Bay County MI Archives Obituaries.....Birney, James May 8, 1888
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Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society

Including

Reports of Officers and Papers Read

At the

Annual Meeting of 1888

VOL. XIII

Second Edition

Lansing, Michigan

Winkoop Hallenbeck Crawrod C., State Printers

1908
 

Memorial Report:  Page 119

BAY COUNTY

James Birney
From the Cheboygan Democrat of May 10, 1888, a paper of a different standpoint
in politics to Mr. Birney:

Hon. James Birney died at Bay City, Tuesday, May 8, 1888 and in his death the
10th district loses one of its most cultivated, courteous and talented men.  He
came of an historical family.  His father James G. Birney, gained a world-wide
fame by freeing all the slaves inherited from his father, and was a presidential
candidate twice, in 1840-44, as an anti-slavery man.  Mr. Birney had held many
important office, state and national, having been representative in the
legislature from this district, lieutenant governor of the State, circuit judge,
and minister plenipotentiary to the Hague, from 1876 to 1882.  The later office
he resigned to return home and stand for congress in this district, having been
promised the nomination, which was then considered as good as an election.  But
the decent men of the republican party could not prevail, and the nomination
went to Hatch.  Again in 1884 he was beaten for the nomination by the pothouse
politicians of Bay City, and a fellow named Gibson put up, who was beaten out of
his boots by Congressman Fisher.  Had the party been faithful to Birney, it is
altogether probable that they would still control the district.  Judge Birney
was not a popular man with the ragtag and bobtail elements of the g.o.p., as he
did not get drunk, nor play cards in saloons, pack caucuses, or cultivate the
bum elements; they thought him an aristocrat, but he was only a true, loyal,
tender hearted gentleman, who could not play the demagogue. 

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