In 1840, an antislavery convention nominated James Gillespie Birney for president, giving birth to the Liberty party.  The decision to launch an antislavery electoral campaign had been contentious.  Two previous conventions, in October and November of 1839, had failed; the first did not endorse a candidacy, the second had nominated Birney only to see him decline the nomination.  The American Antislavery Society was divided over the wisdom—indeed, the morality—of an electoral campaign, and finally split (over the related issues of electoral politics and women's participation) the next month.  The campaign itself was desultory.  Birney, the candidate, left the country in May for the World Antislavery Convention in London, returning only in November, after the election.  He received 7,059 votes, less than one-tenth of the enrolled membership of antislavery societies.

An observer might well have regarded this event as totally insignificant.  But the founding of the Liberty party was the beginning of the end of the Whigs, the second American party system, and slavery.  The Liberty party itself died in the process, and its abolitionist program was diluted almost beyond recognition.  Nevertheless, the final result was the abolition of slavery and, for a time, a program of radical reconstruction that reflected the Liberty party's egalitarian principles.

Despite its seemingly weak beginning, the Liberty party forged ahead with little self-doubt.  Birney was nominated again for the 1844 election, this time with Thomas Morris of Ohio, a former Democratic senator, as his running mate.  The Liberty presidential vote swelled to 62,103.  This was only 2.3 percent, but enough to constitute the margin of victory in three states, Ohio, Michigan, and New York.  Ohio was carried by the Whig candidate, Henry Clay, but Michigan and New York by the Democrat, James Polk.  Had one third of the Liberty voters in New York supported Clay instead, Clay would have won both the state and the presidency.  Both Polk and Clay were slaveholders, but Polk was committed to the annexation of Texas and other proslavery causes, while Clay was more inclined to compromise.  Texas was admitted in 1845, not only bringing us George W. Bush, but adding a new slave state.  Antislavery Whigs blamed the Liberty party; Liberty supporters retorted that the Whigs should have offered a better candidate.  Whether condemned or praised, Birney's 2.3 percent proved that the issue of slavery could not longer be compromised or ignored.

Like the Liberty party, the Greens are part of a badly split movement, are driven in many cases by deep spiritual commitment, are one of a number of new minor parties, have shown limited electoral potential, and yet have begun to affect the outcome of elections.  These common elements do not mean that the Greens are today’s abolitionists.  We must ask what other features of the decades before the Civil War were pertinent, and whether those features as well can be found today.

In his book Why Parties? John Aldrich argues that the Whig party was abandoned by ambitious politicians in the 1850s because it was no longer a promising vehicle for career advancement .  The old party system divided politicians and voters into two national parties, while keeping the debate over slavery out of the political arena.  As the abolitionist debate heated up, such issue suppression became impossible.  The Whigs lost their electoral viability, while the aspiring candidates began to look for an alternative.  The growth of the northern population made a sectional majority attainable, and the Republican party became dominant.

Today the major parties want to suppress a different issue: domination of our lives by the giant corporations who tell us when we can’t get health care or protect the environment, who downsize our jobs and attack human rights in the name of profits, and who have purchased the souls of the Republican and Democratic parties alike with PACs and soft money.  Ralph Nader and the Greens have raised this issue strongly, and have slowly broken through to the voters.  If the Nader vote tips the balance in key swing states this week, it will show that this issue, like slavery last century, cannot be suppressed.  Unless the major parties adjust accordingly, they may share the fate of the Whigs.

An editorial by John C. Berg.  Your comments are invited.

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For more study of this issue, see my pages of books about the Greens and books about the Third Party movement.