Ohio History Journal

STANLEY C. HARROLD, JR.

The Southern Strategy

of the Liberty Party

The great debate among American abolitionists prior to the Civil

War centered upon the question of the proper method of ending

slavery. How was a movement with negligible support outside of the

northern states to abolish an institution that existed in the southern

states? The alternatives appeared to be: convince southerners to

voluntarily give it up, take federal action against it, or use indirect

methods to make slaveholding economically infeasible. The leaders of

the Liberty party of Ohio have been correctly portrayed as advocates

of the third alternative. These men, who led the Liberty party into the

Free Soil coalition of 1848, were able opportunists willing to abandon

an already watered-down abolitionism for a more attractive policy

opposing the further expansion of slavery. What has been largely

overlooked is that these same men had from 1840 onward sought to

expand the Liberty party into the southern states, where it might

bring about the direct abolition of slavery through state legislation.

They based their efforts upon the premise that large numbers of

southerners would be receptive to antislavery arguments. This view,

repeated frequently, nurtured a belief among antislavery men that

there was a reservoir of untapped antislavery sentiment in the South,

and it contributed to the great Republican misconception that pro-

Union sentiment in the South was strong enough to stem the move-

ment for disunion.

Few would dispute that the Virginia House of Delegates' overwhelm-

ing rejection of a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery in 1832

was the symbolic terminus of significant antislavery action within

the southern portion of the United States. A year earlier Nat Turner's

brief but bloody slave revolt had encouraged southerners to discuss

whether to shore up the slave system or to plan for its liquidation.

Virginia set the pattern for the entire South by choosing perpetual

Stanley C. Harrold, Jr., is Assistant Professor of history at South Carolina State Col-

lege.

22                                                            OHIO HISTORY

slavery.¹ Societies for the gradual abolition of slavery in the South,

numerous until then, decayed rapidly as the impetus of the antislavery

movement shifted to the North and southerners became less tolerant.

Southern antislavery leaders, such as James G. Birney, Levi Coffin,

John Rankin, and Angelina Grimke, were forced out of the region

and went north in search of a more sympathetic audience.²

The tightening of proslavery attitudes in the South in the early

1830s, in part due to more fervent antislavery activity in the North,

had a long-term impact upon northern abolitionism. For example,

William Lloyd Garrison showed little interest in a dialogue with

southerners after his early days with Benjamin Lundy in Baltimore.

He believed it pointless to attempt to reason with obdurate sinners

and criminals. From the early 1840s Garrison's demand that the

Federal Union be dissolved because it was "a covenant with death

and an agreement with Hell" indicated that he appealed to an ex-

clusively northern audience.³

James G. Birney also doubted that southerners could be convinced

to abolish slavery. Northerners, he told Lewis Tappan in 1835, under-

estimated the tenacity of slaveholders.4 Increasingly, Birney empha-

sized political action in the North as the means of ending slavery.

Where Garrison hoped through moral agitation to create a genuinely

antislavery majority in the North, Birney hoped to reach the same

end by direct participation in the political process. He did not, however,

advocate using such a majority to dissolve the Union. In the mid-1840s

1. Clement Eaton, The Growth of Southern Civilization, 1790-1860 (New York,

1961), 75-77, 311. Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860 (New York,

1960), 52-58. Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom, Civil Liberties and the Slavery Con-

troversy, 1830-1860 (East Lansing, 1949), 23-31.

2. William Birney, James G. Birney and His Times, the Genesis of the Republican

Party with Some Account of the Abolition Movement in the South before 1828 (New

York, 1969), 74-86, 169, 382-412. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the

Slave Power in America (3 vols., Boston, 1876), III, 11-21, 173-99. Theodore Clark

Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties of the North West (New York, 1897), 8-17.

Dwight L. Dumond, Antislavery: the Crusade for Freedom in America (Ann Arbor,

1961), 87-88.

3. Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism, Garrison and His

Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (New York, 1969), 196-201, 255-60, 269-70,

273. Russel B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston,

1955), 53, 143. Cincinnati Weekly Herald and Philanthropist, April 23, 1845. As early

as 1830 Garrison wrote, "It is morally impossible, I am convinced, for a slaveholder

to reason correctly on the subject of slavery." Genius of Universal Emancipation,

February 19, 1830, in John L. Thomas, Slavery Attacked: The Abolitionist Crusade

(Englewood Cliffs, 1965), 7.

4. James G. Birney to Gerrit Smith, November 14, 1834; Birney to Lewis Tappan,

February 3, 1835; in Dwight L. Dumond, ed., Letters of James G. Birney, 1831-1857

(2 vols., New York, 1938), I, 147-48, 177-78, 363. Betty Fladeland, James G. Birney,

Slaveholder to Abolitionist (Ithaca, 1955), 137.

