American Colonisation Society

8 Key excerpts on "American Colonisation Society"

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  Thoughts on African Colonization

  • William Lloyd Garrison(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  are subjects foreign to the powers of this Society.'—[Address of the Board of Managers of the American Colonization Society to its Auxiliary Societies.—African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 290, 291.]

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  'The American Colonization Society was formed with special reference to the free blacks of our country. With the delicate subject of slavery it presumes not to interfere. And yet doubtless from the first it has cherished the hope of being in some way or other a medium of relief to the entire colored population of the land. Such a hope is certainly both innocent and benevolent. And so long as the Society adheres to the object announced in its constitution, as it hitherto has done, the master can surely find no reasonable cause of anxiety. And it is a gratifying circumstance that the Society has from the first obtained its most decided and efficient support from the slaveholding States.'—[Sermon, delivered at Springfield, Mass., July 4th, 1829, before the Auxiliary Colonization Society of Hampden County, by Rev. B. Dickinson.]

  'The American Colonization Society in no way directly meddles with slavery. It disclaims all such interference.'—[Correspondent of the Southern Religious Telegraph.]

  'This system is sanctioned by the laws of independent and sovereign states. Congress cannot constitutionally pass laws which shall tend directly to abolish it. If it ever be abolished by legislative enactments, it must be done by the respective legislatures of the States in which it exists. It never designed to interfere with what the laws consider as the rights of masters—it has made no appeals to them to release their slaves for colonization, nor to their slaves to abandon their masters. With this delicate subject, the Society has avowedly nothing to do. Its ostensible object is necessarily the removal of our free colored population.'—[Middletown (Connecticut) Gazette.]

  'With slaves, however, the American Colonization Society has no concern

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  Witness for Freedom

  African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation

  • C. Peter Ripley, Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, Donald Yacovone, C. Peter Ripley, Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, Donald Yacovone(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1The Rise of Black Abolitionism

  THE COLONIZATION CONTROVERSY

  The African American struggle to claim the United States as a homeland gave rise to the black abolitionist movement. With the creation of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1816, free blacks confronted a program to resettle them in Africa. More than a few black leaders supported the drive for an African repatriation. They were drawn to the ACS’s plan for a Liberian colony because it promised blacks self-government and the rights denied them in the United States. But most African Americans rejected colonization, embraced the United States as their true home, and refused to abandon it or the slave. Recognizing the ACS as a threat to their claims as American citizens, blacks organized to challenge the society’s program point by point.

  1 OUR PRESENT HOMES

  Philadelphia blacks took the lead by organizing a series of mass meetings to condemn colonization. At one gathering held in 1817, just a few months after the founding of the ACS, participants carefully spelled out their objections to Liberian settlement.

  To the humane and benevolent Inhabitants of the city and county of Philadelphia.

  The free people of color, assembled together, under circumstances of deep interest to their happiness and welfare, humbly and respectfully lay before you this expression of their feelings and apprehensions.

  Relieved from the miseries of slavery, many of us by your aid, possessing the benefits which industry and integrity in this prosperous country assure to all its inhabitants, enjoying the rich blessings of religion, by opportunities of worshipping the only true God, under the light of Christianity, each of us according to his understanding; and having afforded to us and to our children the means of education and improvement; we have no wish to separate from our present homes, for any purpose whatever. Contented with our present situation and condition, we are not desirous of increasing their prosperity but by honest efforts, and by the use of those opportunities for their improvement, which the constitution and laws allow to all. It is therefore with painful solicitude, and sorrowing regret, we have seen a plan for colonizing the free people of color of the United States on the coast of Africa, brought forward under the auspices and sanction of gentlemen whose names give value to all they recommend, and who certainly are among the wisest, the best, and the most benevolent of men, in this great nation.

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  Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia

  • B. Everill(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The early historiography focused on telling the story of the political development of the colony. 14 The story of Liberia was – and continues to be – inextricably linked to the changing fortunes of the American Colonization Society. 15 The ACS’s contentious role in antebellum history has meant that it rarely receives fair treatment in the mainstream abolition historiography. When it is addressed in the historiography of the abolition movement, it is generally dismissed as, at best, a foolhardy organization with no hope of providing a practical anti-slavery strategy, and, at worst, an ‘evil’ scheme to forcibly transport all black Americans. 16 These approaches follow on almost directly from the contemporary abolition literature, which directed most of its ire between 1830 and 1840 toward, not slaveholders, but the ACS. The ACS existed as a nationalizing force, presenting a unified goal of expansion to diverse audiences to bring them together on the ‘slavery question’. However, after the Missouri crisis of 1820, American nationalism gave way to increasing sectionalism and over the course of the 1820s, Southern slaveholders became more wary of federal expansion, fearing that a strong federal government could enforce an anti-slavery policy. 17 Southerners too began to reject colonization as a ‘thinly veiled abolition plot’. 18 Meanwhile, Northerners were increasingly disturbed by the growth of Southern slaveholders’ power and commitment to slavery. The anti-slavery advocates’ endorsement of colonization rested on the belief that slaveholders supported gradual emancipation and were simply in need of security. As sectionalism grew, it became increasingly clear to some Northerners that this was not the case. The most consistent of the attacks on the ACS was from William Lloyd Garrison. Once a member of the organization, in the late 1820s and early 1830s, Garrison had a change of heart

