CHAPTER XVIII.
MEXICAN WAR .-- AGE, 30-32.
James G.Birney was the presidential candidate of the "Liberty Party" in 1844, as he had been in '40.

During the campaign I wrote under my initials for _The Spirit of Liberty_, and exposing the weak part of an argument soon came to be my recognized forte.

For using my initials I had two reasons--my dislike and dread of publicity and the fear of embarrassing the Liberty Party with the sex question.

Abolitionists were men of sharp angles.

Organizing them was like binding crooked sticks in a bundle, and one of the questions which divided them was the right of women to take any prominent part in public affairs.
In that campaign, the great Whig argument against the election of Polk was, that it would bring on a war with Mexico for the extension of slavery, and when the war came, Whigs and Liberty Party men vied with each other in their cry of "Our Country, right or wrong!" and rushed into the army over every barrier set up by their late arguments.