The American Colonization Society (in full, The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America)
was an organization that founded Liberia, a colony on the coast
of West Africa, in 1823 and transported free blacks there from the United States. During the next 20 years the colony continued to grow and establish economic stability. In
1847, the legislature of Liberia declared itself an independent state.
Some charged that the ACS was a racist society, while others point to its benevolent origins and later takeover by men with
visions of an American empire in Africa. The Society closely controlled the development of Liberia until 1847, when it was declared to be an independent
republic. By 1867, the ACS had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to
Liberia. The organization was formally dissolved in 1964.[1]
The society was supported by Southerners fearful of organized revolt by free blacks, by Northerners concerned that an influx
of black workers would hurt the economic opportunities of indigent white, by some who
opposed slavery but did not favor integration, and by many blacks who saw a return to Africa as the best solution to their
troubles.
Background
Colonization as a solution to the "problem" of free blacks
Following the Revolutionary War, the "Peculiar Institution" of slavery and those bound within it grew. At the same time, due
in part to manumission efforts sparked by the war and the abolition of slavery in Northern states, there was an expansion of the
ranks of free blacks.
The domestic forces which significantly influenced the concept of colonization included the abortive slave rebellion which was
headed by Gabriel in 1800, during President James
Monroe's tenure as governor of the state of Virginia, and the alarming increase in the number of free African-Americans in
the United States. Although the ratio of whites to blacks was 8:2 from 1790 to 1800, it was the massive increase in the number of
free African-Americans that disturbed the colonizationists. From 1790 to 1800, the number of free African-Americans increased
from 59,467 to 108,378, a percentage increase of 82 percent; and from 1800 to 1810, the number increased from 108,378 to 186,446,
an increase of 72 percent.
This dramatic increase did not go unnoticed by a wary white community that kept a wary eye out for the free blacks in their
midst. The arguments propounded against free blacks, especially in free states, may be divided into four main categories. One
argument pointed toward the perceived moral laxity of blacks. Blacks, some said, were licentious beings who would draw whites
into their savage. unrestrained ways. These fears of an intermingling of the races were strong and underlay much of the outcry
for removal.
Along these same lines, blacks were accused of a tendency toward criminality and were thought inclined to deviate from the
straight and narrow path. Still others claimed that the mental inferiority of African-Americans made them unfit for the duties of
citizenship and incapable of real improvement. Economic considerations were also put forth. Free blacks, it was thought, would
only take jobs away from whites. This feeling was especially strong among the "working class" in the North. Southerners had their
special reservations about free blacks. It was feared that freedmen located in slave areas would act as an enticing reminder of
what freedom might mean and encourage runaways and slave revolts.
While the colonizationists in the South were motivated by racism and fear of slave uprising; the white colonizationists in the
North refused to accept the notion of white-black co-existence. The proposed solution was to have this class of people deported
from United States to Africa by a process euphemistically called "colonization".
Precursors to the ACS
As early as the Revolutionary period, Thomas Jefferson proposed relocating African Americans beyond the boundaries of the new
nation. Colonization, as this idea became known, rested upon the contention that blacks and whites—due to innate racial
differences, polarized societal statuses, and pervasive racism—could not live together in social harmony and political equality
within the same country. To many of its advocates, colonization was an ideological middle ground between the immediate,
nationwide abolition of slavery, which seemed an ever remote possibility, and perpetual black bondage, a proposition that even
some southern slaveholders found discomforting.[2]
Paul Cuffee
Paul Cuffe (1759-1817), a successful Quaker ship owner of African- American and Native
American ancestry, advocated settling freed American slaves in Africa. He gained support from the British government, free black
leaders in the United States, and members of Congress for a plan to take emigrants to the British colony of Sierra Leone. Cuffe intended to make one voyage per year, taking settlers and bringing back valuable
cargoes. In 1816, Captain Cuffe took thirty-eight American blacks at his own expense to Freetown, Sierra Leone and planned
subsequent voyages but these were precluded by his death in 1817. However, Cuffe had reached a large audience with his
pro-colonization arguments and thus laid the groundwork for later organizations such as the American Colonization Society.