Southern Strategy of Liberty Party                                         23

he joined the New York state antislavery leaders, Alvan Stewart,

William Goodell, and Gerrit Smith, in contending that a northern

majority might use the federal government to overstep the bounds of

state sovereignty and abolish slavery in the South by act of Congress,

Presidential decree, or decision of the Supreme Court.⁵

Garrison and Birney, men of widely different backgrounds and out-

looks-one the leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the other

the head of the Liberty party-observed southerners closing ranks in

support of slavery, and adopted different-but equally radical-policies

which ignored public opinion in the slave states. However, other

antislavery men refused to give up the hope that southerners might

be convinced to abolish slavery voluntarily. Like conservative William

Jay, they feared that those abolitionists who "ridiculed the idea of

effecting our object by addresses to the understanding and consciences

of slaveholders" risked civil war.⁶

Ironically, the foremost advocates of sustaining antislavery efforts

in the South were those individuals who have been most often

criticized for ignoring the problem of slavery and concentrating upon

an appeal to northerners to protect their own interests by removing

slaveholders from positions of power in the federal government.

Salmon P. Chase, Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, and Samuel Lewis, the princi-

pal leaders of the Ohio Liberty party, were repeatedly censured

by Birney, Smith, and Goodell for refusing to advocate using federal

action to abolish slavery in the South.⁷ Ohio Garrisonian Abner

Brooke charged that the Ohio Liberty men adopted a states' rights

position in order to uphold slavery in the states, and Smith told Bailey,

5. Birney, Birney, 171-76. Fladeland, Birney, 169, 216-17. Birney to Ezekial Webb,

Thomas Chandler, and Darius C. Jackson, October 6, 1836; Birney to Russell Errett,

August 5, 1844; Birney to the Hartford Committee, August 15, 1844, in Dumond,

Letters, I, 363; II, 831, 834-35. Alvan Stewart to Wife, May 7, 1838, in Gerald Sorin,

The New York Abolitionists, A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, 1971),

47-52. Gerrit Smith to William Seward, February 19, 1842, quoted in John R. Hen-

dricks, "The Liberty Party in New York State, 1838-1848" (Ph.D. dissertation, Ford-

ham University, 1959), 98-99. William Goodell, Views of American Constitutional Law

in its Bearings on American Slavery (2nd ed., Utica, 1845). Herald and Philanthropist,

April 23, 1845. Kraditor, Means and Ends, 185-91.

6. Bayard Tuckerman, William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the

Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1894), 93-97. Hendricks, "Liberty Party," 142-43.

Herald and Philanthropist, April 23, 1845.

7. James G. Birney, Diary, April 22, 1842; Birney to Limaeas P. Noble, September

13, 1847, in Dumond, Letters, II, 690-91n, 1080-83. Birney to Editor of the National

Era, November 18, 1847, in National Era, January 6, 1848. Ralph V. Harlow, Gerrit

Smith, Philanthropist as Reformer (New York, 1939), 164-65. See also, Joshua Leavitt

to Salmon P. Chase, December 6, 1841, The Papers of Salmon P. Chase, Historical

Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited Chase Papers). Alvan Stewart to Gamaliel

Bailey, April 1842, in Luther Rawson Marsh, ed., Writings and Speeches of Alvan

Stewart on Slavery (New York, 1860), 250-71.

24                                                           OHIO HISTORY

"there certainly is no great merit, and certainly no proof of genuine

abolitionism, in belonging to a party, which makes its appeal to the

selfishness rather than    the benevolence of its members."⁸ Goodell

wrote:

I see not why Dr. Bailey, and as many of the Liberty men as agree with him,

may not join with the Whigs and Democratic anti-slavery men in a Northern

Rights party, which, leaving slavery undisturbed in its present entrenchment

should . . . only busy itself in preventing the further encroachment of the

Slave Power.⁹

Most historians have also agreed that the Ohio Liberty leaders were

willing to trade abolitionist goals for political success in the North.10

Chase, Bailey, and Lewis insisted that they limited Liberty party

work to opposing the political threat of slavery to the North because

they did not wish to alienate potential antislavery men in the South

by threatening to trample their constitutional rights. Well into the

1840s they still believed that antislavery majorities could be created

in the slave states.11 While Garrisonian societies called for no union

with slaveholders, while Gerrit Smith advocated federal interference

in the southern states and defended northerners who entered the

South to aid slaves to escape, the Ohioans emphasized tactics which

would not offend southern moderates.¹² In 1839, prior to the founding

of the Liberty party, the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society resolved

That notwithstanding the exhibition of violence on the part of the leaders in

both church and state at the South, we still believe that there are patriots

and christians there, who deeply lament the evil of slavery, and with whom

we are called upon sincerely to sympathize.13

Chase, Lewis, and ex-Senator Thomas Morris played prominent roles

8. Abner Brooke to Gamaliel Bailey, December 19, 1842, in Philanthropist, January

4, 1843. Gerrit Smith to Bailey, September 13, 1842, in Philanthropist, October 15,

1842.

