LIBERTY CAP 



3401 



LIBERTY PARTY 



was first cast in England and the inscription put 

 upon it by order of the Assembly of the Province 

 of Pennsylvania in 1752. It broke in ringing after 

 its arrival and was recast in Philadelphia from 

 the same metal, 

 with the same in- 

 scription in 1753. 

 It rang on the 8th 

 of July, 1776, to 

 call citizens to- 

 gether to hear the 

 proclamation o f 

 the adoption of 

 the Declaration of 

 Independence. In 

 the adjoining yard 

 it rang at each 

 successive anni- 

 versary of the 

 adoption of the 

 Declaration until 

 1835. It broke 

 July 8, that year, 

 while tolling dur- 

 ing the funeral so- 



i * f T ^ That old state-house bell is 

 lemmties of John silent 



Marshall, Chief Hushed is now its clamorous 

 Justice of the tongue; 



TTnitAri ^t*tw But the s P irit jt awakened 

 United States, stm ig livmg> ever , youn& . 



who died in this ANON. 



The dotted line marks a 



new crack in the Liberty Bell, 



1 he Liberty which is gradually widening 



D 11 i u an d may some dav break the 



Bell has been on bell into y two piece - s . 



exhibition at 



three American expositions: in 1893 it was 

 exhibited at the World's Fair in Chicago, in 

 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 

 Saint Louis, and in 1915 it was sent across the 

 continent to San Francisco, to be on exhibition 

 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposi- 

 tion. On April 6, 1917, the old bell was lightly 

 struck by Phila- 

 delphia officials 

 when announce- 

 ment was made 

 that the United 

 States was in a 

 state of war with 

 Germany. 



LIBERTY 

 CAP, a famous 

 symbol of free- 

 dom which ap- 

 pears on certain 

 American coins 

 and on the seals 

 of several Cen- LIBERTY CAP 



tral and South American republics. In ancient 

 Rome a freed slave was given the conical Phryg- 

 ian headdress, from which the modern liberty 

 cap is copied. Brutus and Cassius used the 

 symbol on coins struck after the assassination 



of Julius Caesar. At the outbreak of the French 

 Revolution, the bonnet rouge, or red cap, was 

 adopted as the badge of "patriots," and Louis 

 XVI was forced to wear it on June 20, 1792, 

 when he was paraded through the streets by 

 the mob which had burst into his palace. It 

 is not certain that the red cap of the French 

 Revolutionists was a revival of the Roman 

 tradition, but its significance is the same. 



LIBERTY PARTY, the first organization in 

 the United States to make the slavery question 

 the leading political issue. The opponents of 

 slavery were not united on a policy concerning 

 that institution; some were .disposed merely 

 to arouse strong anti-slavery sentiment by spe- 

 cial agitation; others, believing that slavery 

 was a political question, were determined to 

 carry the question into politics. The latter 

 faction believed and argued that Congress, by 

 an ordinary statute, had the power to abolish 

 slavery in the territories; but the states, they 

 believed, must decide concerning slavery within 

 their own borders. The leading supporters of 

 this view were James G. Birney, John G. 

 Whittier and Myron Holley (1779-1841), a 

 New York journalist who was at one time 

 president of the American Anti-Slavery So- 

 ciety. Largely through the efforts of these men 

 a convention was held in 1840 at Albany, where 

 Birney was nominated for President. Though 

 called a national convention, most of the dele- 

 gates were from New York, and in the ensuing 

 election 2,798 of the 7,000 votes given to Bir- 

 ney were cast in New York. 



The leaders were disappointed at the show- 

 ing, but within a year began a more vigorous 

 campaign for the election of 1844. The party, 

 composed mostly, of Whigs, was inclined to 

 support Clay until the publication of his letter 

 saying that he would "be glad to see" Texas 

 annexed at some future time. This concession 

 to slavery angered the abolitionists of the Lib- 

 erty party and led them to renominate Birney, 

 who polled 62,000 votes, enough to defeat Clay 

 and elect Polk. Polk, however, was a Southern 

 Democrat, and was even less acceptable to the 

 Liberty party than Clay. Its leaders wisely 

 saw that they were injuring rather than help- 

 ing their cause by maintaining a separate or- 

 ganization, and in 1848 all shades of anti-slavery 

 opinion were united in the Free-Soil party. 

 The Liberty party had nominated John P. Hale 

 for President, but he withdrew when the Demo- 

 crats and Whigs both declined to take a defi- 

 nite stand on the slavery issue. The Liberty 

 party survived for a few years in some of 



