MASSACHUSETTS LIBERTY CONVENTION AND SPEECH OF HON. JOHN P. HALE, LETTER ACCEPTING HIS NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY by [Liberty Party in 1848] - 1848

[Boston?, 1848. 8pp, each page printed in two columns. Caption title as issued. Disbound, Good+.

The forerunner of Martin Van Buren's 1848 Free Soil Party and of the Republican Party in 1854, the Liberty Party was the first national political organization to oppose slavery. It was sufficiently powerful in 1844 to defeat Henry Clay's bid for the presidency, as his tepid stand on the slavery question angered anti-slavery Whigs.
This Massachusetts Convention emphasizes that the Liberty Party "was organized for the purpose of political action against Slavery, as the greatest political evil of the country, on the principle, that the overthrow of Slavery is the most urgent political duty." Other issues are "minor" in comparison. Hale's speech, accepting the Party's nomination, denounces the annexation of Texas and Mexican War as immoral and designed solely to benefit and enhance the Slave Power. Northern "doughfaces," appeasers of their Southern brethren, are cowards who have turned their backs on the Nation's founding principles.
Not in LCP, Dumond, Blockson. Not located on OCLC as of March 2019, although AAS owns it and Brown has an imperfect copy. Not at the online sites of Boston Athenaeum, Boston Public Library, LCP, NYPL, Newberry, Harvard, Yale [which has it as a facsimile].