9. Albany Patriot, quoted in National Era, April 29, 1847.

10. Erwin H. Price, "The Election of 1848 in Ohio," Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Quarterly, XXXVI (1927), 188-290. Julian P. Bretz, "The Economic Back-

ground of the Liberty Party," American Historical Review, XXXIV (January 1929),

250-64. Joseph G. Rayback, "The Liberty Party Leaders of Ohio: Exponents of Anti-

slavery Coalition," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LVII (1948), 165-78.

Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party

before the Civil War (New York, 1970), 73-102.

11. For example, see Chase to Gerrit Smith, May 14, 1842, The Papers of Gerrit

Smith Miller, Syracuse University (hereafter cited Miller Papers).

12. Nye, Garrison, 53, 143. Address of the Peterboro State Convention to the Slaves

and its Vindication (Cazenovia, NY, 1842). Gamaliel Bailey to Gerrit Smith, in

Philanthropist, August 27, 1842. Herald and Philanthropist, April 16, 1845.

13. "Fourth Anniversary of the Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society," Philanthropist,

June 11, 1839.

26                                                          OHIO HISTORY

he feared its existence would damage the credibility of moral appeals

to the South. In 1845 he wrote:

Eastern friends seem to take little note of the South in their calculations. They

do not act or speak, as if they expected its co-operation; nor do they seem

anxious to operate as much upon public sentiment in the slave States, and

through that upon slavery, as upon public sentiment in the free States, and

through that, upon slavery in the slave States.16

In 1840 Bailey still hoped slaveholders could be convinced to free

their slaves. During the next five years he was in the forefront of the

Ohio leaders' campaign to show that the Liberty party would not

usurp a state's power to deal with slavery within its own bounds. He

said it shocked common sense to contend that a constitution which

throughout bore the marks of concessions to slavery "was designed to

empower Congress or the Supreme Judiciary to put an end to this

system."¹⁷ He urged his Liberty party colleagues to be especially care-

ful not "to overstrain the Constitution, or pervert its true meanings."18

When Smith and Goodell rhetorically advised slaves to escape, Bailey

said, "Our business is simply with the master." The abolitionist aim,

he contended, had always been emancipation on the soil, not exodus.

To appear to sanction servile insurrection would not only further close

the mind of the South and hurt the growth of antislavery sentiment

in the free states, but might lead to the extermination instead of the

freeing of black Americans.¹⁹

Bailey conceded that it was difficult for a southerner to see the truth

about slavery, but he pointed to antislavery activity in Kentucky and

Maryland, the establishment of an East Tennessee Anti-Slavery Society

in 1842, and especially to the Philanthropist's expanding circulation

in the slave states as evidence of progress.²⁰ In 1842 he predicted that

the Liberty party could appeal to nine tenths of the people of the

South.²¹

Personal experience underlay the optimism of Bailey and the other

Ohio leaders. Cincinnati, where they all lived, was in many ways a

16. Philanthropist, June 11, November 19, 1839. Herald and Philanthropist, April

23, 1845.

17. Philanthropist, June 9, 1840.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., September 22, 1841; February 9, April 6, 1842.

20. Ibid., April 28, 1840; June 15, 1842. Herald and Philanthropist, May 8, Sep-

tember 18, 1844; January 22, 1845; February 4, July 15, 22, 1846. Bailey to Herald

and Philanthropist, November 5, 1844, in Herald and Philanthropist, November 20,

1844.

21. Philanthropist, August 27, 1842. Bailey in 1845 predicted Kentucky would pass

legislation for the gradual abolution of slavery within its borders in four years. Bailey

to Rev. John Scoble, January 19, 1845, in Annie Heloise Abel and Frank J. Klingberg,

eds., A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 1839-1858 .... (n.p., 1927), 202-03.

Southern Strategy of Liberty Party                                   27

southern city. If progress could be made there, why not further south,

where Cassius M. Clay, John G. Fee, and James E. Snodgrass main-

tained indigenous antislavery movements in Kentucky and Maryland.