Origins and formation
Charles Fenton Mercer
The ACS had its origins in 1816, when Charles Fenton
Mercer, a Federalist member of the Virginia state
assembly, discovered accounts of earlier legislative debates on black colonization helped in the wake of Gabriel's conspiracy. Mercer pushed the state of Virginia to support the idea, and one of his political
contacts in Washington City, John Caldwell, in turn contacted his brother-in-law, a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Robert Finley, who endorsed the scheme.
Formation
The American Colonization Society was established in Washington at the Davis Hotel on December
21, 1816. Among the delegates attending were Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, Richard
Bland Lee, and the Rev. Robert Finley; colonization mastermind Charles Fenton Mercer was a
member of the Virginia legislature and was unable to be in Washington for the meeting.
At this inaugural meeting, Finley proposed a colony be established in Africa to take free
people of color, most of whom had been born free, away from the United States. Finley meant to colonize "(with their consent)
the free people of color residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress may deem most expedient."
Membership
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Randolph and Fernando Fairfax were among the best known members. Ex-President Thomas Jefferson publicly supported the organization's goals, and President James
Madison arranged public funding for the Society. Other notable supporters included Francis Scott Key, Bushrod Washington, and the architect
of the U.S. Capitol, William
Thornton—all slave owners.
These "moderates" thought slavery was unsustainable and should eventually end but did not consider integrating slaves into
society a viable option. So, the ACS encouraged slaveholders to offer freedom on the condition that those accepting it would move
to Liberia at the society's expense. A small number of slave owners chose to follow this course of action.
Bushrod Washington, a Supreme Court Justice and nephew of George Washington,
served as the first president of the organization. The great American statesman Henry Clay of
Kentucky provided its main intellectual and political leadership. The presidents of the ACS tended to be southerners. The first president of the ACS was the nephew of former U.S. President George Washington,
Bushrod Washington, an Associate Justice
of the United States Supreme Court. Clay was ACS president from 1836 to 1849.
The prestige of the ACS benefited tremendously from the high-profile association of leaders like Clay and Washington, and over
the years, some of America’s greatest men were not merely members but officers of the society: James Madison, Daniel Webster, James Monroe, Stephen Douglas, John Randolph, William Seward, Francis Scott Key, General Winfield Scott, John Marshall and Roger Taney.[citation needed] Other great men such as
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, while
never members of the society, strongly supported colonization and the removal of blacks from the United States.[citation needed], though Lincoln later supported
black suffrage.[3]
Supporters of the ACS may be divided into three main groups. The first consisted of those who genuinely felt that it was the
best solution to a difficult problem and might lead to a gradual emancipation. Another smaller group was a proslavery group who
saw removal as an answer to the problems associated with "dangerous" free blacks. Perhaps the largest group of supporters was
made up of those who opposed slavery, but did not believe in anything remotely resembling equality of the races.
Motives of the ACS
The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives. Free blacks, freedmen and their
descendants, encountered widespread discrimination in the United States of the early 19th century. They were generally perceived
as a burden on society, and a threat to white workers because they undercut wages. Some abolitionists believed that blacks could not achieve equality in the United States and would be better off
in Africa. Many slaveholders were worried that the presence of free blacks would encourage slaves to rebel. Other supporters of removal to Africa wanted to prevent racial mixing, to promote the spread of
Christianity in Africa, or to develop trade with Africa.[4][5]
Notable supporters of transporting freed blacks to Liberia included Henry Clay,
Francis Scott Key, Bushrod Washington, and
the architect of the U.S. Capitol, William
Thornton—all slave owners. These "moderates" thought slavery was unsustainable and should eventually end but did not
consider integrating slaves into society a viable option. So, the ACS encouraged slaveholders to offer freedom on the condition
that those accepting it would move to Liberia at the society's expense. A number of slave owners did just that.
Despite being antislavery, Society members were openly racist and frequently argued that free blacks would be unable to
assimilate into the white society of this country. John Randolph, one famous slave owner, called free blacks "promoters of
mischief." At this time, about 2 million African Americans lived in America of which 200,000 were free persons of color.
