The Liberty Party convention’s practical purpose was to nominate a ticket for the presidential election of 1844, and the party selected—by earlier agreement—the Kentucky-born abolitionist James G. Birney for president and Thomas Morris of Ohio for vice president. Yet it was the party’s platform and proceedings that best suggested the party’s commitment to racial equality. The platform, drafted in part by Salmon Chase, began not only with a demand for the “absolute and unqualified divorce of the General Government from Slavery” but also with an argument for “the restoration of equality of
...more
