The Radical Abolitionist Party (also known as the Radical Political Abolition Party) was a political party formed by abolitionists in the United States in the decade preceding the American Civil War as part of a reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. By the start of the Civil War in 1861, the party had mostly faded, as the national debate over Slavery in the United States shifted and other parties (such as the Republican Party) absorbed its more moderate elements.
Background Political abolitionism American abolitionists were slow to enter electoral politics. Women and Black men dominated the membership of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in the 1830s and were legally barred from voting. William Lloyd Garrison opposed participation in the electoral system based on his philosophy of nonresistance. By 1839, a growing number of abolitionists favored direct political action through an antislavery third party. Political abolitionists held the Albany convention and nominated James G. Birney for president in the 1840 United States presidential election. Birney's campaign became the basis for the Liberty Party, which grew rapidly in the years leading up to the 1844 United States presidential election. After 1844, cooperation with antislavery Whigs and Democrats increasingly divided the party. Most Liberty men supported the Free Soil Party in the 1848 United States presidential election, while a faction led by William Goodell and Gerrit Smith sought to preserve the Liberty Party as an independent force.
The Liberty Party declined precipitously after 1848, and by 1852 the party was effectively dead. The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS) disbanded, while some Black Liberty Party veterans began to advocate emigration or political violence. Passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act revived the political abolitionist movement in 1854 and led radical political abolitionists to make plans for a new organization.
Antislavery constitutionalism
Alvan Stewart first published his antislavery interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in 1837. Stewart argued that slavery violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and that the United States Congress could abolish it. Stewart's ideas went against the Garrisonian orthodoxy on the Constitution, which it held to be a proslavery document, as well as the views of other political abolitionists who considered slavery a "creature of local law." The Liberty Party's 1843 platform avoided addressing the constitutionality of slavery and instead called for abolition in the territories of the United States and the District of Columbia, where federal authority over slavery was widely recognized.
Goodell and Lysander Spooner published their own works on antislavery constitutionalism during the 1840s. Spooner's ideas in particular were highly influential, and he emerged as the "leading authority" on the subject with the publication of his 1845 work, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. Writing for a popular audience, Spooner argued that slavery was incompatible with natural law and could only be established by a positive and unambiguous declaration. He used examples from colonial, state, and federal law and constitutional documents to show that slavery in the United States lacked explicit legal sanction and was therefore unconstitutional. Although less sophisticated, Goodell's 1844 book was extremely popular with political abolitionists and shaped the platform of the Liberty League, the caucus of radical political abolitionists that attempted to continue the Liberty Party after 1848.
Abolitionist violence
The use of violence was controversial among abolitionists before the 1850s. The first national convention of the AASS pledged the society to pursue abolition by exclusively non-violent means. Black abolitionists discussed the need for violent resistance following Denmark Vesey's planned 1822 slave rebellion. In his influential 1829 pamphlet, the abolitionist David Walker urged Black Americans to "kill or be killed" when met with proslavery violence. In the 1840s, Henry Highland Garnet called for enslaved people to take up arms against their enslavers and published a new edition of Walker's Appeal. Other Black abolitionists opposed Garnet's call for violence, including Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond, and Maria Weston Chapman, who continued to support non-violent abolitionism.
Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 radicalized Northern opposition to slavery and led some abolitionists to rethink their stance on political violence. Douglass joined prominent abolitionists who counseled violent resistance to the law, saying, "the only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter, is to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers." The 1851 Christiana Riot, the Jerry Rescue, and the capture and re-enslavement of Anthony Burns led Black abolitionists in particular to see violence as necessary to the antislavery struggle.
History Creation, 1855
The 1854 United States elections saw the Anti-Nebraska movement gain more than 100 seats in the United States House of Representatives. In the aftermath of these elections, Goodell launched an attempt to revive radical political abolitionism in New York, where a remnant of the Liberty Party had survived the national party's collapse. In March 1855, he organized the New York City Abolition Society to promote antislavery constitutionalism. The following month, Goodell signed a call for radical political abolitionists to meet in Syracuse, New York, on June 26. The document criticized the existing political parties and the AASS for failing to pursue immediate emancipation through the political process. Asserting "the right and duty to wield the political power of the nation for the overthrow of every part and parcel of American Slavery," it called for delegates to discuss ways to support lecturers and periodicals devoted to political abolitionism and antislavery constitutionalism.
