s to the cause of abolition, was the life of James Gillespie
Birney, who was born in a wealthy slaveholding family at Dansville,
Kentucky, in the year 1792. The Birneys were anti-slavery planters of
the type of Washington and Jefferson. The father had labored to make
Kentucky a free State at the time of its admission to the Union. His son
was educated first at Princeton, where he graduated in 1810, and then
in the office of a distinguished lawyer in Philadelphia. He began the
practice of law at his home at the age of twenty-two. His home training
and his residence in States which were then in the process of gradual
emancipation served to confirm him in the traditional conviction of his
family. While Benjamin Lundy, at the age of twenty-seven, was engaged in
organizing anti-slavery societies north of the Ohio River, Birney at
the age of twenty-four was influential as a member of the Kentucky
Legislature in the prevention of the passing of a joint resolution
calling upon Ohio and Indiana to make laws providing for the return
of fugitive slaves. He was also conspicuous in his efforts to secure
provisions for gradual emancipation. Two years later he became a planter
near Huntsville, Alabama. Though not a member of the Constitutional
Convention preparatory to the admission of this Territory into
the Union, Birney used his influence to secure provisions in the
constitution favorable to gradual emancipation. As a member of the first
Legislature, in 1819, he was the author of a law providing a fair trial
by jury for slaves indicted for crimes above petty larceny, and in 1826
he became a regular contributor to the American Colonization Society,
believing it to be an aid to emancipation. The following year he was
able to induce the Legislature, although he was not then a member of it,
to pass an act forbidding the importation of slaves into Alabama
either for sale or for hire. This was regarded as a step preliminary to
emancipation.

The cause of education in Alabama had in Birney a trusted leader. During
the year 1830 he spent several months in the North Atlantic States
for the selection of a president and four professors for the State
University and three teachers for the Huntsville Female Seminary. These
were all employed upon his sole recommendation. On his return he had an
important interview with Henry Clay, of whose political party he had for
several years been the acknowledged leader in Alabama. He urged Clay
to place him