1841-02-05-Liberator-Politico-Abolition

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[edit] Politico-Abolition

The Liberator, v11 n6, 5 February 1841, p. 22

It appears by the Emancipator, the official organ 
of the politico-abolitionists of the country, that the 
election returns being all received, the whole number of votes, polled throughout the nation for their 
highest candidate, is 6,831—and 'it is barely possi
ble that the sacred number of 7000' may be reached 
by accurate return. These 6,831 votes were cast 
in 12 States, in all of which slavery has ceased to 
be lawful, long before the politico-abolitionists began their clamor. In the city of New-York, where 
they boasted of 3000 votes before the election, they 
could raise only an average of 150, their highest 
vote being 170! and this too in this theatre of all 
their great national and political projects, where 
they have had presses, and other 'great moral engines,' to help them. In this entire State, where 
they professed before the election to have 17,000, by 
which empty boast they frightened certain politi
cians from their propriety, they haye only mustered 
2,808 votes! Facts like the above, have brought 
out the famous Garrison, of the Liberator, in the 
following style:

'If this third party movement (politico-abolition) 
was ridiculous before, it is rendered still more so 
since the election. In the whole nation, it may have 
mustered in its support some six or eight thousand 
votes, (6,831,) out of two millions three hundred thou
sand! And what is yet more ludicrous, the Emancipator and some other papers affect to regard this 
result as most auspicious! The Abolitionist modestly speaks of Mr. Birney as the future President 
of the United States! Well, folly will have its 
day. By this modest title, Mr. Birney has not only 
been heralded throughout this country, but, with 
wonderful self-complacency, allowed himself to be 
thus introduced to the British public, upon anti-slavery platforms.'

The foregoing extract from the Liberator serves 
to show that the Garrison party among the abolitionists do not fellowship with politico-abolitionists, and 
as his followers arc no-voting, as well as no-govern
ment in their notions, the 191 scattering votes of 
Massachusetts may be estimated as the strength of 
the ' women's rights party, ' and as composing the 
moral power of Garrisonism, who thus threw away 
their votes, although a few others probably refused 
to vote at all. The Emancipator, however, goes on 
the presumption that 6,831 is the whole number of 
good men and true in the abolition ranks, for though 
it claims a multitude of the Harrison and Van Buren voters as abolitionists, yet it regards them as 
voting against their consciences, and calls them all 
'dreamy, speculative, transcendental, inoperative 
abolitionists,' who will vote for slavery, while call
ing themselves abolitionists; and as such disowns 
their fellowship.

Now we agree with the editor of said paper, and 
believe that the late election has brought out the 
whole strength of the politico-abolition there is in 
the country. And we marvel, in view of the facts 
developed in the late campaign, that he should prate 
about electing in 1844 either the President, or any 
other officer of the general government. If the 
Mormons had been duped to run their prophet Joe 
Smith for President at the late election, no man in 
his senses can doubt that he would have obtained 
more votes than James G. Birney has throughout the 
country. And the thought of electing the latter in 
1844 is not a whit more ludicrous than the former; 
indeed in the city of New-York, the Mormon voters 
are more numerous than the abolition voters, as 
shown by the experiment of the latter in the recent 
election. And since 1839, it is plain that the abolitionists have decreased one-half, their vote hav
ing been reduced from 336 to 170, in the city, while 
the Mormons have been increasing. It is certain 
then, if New-York is a fair sample of the whole, 
that the probabilities of a Mormon President in 1844, 
are much greater than of Mr. Birney's election at 
that or any future time.

Politicians North as well as South may see by 
the statistics of the late election here cited, that no 
party can have any thing to hope or to fear from the 
politico-abolitionists, and henceforth they should dis
regard their clamor, as unworthy to be estimated in 
any sober calculation of politicians. Their presses 
are all famishing, no one of them being able to get 
along without betraying pauperism in its appeals for 
money, and many of them even at head quarters 
have ceased to be, after bankrupt fortunes have 
overtaken all concerned. The American Anti-Slavery Society is virtually defunct, and though two 
self-styled national societies, cordially hating each 
other, have burst forth from the ashes of the former 
Society, yet neither has any thing but a nominal 
existence. Even the semblance of favor, once 
boasted of, from the ecclesiastical officiaries of the 
different Christian denominations, has been withdrawn, and now the party is regarded as a faction 
by all the churches in their collective capacity, tolerated only in the exercise of Christian forbearance with the weak and the misguided. So that the 
late election has not killed politico-abolition, for 
this was done before, by the folly of its leaders;— 
it has only written its epitaph.

FIAT JUSTITIA.