BIRNEY, JAMES GILLESPIE an Ameri can leader of the political abolitionists (anti-slavery), was twice candidate for the presidency of the United States on the Liberty Party (q.v.) ticket, 184o and 1844. In the first instance he spent the whole of his time as candidate speaking in Great Britain against slavery in the United States, and in the second he wielded such political power in western New York and elsewhere as to cause the defeat of Henry Clay (Kentucky Whig) and the elec tion of James K. Polk (Tennessee Democrat). But in 1845 a fall from his horse made him an invalid and cut short his political career. Birney was born in Danville, Ky., in 1792, of Scottish Irish parents; graduated in 181 o at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton university) ; and was admitted to the Bar at Danville in 1814. Although he held slaves in Alabama, where he lived for a time after 1818, he was from the beginning an anti slavery Democrat, finally drifting into the Whig party. About 1826 he became interested in the American Colonization society, and in 1832-33 served as its agent in the south-west. He decided, however, that the society's plan was impracticable, returned to Danville to devote himself wholly to the anti-slavery cause, and in 1834 freed his own slaves. On July 15 1834, he published his Letter on Colonization and gained a national reputation which carried him into the recently organized American Anti-Slavery society, in which he immediately exerted a decisive influence in favour of "political action." He became executive secretary of the society in Sept. 1837. In spite of the opposition of the Garrisonian abolitionists, steps were taken at Albany, N.Y., on July 31, 1839, for the organiza tion of an anti-slavery political party; but this caused a split in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Those who favoured political action withdrew from the annual meeting of 184o and assumed the forms of two organizations ; namely, the Liberty Party with Birney at the head of a national ticket, and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery society for co-operation with British aboli tionists led by Joseph Sturge (q.v.). This larger movement devel oped in a General Anti-Slavery convention, which was called to meet in London, on June 12 184o. Before the work of organiza tion was completed, however, Birney with Henry B. Stanton and others, sailed as a delegate to the general convention, London, taking with them a mass of lecture materials for the instruction of British abolitionists on the economic, social and political bear ings of the anti-slavery question in the United States. Birney and Stanton, travelling together much of the time, lectured for about five months throughout the British Isles, laying foundations for an Anglo-American anti-slavery solidarity which endured through the Civil War. He died at Perth Amboy, N.J., on Nov. 25, 1857.