Henry Clay, a congressman from Kentucky who was critical of the negative impact slavery had
on the southern economy, believed that because of "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could
amalgamate with the free whites of this country."
Although the eccentric Randolph believed that the removal of free blacks would "materially tend to secure" slave property, the
vast majority of early members were philanthropists, clergy and abolitionists who wanted to free African slaves and their
descendants and provide them with the opportunity to return to Africa. Very few members were slave owners who feared free people
of color and wanted to expel them from America, and in fact the Society never enjoyed much support among planters in the Lower
South.
Objections to the ACS plan
Three of the reasons the movement never became very successful were the objections raised by blacks and abolitionists, the
enormous scale of the task of moving so many people (there were 4 million free blacks in the USA after the Civil War), and the
difficulty in finding locations willing to accept large numbers of black newcomers.
One of the major obstacles that the Society faced was widespread opposition from blacks. Black Americans stood divided on the
issue of emigration. A few black church leaders signaled their support for the ACS. In January 1817, free blacks in Richmond,
Virginia, made a public pronouncement favoring emigration. However, most free blacks in northern communities such as
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston united against emigration, seeing it as a ploy to expel free blacks from the United States.
Many denounced the membership of the society as racist deportationists whose aim was not to help black people, but rather to
strengthen slavery by ridding society of a free black population. They felt that it would be better to stay in America and fight
against slavery and for full rights as United States citizens. Lemuel Haynes, a free black
Presbyterian minister at the time of the Society's formation, argued passionately that God's providential plan would eventually
defeat slavery and lead to the harmonious integration of the races as equals. In 1817, over 3,000 blacks gathered in Philadelphia
in a protest against the plans for colonization.
At the same time, many slave owners in the South vigorously denounced the plan as an assault on their slave economy.
Fundraising
Despite the support of the federal government, contributions from state governments and several leading citizens, the society
had trouble raising the money it would need for its venture.
For many years the ACS tried to persuade the United States Congress to appropriate funds to send colonists to Liberia.
Although Henry Clay led the campaign, it failed. The society did, however, succeed in its appeals to some state legislatures.
One of the chief methods of fundraising that they developed was selling lifetime membership certificates to private
citizens.
The Society's members relentlessly pressured Congress and the President for support. The American Colonization Society had an
ally in the new President of the United States, James Monroe. Monroe had endorsed the removal of free blacks to Africa since the
turn of the century when he had been Governor of Virginia, and was now willing to use his authority to help the new society. He
was able to convince Congress to appropriate $100,000 for the cause in 1819, and also helped the society to secure federal help
in acquiring territory. In fact, Monroe's efforts to help the American Colonization Society were seen as so monumental, the
capital of Liberia was named Monrovia in his honor.
First colony - Cape Mesurado
Despite the opposition of many blacks, hundreds had volunteered to go as colonists back to the land of their origin.
First ship - the Elizabeth
In January 1820 the first ship, the Elizabeth, sailed from New York headed for West Africa with three white ACS agents and 88
emigrants. The ACS purchased the freedom of American slaves and paid their passage to Liberia. Emigration was offered to already-free black people.
Under the leadership of Samuel Bacon, an Episcopal clergyman, the first expedition took place on the ship Elizabeth, a small
merchantman. Among the items brought were wagons, wheelbarrows, plows, ironworks for a saw mill and grist mill, two cannons, 100
muskets, 12 kegs of powder, fishing equipment, and a small barge. President James Monroe had the Secretary of the Navy order an
American sloop of war, the U.S.S. Cyane, to convoy the Elizabeth to Africa. Of the 86 black emigrants sailing on the Elizabeth,
only about one-third were men, the rest were wives and children.
The ship arrived first at Freetown, Sierra Leone then sailed south to what is now the Northern coast of Liberia and made an
effort to establish a settlement. All three whites and 22 of the emigrants died within three weeks from yellow fever. The
remainders returned to Sierra Leone and waited for another ship. The Nautilus sailed twice in 1821 and established a settlement
at Mesurado Bay on an island they named Perseverance. It was difficult for the early settlers, made of mostly free-born blacks,
who were not born into slavery, but were denied the full rights of American citizenship.