Bailey traveled extensively throughout the northern slave states, often

to visit his wife's family in southeastern Virginia. He discussed slavery

with slaveholders, whom by and large he found to be reasonable men.²²

In 1838 the Philanthropist showed how such factors could advance

the antislavery cause. It contended that the southern portions of Ohio,

Indiana, and Illinois were largely populated by proslavery emigrants

from the South, who cared little for the rights of blacks or aboli-

tionists. They maintained family and commercial ties with the people

south of the Ohio River. Antislavery organization among them was

especially difficult, but once it had been accomplished the same family

relationships and commercial ties would offer "peculiar opportunities

for disseminating light and truth among . . . slave-holding neigh-

bors."²³

Bailey stressed that it would be no easy task to abolitionize western-

ers and, especially, southerners, but because the Ohio scheme en-

visioned neither disunion nor a revolutionary interpretation of the

Federal constitution it appealed to the great majority of Liberty

men.²⁴ Lewis Tappan, the bellwether for non-Garrisonian abolitionists

in the East told Jay in 1843:

I confess the proceedings of the Ohio Liberty Party interest me more & more

and I feel almost induced to unite with them. . . . The Ohio party is truly

National in its principles, aiming only to divorce the general Gov't from all

participation in slavery & the slave trade.25

Such a policy, Tappan explained to British abolitionist John Scoble

would avoid sectional animosity, promote a union of antislavery men

North and South, and lead to the abolition of the last remnants of

slavery through the repeal of state laws.²⁶

The idea that the Liberty party should become a national party with

organizations in the slave, as well as the free states, developed slowly.

22. Philanthropist, September 22, 1841. Herald and Philanthropist, October 16,

1844; April 9, 1845; February 25, 1846. Bailey to Herald and Philanthropist, October

24, 28, 1844, in Herald and Philanthropist, November 6, 13, 1844.

23. Philanthropist, September 25, 1838.

24. Hendricks, "Liberty Party," 142-43. Margaret L. Plunkett, "A History of the

Liberty Party, with Emphasis on its Activities in the Northeastern States" (Ph.D.

dissertation, Cornell University, 1930), 99.

25. Lewis Tappan to William Jay, March 16, 1843, quoted in Joel Goldfarb, "The

Life of Gamaliel Bailey Prior to the Founding of the National Era; the Orientation of a

Practical Abolitionist" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1958), 469.

26. Lewis Tappan to Rev. John Scoble, March 1, 1843, in Abel and Klingberg,

Side-Light, 119.

28                                                         OHIO HISTORY

It sprang logically from placing the ultimate responsibility for aboli-

tion on southerners, but it required that abolitionists shift the thrust

of their appeal from slaveholding to nonslaveholding southerners.

Originally       all abolitionists addressed    themselves to    slaveholders,

asking them    to emancipate their slaves immediately.²⁷ By the early

forties Garrison was addressing an exclusively northern audience; as

were Birney, Goodell, and Smith, while Ohio Liberty men still talked

of educating slaveholders to the evils of slavery.28 However, faced

with the same lack of progress in reaching the planting class as had

driven Birney to the North, the Philanthropist in the late 1830s and

early 1840s slowly turned to addressing nonslaveholding southerners,

who constituted the overwhelming majority in the slave states. The

transition was completed in 1843 when the Ohio leaders conceived

of the Liberty party as a nonslaveholders party that could be expanded

throughout the South.²⁹

By 1845 Liberty men in the North were ready to take concrete action

toward expanding the party southward. In the spring of that year the

Cincinnatians organized the "Southern and Western Convention of

the Friends of Constitutional Liberty," which they held in Cincinnati

on June 11 and 12. The name itself indicated the intended scope of

the convention and Bailey circulated the call in Kentucky and western

Virginia, as well as in the Northwest and Pennsylvania.³⁰

The Southern and Western Convention's "Address to the People of

the United States," written by Chase, presented the southern strategy

of the Liberty party. Chase rejected coalition with either Whigs or

Democrats and pledged Liberty men "to regard the extinction of

slavery as the most important end which can, at this time be proposed

to political action."³¹ But he insisted that the final determination of

27. "American Anti-Slavery Society Commission to Theodore D. Weld," in Gilbert

H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimke

Weld, and Sarah Grimke, 1822-1844 (2 vols., New York, 1934), 1, 124-28. Elizur Wright,

Jr., The Sin of Slavery and its Remedy; Containing Some Reflections on the Moral

Influence of African Colonization (New York, 1833), Chapter 5. John Rankin, Letters

on American Slavery, Addressed to Mr. Thomas Rankin, Merchant at Middlebrook,

Augusta County, Virginia (Boston, 1833). A. E. Grimke, Appeal to the Christian Women

of the South; Revised and Corrected (3rd ed., n.p., [1836]); G. Smith, Letter to . . .

Rev. James Smylie of the State of Mississippi, nos. 2 and 3 of Anti-Slavery Examiner

(New York, 1836-1845).

28. Philanthropist, June 9, 1840; September 22, 1841; January 11, 1843.

29. Ibid., September 29, 1837; August 27, 1842. Herald and Philanthropist, January

15, April 9, 1845. Salmon P. Chase to Gerrit Smith, May 14, 1842, Miller Papers.

