Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics by Corey M. Brooks (review)

The Liberty Party's role in antebellum political history has been downplayed in accounts of the era. Outside of Reinhard Johnson's The Liberty Party, 1840–1848 (2009), political histories often focus instead on the Second Party System, its downfall, and the rise of the Republican Party with an eye towards major-party politicians. On abolitionists, the focus is turned to William Lloyd Garrison and his cohort, who eschewed voting and sought to disconnect from politics.

Into this void comes Corey M. Brooks's Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics. His argument is that the Liberty Party—the abolitionist third party that formed in 1840 in an effort to loosen the bonds that tied voters to the major parties and their connections to the moral, economic, and political threats of slavery—was an integral force in reshaping the antebellum political landscape. He focuses attention on the Liberty Party's crusade against the Slave Power, or the theory that southern slaveholding politicians were manipulating both the Whig and Democratic parties to protect their interests and expand their influence. To end this power, slavery had to be denationalized; the federal government needed to localize slavery by distancing itself from the practice. Examples of this include banning slavery where it had the authority, as in territories and in the capital, and cracking down on internal slave-trading. Eventually, the theory went, two parties would be left: one for liberty and freedom, one for oppression and slavery.

Brooks demonstrates how the party was integral to popularizing the argument, not just through elections but via concerted lobbying efforts aimed at sympathetic Whig (and later Democratic) politicians. As the party's support grew throughout the 1840s, and as it worked to align itself with major-party politicians, it took advantage of a rise in sectional tensions over the annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War, and the potential spread of slavery to newly acquired territories to merge with anti-slavery extension forces to create the Free Soil Party in 1848. This was possible because of the efforts of dedicated Liberty men, who worked tirelessly at disseminating their argument. This agitation continued from within the Free Soil Party and into the Republican Party, which former Liberty activists helped to mold in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

This book adds significantly to scholarly interpretations of the party and, in the process, the party system itself from 1840 to the mid-1850s. By emphasizing the electoral and lobbying efforts of the Liberty Party leadership, coupled with its promotion of the Slave Power argument, Brooks uncovers a strategy that was necessary for the cause's future political success. It was not simply another third party, running for office without a clear vision or strategy; nor was it a sideshow to Garrisonian abolitionist posturing. Instead, the Liberty Party was an organization structured by astute leaders who understood the underlying sectional problems of the major parties and, critically, the rules governing politics. Majoritarian elections in New England were important to Liberty Party leverage with major-party politicians in those states, just as awareness of congressional rules aided the party's lobbying efforts.

Overall, the Liberty Party's multipronged approach to squelching slavery, which allowed its leaders to play a pivotal role in shaping the course of antebellum politics from within three parties (Liberty, Free Soil, and Republican), is the critical insight put forth in Brooks's book. Future research must deal more with major-party politicians' reactions or inactions to these demands, as the book focuses predominantly on the perspectives of the Liberty Party leaders as they transitioned into the Free Soil and Republican parties. Understanding how Whig and Democratic politicians used and shaped the Slave Power argument, along with investigating how Liberty Party rhetoric was adopted by these politicians, appears to be a fruitful scholarly endeavor. Nevertheless...