The native Africans resisted the expansion of the settlers resulting in many armed conflicts. Nevertheless, in the next decade
2,638 African-Americans migrated to the area. Also, the colony entered an agreement with the U.S. Government to accept freed
slaves captured from slave ships.
The society had experienced little success in convincing local tribal leaders to sell land for the new colony, and the first
88 free black settlers from America were dropped off on Scherbo Island. But after three weeks, twenty-two of the
African-Americans and all three white officials died of yellow fever.
Second ship - the Nautilus
When President Monroe heard of the disaster, he was disturbed but still believed that the colonization movement could succeed.
He appointed the Reverend Ephraim Bacon, Samuel's brother, to lead a new expedition that would gather up the survivors from the
first and attempt once again to forge a permanent settlement. Bacon set sail, along with a few other white agents and 33 black
colonists, on the ship Nautilus from Hampton Roads, Virginia on January 23, 1821, just a little over a year after the Elizabeth had left New York. Like the Elizabeth, the Nautilus had a
smooth voyage across the ocean. After landing at Freetown, the new party hurried to Fourah Bay to unite with the survivors of the
original settlement and take stock of the situation.
Bacon and others proceeded to sail down the coast to look for a better place to found their colony. Encountering the same
difficulties as Crozer had, they found that most local chiefs were unwilling to sell their land. In April they did manage to sign
a treaty to buy 40 square miles of land in Bassa, but the Colonization Society refused to ratify it because it was too expensive
and would require an annual tribute to be paid to the king. Frustrated by the failure to obtain land, President Monroe replaced
Bacon with Dr. Eli Ayres, who arrived in Africa to meet the party in November aboard to U.S.S. Shark. Not wanting the effort to
fail again, Monroe also decided to involve the military in the quest for a suitable territory, and sent the USS Alligator commanded by Navy Lieutenant Richard Field
Stockton to assist Ayres.
Ayres and Stockton sailed down the coast looking for an appropriate location for their settlement, eventually deciding on Cape
Mesurado, about 225 miles south of Sierra Leone. Agents of the American Colonization Society had previously tried to buy the
land, but King Peter, who ruled the region, had flatly refused to sell it. This time, Ayres and Stockton would not take no as an
answer. They arrived on the cape on December 12 and requested a meeting with the king.
Although denied at first, they were persistent and eventually succeeded in gaining an audience. King Peter refused to sell them
the land they wanted, but agreed to return the next day for further negotiation. When the next day arrived, the king sent
messengers in his place to inform the Americans that he would neither sell them any land nor meet with them again. Infuriated at
this treatment, Stockton and Ayres decided to take matters into their own hands. They paid native guides to lead them to the
king's town, where they once again insisted on a meeting. On December 14, King Peter did
meet with them and once again told them that he would not sell them Cape Messurado under any circumstances. Stockton and Ayres
then proceeded to prove him wrong when they and their company pulled out pistols and aimed them at the king and others. At
gunpoint, King Peter "agreed" to sell Cape Montserado (or Cape Mesurado) to the Americans. On the
next day a formal agreement was drawn up, in which Ayres and Stockton acquired the cape for their colony in exchange for a
quantity guns, powder, beds, clothes, mirrors, food, rum, and tobacco worth about $300.
Ayres and Stockton returned to Sierra Leone, where they loaded up the colonists on two ships and headed for their newly
acquired home. The first settlement was on Providence Island near where the present capital city, Monrovia, is located. Providence Island had not possessed an adequate supply of fresh water, and the rainy
season had begun. Many of the new settlers began to fall ill, just as the colonists of the Elizabeth had done a year earlier. The
colony survived, however, and was strengthened on August 8, when the brig Strong, which had
been chartered by the U.S. Government and left Hampton Roads, Virginia on May 26, arrived at Cape
Mesurado. The Strong carried food and other supplies for the colony, along with 55 black colonists.