"Resolutions of the Hamilton County Liberty Convention," August 1, 1843, in

Philanthropist, August 16, 1843. "Resolutions of the Liberty Party National Con-

vention," Buffalo, August 30, 1843, in Herald and Philanthropist, September 22, 1843.

30. Herald and Philanthropist, March 26, April 16, May 21, 1845.

31. Salmon P. Chase, The Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Con-

30                                                       OHIO HISTORY

themselves, or by the hope that they too might some day become

slaveholders? If they would, they faced "a bitter retribution."³⁴

A year later Samuel Lewis wrote to the State Liberty Convention of

Ohio: "We have no idea that the Liberty party is to be confined to

the free States. It has commenced its work in the slave States, and

there we look for efficient action."³⁵ By then the southern strategy had

spread beyond Ohio in the North. In April 1845 Joshua Leavitt's

Boston Morning Chronicle had indicted the Ohioans' entreaties to the

slaveholding citizens of Kentucky as "mealy mouthed," insisted that an

"indignant tone" be maintained, and sanctioned "slave stealing"

as the tactic best suited "to bring on . . . discussion, or to bring on a

favorable result."³⁶ Six months later, in October 1845, a slaveholder

was addressing the Northeastern counterpart of the Southern and

Western Convention. With Smith, Goodell, and Leavitt in attendance,

the Boston convention tabled a resolution which declared that the

federal government could abolish slavery in the states.³⁷ In 1846

Leavitt showed increasing interest in indigenous antislavery activity

in the South and declared, "there is not a State of the Union where

the people might not peacefully and lawfully abolish slavery by an

overwhelming majority, if they would, against the utmost resistance of

every slaveholder." He called for "practical abolition . . . common

sense abolition," in which all groups, sections, and classes could join.38

In 1847 he said he was "not quite sure" Congress could prohibit

slavery in the states and recommended activities which would "hasten

its overthrow by State legislation."³⁹

In Chicago the Liberty party joined in launching what became the

main instrument for reaching the mind of the South. The first steps

had been taken in the spring of 1846 by Lewis Tappan, who was in-

terested  in establishing antislavery  newspapers in southern cities.

Washington, D.C., was the most attractive location. In addition to be-

ing a slaveholding community, as the national capital it would lend

prestige to any paper published within its bounds, while a publishing

enterprise in Washington could also serve as a lobbying organiza-

tion.⁴⁰ Tappan was already laying the groundwork for such a project

34. Ibid., 119, 121.

35. Samuel Lewis to A. A. Guthrie, February 5, 1846, in Boston Emancipator, July

15, 1846.

36. Herald and Philanthropist, April 16, 1845.

37. Henry B. Stanton to Salmon P. Chase, October 6, 1845, in S. H. Dadson, ed.,

"Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase," Annual Report of the American

Historical Association for the Year 1902 (2 vols., Washington, 1903), 11, 465-66.

38. Emancipator, January 14, 1846, February 24, 1847.

39. Ibid., March 24, 1847.

40. Lewis Tappan to Salmon P. Chase, March 9, 1846, Chase Papers. Tappan to

Southern Strategy of Liberty Party                                  31

when the North Western Liberty Convention, meeting in Chicago in

late June 1846, appointed a committee to consider the subject. Chaired

by Charles V. Dyer and including the leading Liberty men of the upper

Northwest, the committee reported favorably and began cooperating

in launching "a National Liberty Paper at Washington."⁴1 In his re-

port Dyer referred repeatedly to creating a publication that would

"be patronized by thousands in every State." Among other southern

agents for the paper were men located deep in the slave South: Hugh

M. Nisbet of Torbitt's Store, South Carolina; J. Caskey of Caston,

Sumter County, Alabama; and John Caughey of Starkville, Missis-

sippi. Any excess funds raised for the undertaking would "be ex-

pended in the free circulation of the said paper among the non-slave-

holders in the slave states."⁴²

Tappan chose Bailey to edit the Washington paper, with John G.

Whittier and Amos A. Phelps as corresponding editors. Bailey, whom

Tappan praised as "never ultra or vulgar or coarse," had not only

been a leader in advocating expanded operations in the South; he

would bring the Philanthropist's subscription list with its large south-

ern element to Washington.⁴³ Tappan and Bailey named the new

paper the National Era, which embodied their hope that the Liberty

party would expand into the South and become a truly national party.⁴⁴

Meanwhile Tappan and Chase aided John C. Vaughan-a native of

South Carolina-to found a successor to Cassius M. Clay's defunct

True American in Kentucky. "Now the establishment of the National

Era at Washington & the Examiner at Louisville," Tappan told Fee,

"have satisfied the community that anti-slavery papers can be estab-

lished in slave States." The National Era, for which Tappan raised

$63,000, was to be the flagship of a fleet of southern Liberty papers.⁴⁵

Bailey gained the endorsement of Dyer's committee, which alluded

to "his well tried services as a friend of the slave" and his "talent and

Joshua Leavitt, February 28, 1847, in Emancipator, March 10, 1847.