Delegates attended the first national convention of radical political abolitionists from June 26 to 28, 1855, in Syracuse. The list of delegates included Liberty League veterans and members of the defunct AFASS, including Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Lewis Tappan, Simeon Jocelyn, George Whipple, William Whiting, Charles C. Foote, Samuel Joseph May, and Jermain Wesley Loguen. James McCune Smith presided over the meeting, becoming the first Black American to lead a national political convention. Others present included John Brown, the abolitionist partisan recently arrived from Kansas Territory. John Pierpont and future socialist editor James McIntosh were unable to attend and sent letters which were read to the convention.
The convention's main achievement was to establish the principles of a future national organization dedicated to the immediate abolition of slavery through the electoral system. Most of the first two days were devoted to discussion of the movement's founding documents. A heated debate on events in Bleeding Kansas dominated the third day. Gerrit Smith read two letters from Brown's sons describing the situation in Kansas, where armed conflict between proslavery and antislavery settlers erupted following passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Brown appeared in person and made a passionate appeal for money and arms to equip the antislavery insurgency. Douglass and Gerrit Smith spoke in support of Brown's motion, which Goodell and Tappan opposed. The convention approved the principle of armed resistance, but voted to limit their own efforts to the ballot box. At Douglass's urging, delegates contributed $60 and several muskets, bayonets, pistols, and broadswords to Brown's expedition.
The delegates named a nine-member Central Abolition Board to serve until a future convention of the proposed organization. The founding convention of the American Abolition Society (AAS) met subsequently from October 23 to 25, 1855, in Boston. At least 1,500 people attended the gathering, which named Gerrit Smith president of the society. The AAS sponsored a variety of activities intended to spread its moral and political philosophy, employing lecturers, distributing literature, and publishing a monthly periodical, the Radical Abolitionist. Dissatisfied with the Republican Party's acceptance of the constitutionality of slavery, members proposed forming a "National Abolition Party" to campaign in the 1856 United States elections.
Rise, 1856–58
The 1856 Radical Abolitionist National Convention met in Syracuse on May 28. The presidential nominating convention was sponsored by the AAS. Delegates included representatives of the National Reform Association and future socialist politician Peter H. Clark. The convention nominated Gerrit Smith for president and Douglass for vice president in the 1856 United States presidential election; because both men came from New York, Douglass was later replaced on the ticket by Pennsylvanian Samuel McFarland. Most of the discussion focussed on the ongoing violence in Kansas and the recent caning of Charles Sumner. Douglass "summarized the prevailing mood of his party" by calling for abolitionists to take up arms to overthrow the Slave Power. While Smith favored armed resistance, Goodell and Tappan continued to argue for strictly non-violent measures. The debate exposed a rift within the AAS that threatened to split the society between supporters of violent and non-violent tactics.
The popularity of the Republican Party in the Northern United States meant that Smith's candidacy was a "formality." Although they remained critical of the Republican platform, the prospect for a Republican presidential victory led some Radical Abolitionists to lend their support to the larger party. The Radical Abolitionist convention took place concurrently with the New York Republican state convention in Syracuse, and some abolitionists attended both gatherings. Douglass endorsed the Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, in August, while Smith donated $500 to Frémont's campaign. Smith received 320 votes in the presidential election, less than 1 percent of the total. Frémont received more than 1.3 million ballots and 114 electoral votes, all from the free states, where the Republicans won a plurality of the popular vote despite losing the election.
In the aftermath of Frémont's defeat, Goodell suggested that the Republicans could collapse, allowing the Radical Abolitionists to take over the mantle of the largest antislavery party. The party grew noticeably during 1856–57, adding affiliates in New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Illinois, and Ohio. Women and Black abolitionists participated in this growth: Charles Lenox Remond presided over the 1857 New York Radical Abolitionist state convention, and Sarah Parker Remond, Sarah Clark, and Susan B. Anthony spoke at the meeting. Operating as the party's activist wing, the AAS expanded its activity during this period, including by orchestrating a campaign to mail copies of Spooner's Unconstitutionality of Slavery to every member of Congress. These efforts gained a series of prominent endorsements, including by Charles Grandison Finney, the celebrated revivalist; John Gregg Fee, the Kentucky abolitionist and missionary; and U.S. representative Amos P. Granger.