American Colonization Society

The American Colonization Society (ACS) was established in Washington, D.C., in December 1816 by Presbyterian minister Robert Finley (1772–1817) for the purpose of removing free blacks from the United States and settling them in Africa. Officially known as the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States, the ACS's leadership included many of the nation's most influential figures and by 1860 had relocated more than 10,000 people to the organization's colony in Liberia.

Proposals to remove people of African descent from America had circulated since the colonial era. As early as 1714, one New Jersey resident suggested that enslaved people be set free and sent to their native country. However, interest markedly increased in the wake of the American Revolution (1776–1783) as slavery was abolished in many northern states leaving white politicians to deliberate over the appropriate place of newly freed black populations. For many, deportation and relocation was a favorable alternative to the prospect of interracial democracy in the new nation.

Early colonization proposals also gained support from both pro-slavery and antislavery southerners. Seeking to bolster the institution of slavery, many pro-slavery southerners saw colonization as an invaluable tool for removing volatile free black populations that might lend support to slave rebellions. In contrast, some sought to use colonization as a tool to encourage voluntary manumission of slaves amongst southern slaveholders. Fearing a race war if abolition was immediate, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and James Madison (1751–1836) advocated gradual emancipation and deportation to end slavery in the United States. Moreover, by resettling free blacks in Africa, Jefferson argued that they might "carry back to the country of their origin the seeds of civilization" rendering their enslavement "a blessing, in the end, to that country."

From its founding moment, ACS reflected this complex array of interests. At the first ACS meeting at the Davies Hotel in Washington, D.C., slaveholder and Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay (1777–1852) advocated the colonization of, what he termed, "a useless and pernicious" free black population. Slaveholder, and fellow congressman, John Randolph (1773–1833) agreed with Clay suggesting that ACS should not challenge slavery but focus instead on removing free blacks that threatened the institution's stability. Others, such as the Supreme Court clerk, Elias Caldwell (d. 1825), believed that white America's racial attitudes would never change and promoted the settlement of free blacks in Africa as an alternative to the animosity and restrictions they would face in the United States.

Despite their disagreements about the purpose of colonization, ACS leaders agreed that free blacks should not remain in the United States and collectively lobbied the federal government for its support. The organiza-tion's first success came on March 3, 1819, when Congress passed the Slave Trade Act. Introduced by active Virginian colonizationist Charles Fenton Mercer (1778–1858), the Slave Trade Act authorized the federal government to use the navy to transport illegally enslaved people to Africa. Congress appropriated $100,000 to carry out the program.

After several failed attempts to locate an appropriate site for colonization, President James Monroe (1758–1831) sent Lieutenant Robert Field Stockton (1795–1866), a naval officer, to Africa with instructions to purchase territory for a permanent settlement. Stockton met with King Peter, chief of the Dey people around Cape Mesurado in western Liberia and negotiated the transferal of land at gunpoint. King Peter and other local leaders received goods worth less than $300 and were forced to pledge that they would live in peace with the new colony. The land was ceded to Stockton who signed the contract on behalf of the ACS, which administered it as the private colony of Liberia until it was declared an independent republic in 1847.

Back in the United States, the ACS began to expand its base by establishing sixteen state societies and more than 200 local auxiliaries across the country. Buoyed by the organization's initial successes, Rev. John C. Young, president of Center College in Kentucky, stated, "the systematic and efficient operation of this society could in less than seventy years settle the whole of our colored population in Africa." However, this initial optimism gave way as changes in the political and economic climate rendered the ACS increasingly unpopular during the 1830s and 1840s. With the advent of the cotton gin, cotton production and its corollary slave labor became enormously profitable. By 1840, the South could boast over 60 percent of the world's cotton production. In this context, interest in gradual emancipation amongst pro-slavery southerners waned resulting in the closure of ACS auxiliaries across the Lower South. In the North, the increased militancy of abolitionists severely hindered ACS's efforts to deport northern free blacks. In the Colored American on May 27, 1837, the editor warned "against the art and chicanery" of ACS, whose "leading motives are, interest and ambition." African American abolitionists emphasized the importance of staying within the United States to fight for full legal and political equality.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY

Contemporary observers of the American Colonization Society testified to its mass appeal and powerful leadership, which was drawn from amongst America's socialand political elite. As abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison testified in 1832:

In opposing the American Colonization Society, I have also counted the cost, and as clearly foreseen the formidable opposition which will be arrayed against me. Many of the clergy are enlisted in its support: their influence is powerful. Men of wealth and elevated station are among its contributors: wealth and station are almost omnipotent. The press has been seduced into its support: the press is a potent engine. Moreover, the Society is artfully based upon and defended by popular prejudice: it takes advantage of wicked and preposterous opinions and hence its success. These things grieve, they cannot deter me. 'Truth is mighty, and will prevail.' It is able to make falsehood blush, and tear from hypocrisy its mask, and annihilate prejudice, and overthrow persecution, and break every fetter (Garrison 1832, pp. 1-2).

SOURCE: Garrison, William Lloyd. Thoughts on African Colonization; or, An Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles, and Purposes of the American Colonization Society Together with the Resolutions, Addresses, and Remonstrances of the Free People of Color. Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1832.

Those that did immigrate to Liberia during this period often described the colony as a bleak environment with high mortality rates. Thomas C. Brown, a free black resident of Charleston, South Carolina, traveled to Liberia aboard the Hercules in 1833 to better his condition and escape the oppressive laws of South Carolina. Within fourteen months, Brown had returned to the United States where he testified before a public assembly in New York to his experiences in Liberia. Brown informed the audience that he had left a successful carpentry job in Charleston to make a new life for his family in the ACS colony. However, upon arrival Brown's entire family had taken ill resulting in the deaths of two of his children, and his brother and sister. When asked if others would like to leave the colony, Brown stated that a large majority would like to return but lacked the resources. However, some African Americans continued to contend that Liberia offered freedoms that were unavailable in the United States, especially during times of heightened surveillance and racial violence.

After the Civil War (1861–1865), ACS's leadership continued to promote colonization insisting that African Americans were unfit for citizenship and that racial attitudes would result in the failure of integration. As Democrats regained control of the South, African American interest in expatriation grew exponentially with emigration rates to Liberia reaching nearly 5,000 between 1861 and 1899. However, ACS experienced financial problems during the mid -1870s that severely undermined its efforts. In 1904, ACS transported its final patron to Liberia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

American Colonization Society. The First Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States: and the Proceedings of the Society at Their Annual Meeting in the City of Washington, on the First Day of January, 1818. Washington, DC: D. Rapine, 1818.

American Colonization Society. Condition of the American Colored Population, and of the Colony at Liberia. Boston: Pierce & Parker, 1833.

Brown, Thomas Cilavan. Examination of Mr. Thomas C. Brown: a Free Colored Citizen of S. Carolina, as to the Actual State of Things in Liberia in the Years 1833 and 1834: at the Chatham Street Chapel, May 9th and 10th, 1834 [1834]. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2006.

Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.

Yarema, Allan. The American Colonization Society: An Avenue to Freedom?. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006.

                         Kerry L. Pimblott