James G. Birney

Mercer County, Kentucky

Birney's Father

Born to an affluent Irish Episcopalian slaveholder of the same name in Danville, Kentucky, James G. Birney lost his mother, Martha Reed, aged three.[1] He and his sister were raised by their widowed aunt, who had come over from Ireland[1] at the request of his father to look after the two. He was influenced by his aunt's opposition to slavery; she refused to own slaves.[1] By 1795, his father's two sisters and their families had migrated from Ireland, settling on farms near his home. Most of his mother's relatives had also migrated nearby, settling in other areas of Mercer County, Kentucky. Growing up, he saw the issue of slavery from a variety of perspectives. Though his father fought to prevent their state of Kentucky from joining the Union as a slave state, when the effort failed, he decided that until the legislature abolished slavery from the state as a whole, a person could own slaves as long as he treated them humanely. Other members of Birney's family felt a personal moral responsibility and refused to own slaves. For his own part, Birney agreed with his father and received his first slave, Michael, a boy his own age, at age six.[1] However, for much of his youth and education, he was under the influence of teachers and friends with strong anti-slavery views. For example, he attended several sermons given by a Baptist abolitionist by the name of David Barrow in his youth, which he later recalled with fondness.

Samuel Stanhope Smith

When Birney turned eleven he was sent to Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where "one of Birney’s teachers, Robert Hamilton Bishop, was one of the state's earliest outspoken opponents of slavery."[1] He returned home two years later to enter a school run by a Presbyterian man that had just opened in Danville, where he excelled in his studies, mostly based in the sciences. In 1808, at age sixteen, he entered the College of New Jersey (later, Princeton University). He studied political philosophy, logic, and moral philosophy, and became known as a proficient debater. Among his classmates, he became particularly good friends with George M. Dallas. He studied under the president of the school (Samuel Stanhope Smith), both a logician and an author who was somewhat anti-slavery. He was also exposed to the anti-slavery thinking of John McLean.[1] Birney graduated from Princeton on September 26, 1810.

When he returned to Danville following graduation, he worked for the campaign of Henry Clay for one month. After this, he began to study law in Philadelphia, at the office of Alexander J. Dallas, the father of his Princeton friend and classmate. Enjoying considerable financial means, he had a horse carriage for transportation and was always well-dressed. He also made friends with members of the local Quaker community. He remained in Philadelphia with Dallas for the next three years, until he passed the Philadelphia bar examination and was admitted to the bar association, giving him the right to practice law.

In May 1814 Birney returned to his hometown and took up the practice of law there, becoming the acting attorney for the local bank. He handled both civil and criminal lawsuits in Danville and other outlying cities of Kentucky. The economy of Kentucky was rather poor at this time, as the War of 1812 had caused a schism in trade within the state. Having trouble making ends meet, Birney made his living at this time primarily as a claims adjuster.

Following in the footsteps of his father, Birney became a Freemason upon his return to Danville and a member of Danville's town council, making him a member of the town's social elite. He also fell in love with Agatha McDowell and married her on February 1, 1816, at a Presbyterian church; they had 11 children, of whom 6 survived to adulthood.[1] Among the wedding gifts the young couple received were slaves from his father and father-in-law. As Birney had yet to fully develop his abolitionist views, he accepted them kindly. It should be said that later in life Birney was known to say on many occasions that he does not recall ever believing that slavery was right.

Henry Clay

John McKinley

In 1815, he again worked for the successful campaign of Henry Clay, who was running for U.S. Congress. He also campaigned for George Madison, who was running for Kentucky Governor and won (Madison died months later). George Madison was also the maternal uncle of his wife, Agatha McDowell. His political sentiments at the time were with the Democratic-Republican Party. In 1816, Birney won a seat in the Kentucky Legislature representing Mercer County, becoming a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives at age twenty-four. In 1817, the Kentucky Senate drafted a resolution that proposed opening a dialogue between the newly installed governor of Kentucky, Gabriel Slaughter, and the governors of Ohio and Indiana for the purpose of passing laws in those states calling for the capture and return of runaway slaves from Kentucky.

Birney staunchly opposed this resolution and it was defeated, though a new resolution was soon after drafted and passed, despite Birney's opposition yet again. As he saw very little future for himself in Kentucky politics, Birney decided to move to Alabama with the hope of starting a political career.

Madison County, Alabama

In February 1818, he moved his family to Madison County, Alabama, where he purchased a cotton plantation and slaves, most of whom came with him from Kentucky. In 1819, Birney became a member of the Alabama House of Representatives representing Madison County. While there, he helped draft an act that would afford slaves tried by jury paid legal counsel, barring the master and prosecutorial witness or their relatives from being members of the jury. This, along with his opposition to the nomination of Andrew Jackson for U.S. president, hampered many of his future political ambitions in Alabama. He opposed Jackson primarily on the grounds that he was foul-tempered, having executed two men personally.

In 1823, after experiencing many troubles with his cotton plantation, Birney moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to practice law again. His financial troubles were due in part to his habit of horse race gambling, which he gave up eventually after many losses. Most of his slaves stayed on at the plantation, though he did bring with him to Huntsville his servant Michael, as well as Michael's wife and three children.

