Huntsvillain History Season 2 - Episode #3 The Ballad of James G. Birney

James G. Birney is one of the few self-professed abolitionists from the Deep South and specifically Alabama. His life and work provides an insight into the evolving American attitudes towards slavery and its moral failings from the 1790’s to his death immediately prior to the Civil War. Birney was a deeply imperfect man and his path from slaveholder to first Presidential candidate for the anti-slavery Liberty Party traces a strange path across American politics in the Antebellum.