41. "National Liberty Paper at Washington: Report of the Committee," in Emanci-

pator, November 4, 1846.

42. Ibid.

43. Lewis Tappan to Gerrit Smith, August 24, 1846, Miller Papers. Bertram Wyatt-

Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969),

278-97.

44. Herald and Philanthropist, November 18, 1846. Cincinnati Weekly Herald,

December 16, 1846.

45. Salmon P. Chase to Charles Sumner, November 26, 1846, "Diary and Correspon-

dence," II, 111. Lewis Tappan to Joshua Leavitt, February 28, 1847, in Emancipator,

March 10, 1847. Tappan to Gamaliel Bailey, November 6, 1848, Tappan to John G. Fee,

November 12, 1847, Tappan to Amos A. Phelps, January 16, 1847, Lewis Tappan

Letter Book, The Papers of Lewis Tappan, Library of Congress (hereafter cited Tappan

Papers).

32                                                       OHIO HISTORY

tact as the conductor of a public journal."⁴⁶ He began his first issue

of the National Era on January 7, 1847, with an appeal to the people

of the South, which was premised upon the assumption that

A majority of the anti-slavery people of the free states without abating their

zeal, or compromising their principles, clearly see that mere denunciation may

inflame but not convince-may terrify the cowardly, but must arouse the in-

dignation and resistance of men of courage and intelligence .... On the

other hand there are Southern men who feel in their hearts that the haughty

claim that slavery shall be exempt from investigation, discussion, opposition,

is a gross absurdity. They . . . are willing to listen to discussion, so that they

be treated as men whose peculiar circumstances should not be lost sight of

and who have minds to be reasoned with, sensibilities to be respected.⁴⁷

The "leading object" of the National Era would be to present to

southerners "such facts and arguments as may serve to throw further

light upon the question of slavery, and its disposition." It would advo-

cate the "doctrines and measures" of the Liberty party, which although

"confined chiefly to the free States" was not "sectional in its creed or

spirit." Bailey repeated assurances that his party would not "attempt

to force the Federal Constitution from its obvious meaning" and that it

would rely on adherents in the slave states to abolish slavery, "sec-

onding their efforts by the moral influence of the rest of the organi-

zation."⁴⁸

Bailey said he wished to "reach the mind of the South," but like

Chase's 1845 "Address to the People of the United States," the Na-

tional Era spoke to the nonslaveholding majority. Its constant theme

was that the antislavery movement was not a sectional struggle, but a

class struggle, and it called upon the southern people to overthrow

"the ruling caste, the Slave Power."⁴⁹ Slaveholders cared nothing for

democracy or the interests of the southern people. They assumed that

there was nothing worthwhile in the South but slavery and by using

"'Slavery' and 'Southern Institutions' " interchangeably they made it

appear that an attack on slavery was an attack on the South as a sec-

tion. Because of these tactics, many southerners opposed abolition

even though it would free them from perpetual domination by the

slaveholders, raise the price of labor, and benefit the material pro-

gress of their section.⁵⁰

46. "Report of the Committee," Emancipator, November 4, 1846.