At this time there were a number of other practicing lawyers in that area, including one John McKinley. His name preceded him, and he was admitted to the Alabama bar association. McKinley, along with several other prominent members of society, successfully campaigned for Birney to become the solicitor of Alabama's Fifth District in 1823. By the end of the year he decided to close his plantation, and sold the slaves at the plantation to a friend of his that was known for his good temperament and kind treatment of slaves. Following the sale of the plantation and slaves, he achieved financial stability, bought a generous plot of land and constructed a large brick house in Huntsville. As was true upon his first return to Danville years back, he once again became a member of the social elite in this new town. In addition to his duties as a public prosecutor, his private law office proved quite lucrative.

By 1825, he was the wealthiest lawyer in northern Alabama, partnering up with Arthur F. Hopkins. The next year, he resigned as solicitor general to pursue his own career with more tenacity. Over the next several years, he worked, often defending blacks, was appointed a trustee of a private school and joined the Presbyterian Church. In 1828, he became an elector on the John Quincy Adams and Richard Rush ticket. He strongly supported Adams for his conservatism, viewing the politics of Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun as a threat to the Union. To Birney's great disappointment, Jackson won. However, he found other ways to champion his beliefs. In 1829, his fellow citizens elected him mayor of Huntsville, Alabama, allowing him to act on his newfound faith and work for reforms in public education and temperance.

A year before returning to Danville, Birney wrote letters to slaveholders in Kentucky who had previously expressed their support for emancipation, suggesting they soon hold a convention on the matter. On December 6, 1832, the gathering was held, with only nine slave owners in attendance. Most of these pledged not to emancipate their current slaves, but to emancipate their slave's offspring at age twenty-one. This small group also aimed to bring in non-slaveholders to promote this idea of "gradual emancipation".

James G. Birney, abolitionist publisher whose press was twice destroyed during the Cincinnati riots of 1836.

Birney's repudiation of the American Colonization Society and its projects was enormously influential; Gerrit Smith called it "celebrated".[2] 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."[3]^: 3

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.[4][5][6][7] 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,[8] he freed his remaining slaves and declared himself an abolitionist in 1834.

Liberty Party

Birney is pictured here at the conference in 1840 in a large group painting. The figure to the left is John Beaumont (another abolitionist delegate).[15]

With the American Anti-Slavery Society's schism in 1840, he resigned his position as he opposed equal rights for women. Also in that year, the Liberty Party, a newly formed political party whose only aim was abolition, nominated Birney for president. Accurately predicting he would not win, he instead went as a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.[15] The convention named him a vice-president and spread his writings throughout the United Kingdom. When he came back, the Liberty Party made use of his legal expertise in their efforts to defend blacks and fugitive slaves. They chose him as their candidate again in the 1844 presidential election with a campaign designed to draw votes away from the Whig Party candidate Henry Clay. In the New York election, Birney achieved 15,812 votes after Clay lost to the Democrat James K. Polk by only 5,106 votes; if Clay had won this state he would have achieved a majority in the Electoral College and won the election.[16]

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.[17]

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. 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.[18] He was buried at the Williamsburg Cemetery[19] in Groveland, New York, the home of his second wife's family.

In 1889, an all-black school in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was named the Birney School in his honor.[20] It later became an elementary school and in 1962 it was renamed Nichols Avenue Elementary School.[21]

Birney married Agatha McDowell in 1816. Agatha was the daughter of U.S. district judge for Kentucky William McDowell and Margaret Madison, a distant relatative of James Madison.[22] James and Agatha's marriage produced eleven children, only six of whom survived early childhood: James, William, Dion, David Bell, George, and Florence.[23] Agatha died in October 1838.[24]

On 25 March 1841, Birney married Elizabeth Potts Fitzhugh (sister of Henry Fitzhugh and of Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, wife of Gerrit Smith).[24] Their two children were Ann Hughes Birney (1844–1846) and Fitzhugh Birney (1842–1864).[25][26]

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.[26]

Birney's archive is at the Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.[27]

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Birney, James Gillespie".

• Fladeland, Betty (1955). James Gillespie Birney: Slaveholder to Abolitionist. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
• Encyclopedia of Kentucky. New York City: Somerset Publishers. 1987. pp. 112–116. ISBN 0-403-09981-1.
• Remini, Robert V. (1991). Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 652–668. ISBN 978-0393030044.
• D. Laurence Rogers (2011). Apostles of Equality: The Birneys, the Republicans and the Civil War. Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.
• Franklin, Cathy Rogers (2000). "James Gillespie Birney, the Revival Spirit, and The Philanthropist". American Journalism. 17 (2): 31–51. doi:10.1080/08821127.2000.10739237. S2CID 220312656.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Gillespie Birney.

• James G. Birney papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
• American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists, comprehensive list of abolitionist and anti-slavery activists and organizations in the United States, including historic biographies and anti-slavery timelines, bibliographies, etc.