James Gillespie Birney (February 4, 1792 – November 18, 1857)[2] was an American abolitionist, politician, and attorney born in Danville, Kentucky.

Birney pursued a legal career in Danville after graduating from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) and studying under Alexander J. Dallas.

Birney eventually sold the plantation and established a legal practice in Huntsville, Alabama, becoming one of the most successful lawyers in the region.

He accepted the Liberty Party nomination again in 1844 and received 2.3% of the popular vote, finishing behind James K. Polk and Clay.

Born to an affluent Irish Episcopalian slaveholder of the same name in Danville, Kentucky, James G. Birney lost his mother, Martha Reed, when he was three.

For example, he attended several sermons given by a Baptist abolitionist by the name of David Barrow in his youth, which he later recalled with fondness.

"[2] He returned home two years later to enter a school run by a Presbyterian man that had just opened in Danville, where he excelled in his studies, mostly based in the sciences.

After this, he began to study law in Philadelphia, at the office of Alexander J. Dallas, the father of his Princeton friend and classmate.

Having trouble making ends meet, Birney made his living at this time primarily as a claims adjuster.

His financial troubles were due in part to his habit of horse race gambling, which he gave up eventually after many losses.

McKinley, along with several other prominent members of society, successfully campaigned for Birney to become the solicitor of Alabama's Fifth District in 1823.

Following the sale of the plantation and slaves, he achieved financial stability, bought a generous plot of land and constructed a large brick house in Huntsville.

Over the next several years, he worked, often defending blacks, was appointed a trustee of a private school and joined the Presbyterian Church.

He strongly supported Adams for his conservatism, viewing the politics of Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun as a threat to the Union.

In 1829, his fellow citizens elected him mayor of Huntsville, Alabama, where he distinguished himself as a reformist, campaigning for free public education and temperance.

He was intrigued by the possibility of solving the supposed problem constituted by free blacks by starting a colony for them in Liberia, Africa.

He was then sent on a trip to the East Coast for the University of Alabama in search of professors for the college, following the receipt of a generous endowment for the school.

He met with some success, including organizing the departure of settlers to Liberia and writing essays in defense of colonization.

A year before returning to Danville, Birney wrote letters to slaveholders in Kentucky who had previously expressed their support for emancipation, suggesting they soon hold a convention on the matter.

Birney's repudiation of the American Colonization Society and its projects was enormously influential; Gerrit Smith called it "celebrated".

"[4] In 1833, he read a paper signed by several Christian organizations that repudiated the tenets of the American Colonization Society and, instead, called for the immediate abolition of slavery.

Inspired by correspondence and discussions with Theodore Weld, the organizer of the Lane Seminary debates,[9][full citation needed] he freed his remaining slaves and declared himself an abolitionist in 1834.

"[10][full citation needed] Birney decided to make Cincinnati his base, and made contacts with friends and fellow members of the abolitionist movement there.

At this time, there were four newspapers in the city, and all but the Cincinnati Daily Gazette released "critically-roundabout" editorials the next day that assailed the faults of abolitionism in general.

In August 1835, a meeting of "4 or 500 persons, has met at Danville, K., to warn James G. Birney against publication of his Abolition paper.

[10][full citation needed] When Birney began publication of his abolitionist weekly, The Philanthropist, in Cincinnati, he and the paper were from the first the subject of controversy, with the majority of local newspapers and others doing everything they could to make him feel unwelcome.

While in Bay City, Birney led a life of farming and agricultural pursuits in addition to his legal work, land development, and national anti-slavery involvement.

[18] In August 1845, Birney suffered from bouts of paralysis following a horseback riding accident, which recurred intermittently for the remainder of his life.

His speech became affected as his condition worsened, until he was eventually left to communication through gestures and writing (the latter made difficult by severe tremors).

He ended his public career and his direct involvement in the abolitionist movement as a result, though he kept himself informed of new developments and campaigned for causes including the abolition of the military during the Mexican-American War and a decrease in immigration, arguing that European immigrants diluted the influence of America's free people of color.