47. National Era, January 7, 1847.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., August 26, 1847.

50. Ibid., February 25, August 26, 1847; November 16, 1848.

Southern Strategy of Liberty Party                                   33

Slaveholders also maintained that the alternative to slavery in the

South was race war and anarchy, and the National Era acknowledged

that nonslaveholders had reason to support a bad system if the alter-

native were worse. Yet, so long as slavery existed southerners risked

a "war of extermination and anarchy." Would it not be wiser to end

the threat altogether through a policy of peaceful emancipation, which

would align former slaves "with law and order, instead of against

it?"51

This was certainly not an appeal to conscience and morality, but

to self-interest, and, to avoid the violent end that had been the fate

of earlier antislavery papers in the South, Bailey did not initially

make a point of advocating the abolition of slavery in the District of

Columbia. He announced that "it might be wise to refrain to-day from

stating a fact or pressing a principle which to-morrow may find ready

access to the public," and he begged the forbearance of his northern

colleagues.⁵²

Predictably, however, Birney and the New York state Liberty

spokesmen distrusted the southern strategy and believed the estab-

lishment of the National Era to be pointless. Garrison and his followers

agreed. Even though Bailey's appeal to southern nonslaveholders was

hardly likely to please slaveholders, they regarded it as a violation of

true abolitionist principles. Birney told Tappan, "The publishing of an

anti-slavery newspaper in Washington City, even if it took high ground,

it is probable, I do not consider so important as you do."⁵³ The Garri-

sonian Salem (Ohio) Anti-Slavery Bugle observed that the National

Era's conduct was "exceedingly judicious" and would not be "in-

dicted for incedniarism, fanaticism, and we had almost said abolition-

ism." Garrison said, "A genuine anti-slavery journal would not be tol-

erated twenty four hours in that District."⁵⁴

Even Leavitt, who had supported the appeal to the South and had

publicized the National Era, despite the fact that he had hoped to edit

the Washington paper himself, soon began to fear that Bailey had gone

too far in his defense of exclusive state control over slavery.55 How-

ever Lewis Tappan spoke for large numbers of abolitionists when he

defended Bailey's conduct of the paper as proper for its southern loca-

51. Ibid., August 26, 1847.

52. Ibid., January 7, 1847. Gamaliel Bailey to Zebina Eastman, June 11, 1847, The

Papers of J. Frank Aldrich, Chicago Historical Society. Bailey to Gerrit Smith, Sep-

tember 2, 1847, Miller Papers.

53. James G. Birney to Lewis Tappan, April 8, 1847, The Papers of James G. Birney,

William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.

54. Salem Anti-Slavery Bugle, January 29, 1847. Boston Liberator, July 16, 1847.

55. Emancipator, March 17, 1847.

34                                                        OHIO HISTORY

tion and necessary for its continued existence. Most important, Tappan

exclaimed, "the Doctor is getting readers at the South!"⁵⁶

Of that there was no doubt. The paper's moderate language and

ample literary content-much of which was tailored to southern taste-

brought an initial response among southern journals more favorable

than not.⁵⁷ In 1849 the Nashville Gazette described the National Era

as "able and dignified" and advised southern politicians to read the

paper in order to better understand antislavery motives. Also, the

National Era was not at first labeled incendiary and circulated more

or less freely through the southern mails. By 1853 approximately one

sixth of the paper's 28,000 subscribers lived in the slave states.⁵⁸

From accounts of organization, reports of individual acts of emancipa-

tion, and letters from southerners which appeared in its columns, a

picture materialized of the National Era as in the vanguard of an anti-

slavery movement stretching from Kentucky to South Carolina.⁵⁹

The picture, however, was never a reality. Too many obstacles,

North and South, precluded it. In the first place, the initial acquies-

cence by many southern papers in the establishment of the National

Era reflected not tolerance, but a widespread hope that the paper

would fail if ignored.⁶⁰ When instead it gained a southern audience the

editor of the Montgomery (Alabama) Times warned that Bailey's

"policy is furnishing the axe which is to cleave your heads and dis-

member the very cord of national existence."⁶¹

Prominent Southerners established the Southern Press in Washing-

ton in 1850 specifically for the purpose of countering the National Era.

The Press's able editor, Elwood Fisher, who was also from Cincinnati,

began a campaign to show that in spite of its mild demeanor Bailey's

publication was "clearly incendiary" because, say what it would about

state control over slavery, it believed the institution wrong and de-

fended the right of slaves to escape.⁶²

In the second place, just as the National Era began publication,

the Liberty party entered a crisis. The organization shattered in 1848.

Bailey, Chase, Lewis, and Leavitt joined the Free Soil coalition. Smith,

56. Lewis Tappan to John G. Whittier, April 21, 1847, The Papers of Samuel T.

Pickard and John G. Whittier, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

57. National Era, January 7, 28, 1847.

58. Ibid., August 12, 1852; January 13, 1853. Montgomery (Alabama) Times,

quoted in National Era, January 6, 1843.

59. National Era, January 21, May 13, June 10, 24, August 19, December 30, 1847;

March 16, July 6, September 7, October 12, 26, November 2, 1848; August 30, Sep-

tember 6, 1849.

