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FORLORN HOPE OF FREEDOM: THE LIBERTY PARTY IN THE OLD NORTHWEST, 1838-1848 (ABOLITIONISM, REFORM, CIVIL WAR)
Abstract
As the first antislavery party in the United States, the Liberty party typically has been considered the forerunner to the more politically-successful Free Soil and Republican parties. Although some continuity existed between Liberty and the subsequent antislavery parties, more important to understanding antebellum political and religious affairs were the factors that separated the abolitionist Liberty party from those formed primarily to halt slavery's expansion. More properly, the Liberty party was the political expression of an abolitionist campaign to reform American society by cleansing the Protestant churches of their toleration of the "sin" of slavery. When the churches resisted their campaign, many abolitionists withdrew from these churches to form new abolition sects which then provided the core of the Liberty movement. Analysis of township voting returns reveals that particular communities containing large numbers of these religiously-oriented abolitionists indeed formed the basis of Liberty support. Immune from the profound social and economic changes then transforming much of the North, these communities hoped to purify the rest of society in their own image by maintaining their own religious and political independence, both from the sin of slavery and the moral corruption they beheld in the North. Thus they largely resisted the attempts of politically-oriented Liberty men to transform the third party movement into a more viable political organization with less radical religious and political goals. Gaining only a small portion of the Northwestern vote, the Liberty party was strong enough in certain regions to worry antislavery Whigs, but the third party only encouraged those who appealed to anti-abolitionism among Northern and Southern voters. Because of its narrow religious base and because it made so little effort to attract a wider following, the Liberty party failed to persuade other Northerners to sever their political and religious ties with the institution abolitionists considered so sinful.
Subject Area
American history
Recommended Citation
VOLPE, VERNON LEWIS, "FORLORN HOPE OF FREEDOM: THE LIBERTY PARTY IN THE OLD NORTHWEST, 1838-1848 (ABOLITIONISM, REFORM, CIVIL WAR)" (1984). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8427915.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8427915