Expansion and growth of the colony
In 1824 the Cape Mesurado Colony expanded and became the Liberia Colony, and the United States government settled New Georgia
with "Congo" recaptives (slaves rescued by Americans in mid-ocean). Other colonies soon followed.
Jehudi Ashmun, an early leader of the American Colonization Society colony, envisioned
an American empire in Africa. During 1825 and 1826, Ashmun took steps to lease, annex, or buy
tribal lands along the coast and along major rivers leading inland. Like his predecessor Lt. Robert Stockton, Ashmun was prepared to use force to extend the colony's territory. His aggressive
actions quickly increased Liberia's power over its neighbors.
In a treaty of May 1825 deposited by the ACS in the U.S. Library of Congress,
King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land in return for 500 bars of tobacco, three
barrels of rum, five casks of powder, five umbrellas, ten iron posts, and ten pairs of shoes, among other items.
Expansion by creation of other colonies
The Maryland State Colonization Society withdrew her support from the American Colonization Society and resolved to establish
a colony in Liberia to send free people of color, of that State, that wished to emigrate. Soon afterwards, the Young Men's
Colonization Society of Pennsylvania was induced to establish a separate colony at Port Cresson. The New York City Colonization
Society united with the Young Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania. Under the active agency of Dr. Proudfit, the funds of
the State were brought to their aid.
In 1832 the Edina and Port Cresson colonies were formed by the New York and Pennsylvania Colonization Societies. In 1834 the
Maryland in Liberia colony was created by the Maryland State Colonization Society.
In 1834, the Mississippi State Colonization Society established a colony independent of the American Colonization Society. The
Mississippi-in-Africa colony was created by the Mississippi and Louisiana State Colonization Societies in 1835. In 1835, the Port
Cresson Colony was destroyed by natives of the area. The Bassa Cove Colony was founded on the ruins of the Port Cresson Colony a
month later.[6][7]
A period of consolidation followed. The Bassa Cove Colony absorbed the Edina Colony in 1837. Bassa Cove in turn was
incorporated into Liberia in 1839, as was New Georgia. Maryland in Africa became the State of Maryland in Liberia in 1841.
Mississippi-in-Africa was incorporated into Liberia as Sinoe County in 1842. Maryland in Liberia declared independence from
Liberia in 1854 and had a brief life as the independent state of Maryland in Liberia. It was annexed into Liberia as Maryland
County in 1857.[6][7]
Continued opposition to the ACS
Abolitionist resistance to colonization grew steadily. Beginning in the 1830s, the society was harshly attacked by some
abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a slaveholders' scheme and the
American Colonization Society as merely palliative propaganda for the continuation of slavery in the United States.
In 1832, as the ACS began to send agents to England to raise funds for what they touted as a benevolent plan, William Lloyd Garrison helped instigate opposition to the plan with a 236-page book on the evils
of colonization and sent abolitionists to England to track down and counter ACS supporters.
In 1855, William Nesbit published the pamphlet "Four Months in Liberia, Or, African Colonization Exposed", a highly critical
essay against the feasibility of colonization. Nesbit had sailed to Liberia under the auspices of the American Colonization
Society in 1853, and his booklet was a recounting of his experiences and observations in the colony.
Support from Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland
Despite the strong opposition, the scheme did have some supporters. Slave states like Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland were
already home to a significant number of free blacks, and whites there—still reeling from Nat
Turner's 1831 rebellion, which emancipated slaves had a hand in—formed local colonization societies.
The colonization effort received a major boost after the Nat Turner slave uprising in 1831. Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland
all appropriated funds for the shipment of free blacks to Africa. Also, many more blacks were now more willing to emigrate since
the Turner rebellion had produced significant white backlash against free blacks.
Thus encouraged, Maryland legislators passed a law in 1832 that required any slave freed after that date to leave the state
and specifically offered passage to a part of Liberia administered by the Maryland State Colonization Society. However,
enforcement provisions lacked teeth, and many Marylanders forgot their antipathy to free blacks when they needed extra hands at
harvest time. There is no evidence that any freed African-American was forcibly sent to Liberia from Maryland or anywhere
else.[citation needed].
