about a separation of the national government from all connection with
the institution." This third party was facing in 1844 a crisis over
the question of the annexation of Texas for which the South was a unit
and on which the political organizations of the North were divided.
Bibb had attended a convention of free colored people held in Detroit
in 1843 and the next year he began to give addresses throughout the
State in the interests of Liberty Party candidates, a full ticket for
both Congress and the State legislature having been nominated. It was
a bitter contest in which he engaged. The Whigs pointed out that they
were standing out against the annexation of Texas, a slave empire in
itself, and that votes for a third party would but pave the way for a
Democratic victory. This is exactly what happened. In Michigan the
Liberty Party polled six and a half per cent of the votes, but even
this added to the Whig vote would not have brought victory.[5] Bibb
continued to work for the Liberty Party during 1844 and 1845, going
also into Ohio with Samuel Brooks and Amos Dresser. They were more
than once mobbed and their meetings broken up by rowdies. Of their
work Bibb writes:

"Our meetings were generally appointed in small log cabins,
schoolhouses, among the farmers, which were sometimes crowded
full; and where they had no horse teams it was often the case
that there would be four or five ox teams come, loaded down with
men, women and children to attend our meetings. The people were
generally poor and in many places not able to give us a decent
night's lodgings. We generally carried with us a few pounds of
candles to light up the houses wherein we held our meetings after
night; for in many places they had neither candles nor
candlesticks. After meeting was out we have frequently gone
three to eight miles to get lodgings, through the dark forest
where there was scarcely any road for a wagon to run on. I have
travelled for miles over swamps where the roads were covered with
logs without any dirt over them, which has sometimes shook and
jostled the wagon to pieces where we could find no shop or place
to mend it. We would have to tie it up with bark, or take the
lines to tie it with and lead the horse by the bridle. At other
times we were in mud up to the hubs of the wheels."

Bibb found his real work when, with the passing of the Fugitive