Brief guide to manuscripts collections| William L. Clements Library The University of Michigan James G. Birney Papers |
James G. Birney, whose public career encompassed the entire antislavery movement in America, was born to a wealthy Kentucky family. Educated at Princeton, he became a successful lawyer in Huntsville, Ala., but his humanitarian sympathies led him to abandon his law practice in 1832 to become an agent for the American Colonization Society. Within a year he resigned, disillusioned with their scheme of gradual emancipation based on ideas of racial inferiority. Convinced that there must be united action by all opponents of slavery, he established a newspaper in 1836. Under his editorship the Philanthropist, printed in Cincinnati, became the first great antislavery paper in the midwest.
Birney's influence continued to grow in the antislavery movement with his lecturing, correspondence, and pamphleteering. In 1837 he became corresponding secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Within the Society Birney differed with his friend theodore D. Weld over the political duties of abolitionists and denounced the political abstention of William Lloyd Garrison. Birney saw the need for a new political party whose sole purpose was to promote the abolition of slavery, and with his leadershi,p the Liberty Party was founded in 1840. As its presidential candidate in 1840 and 1844, Birney argued that the Bible and the Constitution proscribed slavery. He came under personal attack from the Whigs, who were seriously affected by his challenge. Birney retired from public life after the election of 1844, although he continued to write occasional articles for the antislavery press.
Antislavery, political, business, and family correspondence of James Gillespie Birney, approximately 1,700 items.
This collection contains a very full correspondence for the decade 1834-1844. It has both incoming letters and drafts of Birney's letters. During this period Birney corresponded with a wide variety of public figures in politics and the antislavery movement in Great Britain as well as in America.
Gift of G. B. Jennison and Dwight L. Dumond, 1935 and 1964
Selected letters from the collection are published in Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831-1857, ed. Dwight L. Dumond, 2 vols. (New York, 1938)
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