Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest

2. Abolitionist Women and the Liberty Party

c hap t er 2 Abolitionist Women and the Liberty Party Mary Davis must have been scandalized when a “gentleman” sat in her lap. She had gone to Chicago’s City Hall to hear famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass discuss the state’s Black Laws, the importance of political antislavery, and the Fugitive Slave Act. A longtime admirer of Douglass , Davis was eager to listen to his lecture. When she arrived, however, the “house was crowded to its utmost capacity—high and low, rich and poor, black and white.” At fifty-three years old, she doubted she could stand for the entire talk. Her extensive antislavery experience had taught her that these meetings often ran longer than three hours. She scanned the hall and finally spied one empty seat at the end of a bench. Grateful for her luck, she quickly moved to the open space. The white gentleman occupying the seat next to the empty one, however, informed her that the seat was “engaged.” A stubborn and independent woman, Davis simply ignored his comment and sat down. Within a few minutes, another man arrived and the first man explained that he had attempted to save the seat but “this lady thinks she has the best right.” At this point, the second man plopped himself down on Davis’s lap. Unnerved and uncomfortable, Davis attempted to extricate herself.Then “a colored man very politely rose and gave us a seat.”While the white “gentlemen” humiliated her and violated the basic rules of decorum and respect, a kind and generous African American man inconvenienced 38 . the liberty party himself (and perhaps put himself at risk by interfering with white men) to come to her rescue. This incident offered Davis further evidence that the color of one’s skin was unrelated to one’s character and that racial prejudice and slavery were a detriment to the nation. Davis’s response to the insolent white male representatives of “galvanized aristocracy” she encountered at Chicago’s City Hall well represented her outspoken support for the antislavery movement—she ignored opposition from those around her and forged an independent position that reflected her passion for the cause but that occasionally left her vulnerable to disparagement from the general public. A resident of Peoria, Illinois, throughout the 1840s,Davis became a zealous advocate of the Liberty Party and a skilled political recruiter among women.Like the Ohio women who organized female antislavery societies in the 1830s,Davis and her Liberty Party sisters carefully negotiated a cooperative and flexible position within the movement. But they crossed more boundaries and risked more opposition than their Ohio counterparts by entering the world of partisan politics. The Liberty Party emerged among a small group of abolitionists frustrated with the failure of moral suasion. While the antislavery associates of William Lloyd Garrison disdained partisan politics as inherently corrupt and eschewed the Liberty Party, other abolitionists slowly came to see the new third party as a pragmatic method for achieving emancipation . Led initially by Alvan Stewart and Myron Holley, the party organized in Albany, New York, in April 1840, and nominated James G. Birney, exKentucky slaveholder and former editor of the Cincinnati-based Philanthropist , for president. A one-issue party, Liberty called for the federal government to disassociate itself from slavery as much as possible—particularly by emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia and ensuring that the western territories excluded slavery. Liberty also opposed racial discrimination. Birney received less than 1 percent of the vote in 1840,and although the party experienced more electoral success four years later, its numbers remained small. Most Liberty voters came from the Whig Party, but some disgruntled Democrats also joined. In the Old Northwest, the party thrived primarily in small communities with substantial Quaker populations or strong abolitionist “come-outer”churches such as the Free Will Baptists, Free Presbyterians, and Wesleyan Methodists. In New Garden, Indiana, for example, where a large contingent of antislavery Quakers lived,“two of every three voters cast a third party ballot.” By 1848, the Liberty Party was replaced by the more moderate Free-Soil Party, which emphasized the benefits of “free soil and free labor”for whites.The mid-1850s saw the development of the Republican the liberty party . 39 Party, a more traditional political organization that only loosely opposed slavery. Davis was among those who entered the Liberty Party camp with unbridled enthusiasm. She and...