Life in colonial Liberia
The society in Liberia developed into three segments: The settlers with European-African lineage; freed slaves from slave
ships and the West Indies; and indigenous native people. These groups would have a profound affect on the history of Liberia. The
new colonies adopted other American styles of life, including southern plantation-style houses with deep verandahs, and
established thriving trade links with other West Africans. The Americo-Liberians distinguished themselves from the local people,
characterized as 'natives,' by the universal appellation of "Mr."
The settlers recreated American society, building churches and homes that resembled Southern plantations. And they continued
to speak English. They also entered into a complex relationship with the indigenous people -- marrying them in some cases,
discriminating against them in others, but all the time attempting to "civilize" them and impose Western values on the
traditional communities.
Opposition from the natives
The formation of the colony did not occur altogether without difficulty. The land occupied by the American Colonization
Society in Liberia was not void of native inhabitants when the emigrants arrived. Much of the area was under the control of the
Malinké tribes who resented the expansion of these settlers. In addition to disease, poor
housing conditions and lack of food and medicine, these new emigrants found themselves engaged in sporadic armed combat with the
natives.
Almost from the beginning, the settlers periodically encountered stiff opposition from local tribesmen, usually resulting in
bloody battles. On the other hand, colonial expansionists encroached on the newly-independent Liberia and took over much of the
original territory of independent Liberia by force.
Lincoln and the ACS
Since the 1840s Lincoln, an admirer of Clay, had been an advocate of the ACS program of colonizing blacks in Liberia. In an 1854 speech in Illinois, he points out the immense difficulties of such a task are an obstacle to
finding an easy way to quickly end slavery.[8]
Early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlements of the kind the ACS supported, but each
arrangement failed (See Abraham Lincoln on slavery). By 1863, most scholars
believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea following the use of black troops. Biographer Stephen
B. Oates has observed, Lincoln thought it immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for the United States and then remove
them to Africa after their military service. Others, like Michael Lind, believe that as
late 1864 or 1865 Lincoln continued to hold out hope for colonization, noting that he allegedly asked Attorney general Edward
Bates if the Reverend James Mitchell could stay on as "your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of
Congress relating to the emigration or colonizing of the freed Blacks." General Benjamin F. Butler claimed that only two weeks before he died Lincoln had asked
him to investigate the possibility of colonizing colored troops to Panama in order to build a canal because Lincoln feared that
they might initiate a "race war" after the Civil War ended.[citation needed]. In his second term as president, on April
11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech supporting suffrage for blacks.[9]
Bankruptcy of the ACS
The American Colonization Society closely controlled the development of Liberia until 1847. However, by the 1840s, Liberia had
become a financial burden on the American Colonization Society which was effectively bankrupt.
Liberian Independence
Liberia faced external threats, chiefly from Britain, because it was neither a sovereign power nor a bona fide colony of any
sovereign nation. The Society controlled the colony of Liberia until 1846 when, under the perception that the British might annex the settlement, the ACS directed the Liberians to
proclaim their independence. In 1847, the colony became the independent nation of Liberia. The new Liberian constitution was said to be fashioned after the American model.
Virginia
In 1850, Virginia set aside $30,000 annually for five years to aid and support emigration.
In its Thirty-Fourth Annual Report, the society acclaimed the news as "a great Moral demonstration of the propriety and necessity
of state action!" During the 1850s, the society also received several thousand dollars from the New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and
Maryland legislatures.
Post Civil War era
By 1867 the Society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants to Liberia. After the Civil
War, when many blacks wanted to go to Liberia, financial support for colonization had waned. During its later years the
society focused on educational and missionary efforts in
Liberia rather than further emigration.
Library of Congress
In 1913 and again at its formal dissolution in 1964, the Society donated its records to the U.S. Library of Congress. The material contains a wealth of information about the foundation of the
society, its role in establishing Liberia, efforts to manage and defend the colony, fund-raising, recruitment of settlers,
conditions for black citizens of the American South, and the way in which black settlers built and led the new nation.
