Liberty Party was the first political party in the United States to give most of its attention to the slavery question. The politician James G. Birney and the poet John Greenleaf Whittier were the leading supporters of the group. From July 1844 to March 1845, Whittier edited the Middlesex Standard, a paper published in Lowell, Mass., by the Liberty Party. He was also chiefly responsible for editing the Essex Transcript, another of the Liberty Party’s publications.
The Liberty Party nominated Birney for President in 1840, but he made a poor showing in the election. He also headed the party ticket in 1844 and polled 62,000 votes. In 1848, the party met in Buffalo, N.Y., with other groups to form the Free Soil Party.
