigan in 1845. Birney remained in Michigan until 1855, when his health drove him to move to the East Coast.

While in Bay City, Birney led a life of farming and agricultural pursuits in addition to his legal work, land development, and national anti-slavery involvement. He commented on the lack of help available in the city and was found working on his own fence.

His son, James Birney, came to Bay City, then called Lower Saginaw, to take care of his father's business interests in the city. James remained in Bay City and followed his father's tradition of public service. He is buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery on the East side of town.

Paralysis In August 1845, Birney suffered from bouts of paralysis following a horseback riding accident, which recurred intermittently for the remainder of his life. His speech became affected as his condition worsened, until he was eventually left to communication through gestures and writing (the latter made difficult by severe tremors). He ended his public career and his direct involvement in the abolitionist movement as a result, though he kept himself informed of new developments and campaigned for causes including the abolition of the military during the Mexican-American War and a decrease in immigration, arguing that European immigrants diluted the influence of America's free people of color.

He died in New Jersey in 1857 in the Raritan Bay Union, a communal settlement, surrounded by abolitionist friends Theodore Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké Weld, and her sister Sarah Grimké, convinced that war would be necessary to end slavery. He was buried at the Williamsburg Cemetery in Groveland, New York, the home of his second wife's family.

Honors

In 1889, an all-black school in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was named the Birney School in his honor. It later became an elementary school and in 1962 it was renamed Nichols Avenue Elementary School.

Family Birney married Agatha McDowell in 1816. Agatha was the daughter of U.S. district judge for Kentucky William McDowell and Margaret Madison, a distant relative of James Madison. James and Agatha's marriage produced eleven children, only six of whom survived early childhood: James, William, Dion, David Bell, George, and Florence. Agatha died in October 1838.

On 25 March 1841, Birney married Elizabeth Potts Fitzhugh (sister of Henry Fitzhugh and of Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, wife of Gerrit Smith).

Birney's oldest son James served as the 13th Lieutenant Governor of Michigan under Governor Austin Blair and as the U.S. Minister to the Netherlands.

Four of Birney's sons fought in the American Civil War. David was a Union Army major-general who died of disease in October 1864. William was a U.S. inspector-general of U.S. Colored Troops who later became a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Dion was a U.S. lieutenant who died during the Peninsula campaign in 1862. Fitzhugh was a U.S. major at the time of his death by pneumonia in June 1864.

Archival material James G. Birney Papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan. James Gillespie Birney Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.