Assessment
Ultimately, the ACS failed to effect any significant change in the "problem" of free blacks in the United States. Although the
Society succeeded in establishing a successful colony in Africa, it failed to achieve the vision of its proponents which was the
removal of free blacks from the United States. From the group's founding in 1816 until the Civil War, the organization managed to
send less than eleven thousand black Americans to Liberia. In 1810, there were nearly 1.4 million African Americans living in the
United States. By 1860, that number had grown to 4.25 million.[10] Thus, the ACS managed to colonize less than one percent of the black population in the United States
and, due to the growth rate of that population, was essentially embarked on an impossible mission.
The reasons for the failure of the ACS were many. A major cause of the Society's failure was financial. There were seldom
enough funds to pay for the costs of transportation, land grants, and subsistence expenses. However, the Society's financial
difficulties were a symptom rather than the root cause of its failure.
Another major cause of the Society's failure was internal dissension. The many different supporters could rarely agree upon a
uniform policy to achieve their goals. Such agreement was difficult at best with adherents who often held diametrically opposed
views from one another. As cries for abolition grew stronger in the country, the basis of the colonization movement was called
into question. Ardent abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who once
supported the Society, began to see it as a racist organization that could only hinder the cause of emancipation. This criticism
points to the principal reasons Colonization in general and the American Colonization Society, specifically, failed. It cannot be
emphasized too strongly that colonization was an essentially white experiment. It was begun by white Americans, promoted by
whites, and in the end was meant to benefit white America the most. Some blacks were hired to act as agents and proselytize for
the movement, but it was an essentially white movement. The view that blacks were inferior was at the basis of the movement. Once
this central tenet was understood, the movement lost many potential supporters.
But the primary reason the movement did succeed was quite simply that it blithely ignored one cardinal point: the vast
majority of those who were meant to colonize did not wish to leave the United States. Most free blacks simply did not want to go
"home" to a place from which they were generations removed. America, not Africa, was their home and they had little desire to
migrate to a strange and forbidding land to achieve someone else's dream.
See also
Sources
- Boley, G.E. Saigbe, "Liberia: The Rise and Fall of the First Republic", Macmillan Publishers, London, 1983.
- Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. University Press of Florida,
2005.
- Cassell, Dr. C. Abayomi, "Liberia: History of the First African Republic", Fountainhead Publishers Inc., New York, 1970.
- Egerton, Douglas R. Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism. University Press of Mississippi, 1989.
- Jenkins, David, "Black Zion: The Return of Afro-Americans and West Indians to Africa", Wildwood House, London, 1975.
- Johnson, Charles S., "Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic", Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ, 1987.
- Liebenow, J. Gus, "Liberia: The Evolution of Privilege", Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1969.
- Miller, Floyd J., "The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863", University of Illinois
Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1975.
- West, Richard, "Back to Africa", Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., New York, 1970.
References
- ^ The African-American Mosaic - A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History
& Culture. Retrieved on 2007-06-23.
- ^ Clegg III, Claude A. (2004). The Price of Liberty - African Americans and the Making of
Liberia. University of North Carolina Press, 424.
- ^ http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/5/berwanger.html
- ^ Kocher, Kurt Lee (April 1984).
"A duty to America and Africa: A history of the independent African colonization movement in Pennsylvania." (pdf).
Pennsylvania History 51. Retrieved on 2007-06-23.
- ^ Background on Conflict in
Liberia. Friends Committee on National Legislation. Retrieved on 2007-06-23.
- ^ a b World Statesmen.org: Liberia - retrieved July 3 2006
- ^ a b On Afric's Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834-1857, Maryland
Historical Society, 2003.
- ^ Lincoln on Slavery.
- ^ Berwanger, Eugene H.. Lincoln's Constitutional
Dilemma: Emancipation and Black Suffrage.
- ^ Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung. "Historical Census
Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970-1990, For the United States, Regions,
Divisions, and States, Population Division, Working Paper Series No. 56". U.S. Census Bureau.
External links
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