60. Baltimore Sun, quoted in National Era, January 7, 1847.

61. Montgomery Times, quoted in National Era, January 6, 1853.

62. Washington, D.C., Southern Press, July 19, 22, October 17, 1850.

Southern Strategy of Liberty Party                                     35

Goodell, and Birney founded the Liberty League.63 Tappan, who would

join neither group, lost the support he needed to launch the large-scale

propaganda agency he had hoped to build around the Washington

paper. The Louisville Examiner proved to be a bitter disappointment

and proposals for antislavery papers in other southern states were

dropped.⁶⁴

The increasing sectional polarization that arose out of the debate

over the status of slavery in the territories wrested from Mexico

finally blocked the circulation of even moderate antislavery material in

the South, and at the same time destroyed the political base of the

southern strategy in the North. Southerners were convinced that north-

ern attempts to ban slavery in the new territories were attacks on the

interests and honor of the South. Meanwhile, popular opposition to the

expansion of slavery attracted Bailey and Chase and separated them

from Tappan, who insisted that participation in an anti-slavery exten-

sion coalition amounted to lowering the standard of abolition.⁶⁵

By the early 1850s all who had hoped to establish a national pro-

gram of antislavery action had been disillusioned. Lewis Tappan be-

came convinced that federal action was necessary after all to abolish

slavery in the southern states. Samuel Lewis was tending toward the

same conclusion. Bailey and Chase gave increasing preeminence to

nonextensionism as an indirect method of forcing the abolition of

slavery.⁶⁶ Briefly during the crisis of 1850 such a consummate na-

tionalist as Dr. Bailey advocated disunion.⁶⁷ In the middle 1850s he

adopted the argument that not until a northern antislavery party gained

control of the federal government would antislavery sentiment in the

South be able to organize politically. This was a clear concession to

the tactic of appealing to an exclusively northern audience.⁶⁸

63. National Era, July 1, August 24, 1848. Emancipator, August 16, 1848. Proceedings

of the National Liberty Convention Held in Buffalo, N. Y., June 14th & 15th, 1848

(Utica, 1848). Lewis Tappan to Gerrit Smith, July 5, 1848, Miller Papers. Tappan to

Gamaliel Bailey, October 9, November 6, 1848, Tappan Letter Book, Tappan Papers.

64. Lewis Tappan to Gamaliel Bailey, November 6, 1848, Tappan Letter Book,

Tappan Papers. Tappan to F. Julius LeMoyne, November 18, 1848, in "Letters of

Dr. F. J. LeMoyne, an Abolitionist of Western Pennsylvania," Journal of Negro History,

XVIII (October 1933), 451-52.

65. Lewis Tappan, "Address to the Friends of Liberty," New York Tribune, July 4,

1848.

66. Lewis Tappan to Salmon P. Chase, June 23, 1852, Tappan Letter Book, Tappan

Papers. "National Convention of the Friends of Freedom," September 24, 1851, in

National Era, October 2, 9, 1851. Samuel Lewis to Lewis Tappan, February 11, 1852,

in William G. W. Lewis, Biography of Samuel Lewis (Cincinnati, 1857), 394-96.

National Era, February 4, 1847; July 6, 1848; May 3, October 18, 1849; January 2, 9,

1851. Foner, Free Soil, 119.

67. National Era, June 20, 1850.

68. Ibid., February 16, April 20, 1854; August 30, November 8, 1855.

36                                                          OHIO HISTORY

There can be no doubt that Chase, Bailey, and Lewis had used op-

position to the extension of slavery in order to broaden the Liberty

party's appeal to include northerners who did not want to abolish

slavery in the South. At the same time they believed that they could

spread antislavery sentiments through the South, and had taken con-

crete steps in that direction. It was symbolic that when in 1849 a

young man was arrested in South Carolina for distributing antislavery

literature he was linked, not to Garrison or Smith, but to Chase.⁶⁹

Yet from the beginning the southern strategy had been based upon a

false premise. The progress of the antislavery cause in southern Ohio,

in some of the border states and among certain individuals from the

deep South convinced most Liberty leaders that traditional southern

governmental and moral structures could be used to abolish slavery.

As it turned out they were wrong, and those like Gerrit Smith, who

long thought federal action necessary to end the institution, were right.

In the meantime the misconception which was the basis of the south-

ern strategy left a legacy of historical consequence. The National Era

continued until 1860 as the journal of the radical wing of the Republi-

can party; throughout it pictured that party as a national party with

large numbers of potential adherents in the South.⁷⁰ It was a champion

of border state Republicans, and it enhanced the belief that the south-

ern populace was not as committed to the institution of slavery as its

representatives in Washington claimed.71 It is likely that the legacy of

the optimistic, but hopeless, southern strategy of the Liberty party

played a large part in nourishing the belief of Abraham Lincoln and

other Republican leaders in 1860 and 1861 that, despite ample evi-

dence to the contrary, there was enough pro-Union-if not antislavery

-sentiment in the South to prevent secession and war.

69. Ibid., August 9, 1849.

70. Ibid., December 9, 1852; October 6, 1853; November 1, 15, 1855; July 31, 1856.

Foner has shown that radical Republicans-for whom both Chase and Bailey were

prominent spokesmen-thought of themselves as political abolitionists, and that "it was

an axiom of radical policy that there existed a latent mass of antislavery feeling in

the South." Foner, Free Soil, 115-23.

71. National Era, August 17, 1848; August 30, 1849; September 11, 1851; October 5,

1852; August 14, 1856; April 8, 1857.