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  Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

  America's First Abolition Movement

  • Paul J. Polgar(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Omohundro Institute and UNC Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 5

  “Unconquerable Prejudice” and “Alien Enemies”

  The Roots and Rise of the American Colonization Society

  When the New York pastor William McMurray took to his pulpit to preach against human bondage in the summer of 1825, he made what at first sounded like standard antislavery arguments. No matter a bondsperson’s “complexion or his country,” McMurray declared, the enslaved possessed “natural sensibilities” alike with all other people. Chastising the American Republic for contradicting its founding creed, the “self-evident truth, that all men are born equal,” he predicted that the abolition of slavery would place “the brightest gem in the crown of a nation’s glory.”1

  McMurray’s plan for effecting emancipation, however, departed greatly from that of first movement abolitionists. Gradual emancipation in the mid-Atlantic had been, according to McMurray, an utter failure. Free persons of color were “contemned and despised” because of the “indelible mark” of blackness. Relegated to “vice and poverty” by the “insuperable barrier to advancement” of white prejudice, emancipated blacks became “the pests of the neighbourhoods in which they reside,” constituting serious threats to public safety. The permanency of black degradation made emancipation in the South, where a much larger population of people of color lived, a daunting and dangerous prospect. Fortunately, McMurray assured his listeners, there was a solution. The American Colonization Society (ACS) wisely advocated for black removal. Through the colonization of black Americans in Africa, not only would white Americans be able to “get rid of our black population” and thus make emancipation safe and palatable, but also those of African descent could reach a level of “equality” in their ancestral homeland that they could never achieve within the United States.2

  McMurray’s speech, sponsored by the ACS, represented a sweeping shift from the reform program of the first abolition movement. For first movement abolitionists, slavery created a corrupted societal environment that degraded blacks and blinded whites to the inherent equality of African Americans. The abolition societies and their black allies believed that, if persons of color could achieve virtuous citizenship through moral and educational uplift, white prejudice would be overcome and the barriers to African American equality and the justifications for human bondage would simultaneously shatter. According to colonzationists, however, the problem facing antislavery advocates was race, not slavery. As colonizationists saw it, an unalterable racial divide between white and black Americans created a fixed societal environment of black inferiority in which prejudice was unconquerable. The reality of an unchangeable white prejudice made freedom a mockery in the North and an impossibility in the South as long as African Americans remained within the nation’s borders. Colonizationists turned their backs on the reformers who came before them by arguing that slavery could not be abolished through black incorporation. Unless those of African descent were removed from American society, colonizationists insisted, emancipation constituted a delusional hope.

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  A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky

  Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

  • (Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  ON AFRICAN COLONIZATION.

  IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, AT WASHINGTON CITY, JANUARY 20, 1827.

  [THE subject of colonizing the free people of color and emancipated slaves, became one of deep and profound interest, at an early period, in the history of the United States. The question was agitated in Virginia in 1800, and a resolution passed in the legislature of that state, requesting the governor to correspond with the president of the United States, on the subject of purchasing land for a colony; and president Jefferson made efforts, which, however, were unsuccessful, to obtain by negotiation an establishment within the British colonies, in Africa, or the Portuguese colonies, in South America. The movement which finally led to a successful result, in establishing an American colony on the coast of Africa, commenced in the legislature of Virginia, in December 1816, by instructing the executive of that state, and their members of congress, to coöperate with the United States government in endeavoring to obtain a territory on the before-mentioned coast, for an asylum for free persons of color. Through the instrumentality of the Rev.  Robert Finley, an early and zealous friend of the cause, a meeting of public men and private citizens was held at Washington city, on the twenty-first of December, 1816, over which Mr.  Clay, then speaker of the house of representatives, was called to preside. A constitution of the American Colonization Society was adopted, at an adjourned meeting on the twenty-eighth of December, and on the first of January, 1817, the officers of the society were chosen, judge Bushrod Washington being elected president, and Henry Clay, William H. Crawford, Andrew Jackson, Robert Finley, and others, vice-presidents. Mr.

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  American Exceptionalism Vol 1

  • Timothy Roberts(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY

  Robert Finley, Thoughts on the Colonization of Free Blacks (Washington, DC, 1816).

  Ralph Randolph Gurley, A Discourse, Delivered on the Fourth of July, 1825, in the City of Washington (Washington, DC: Printed by Gales & Seaton, 1825).

  Leonard Bacon, Discourse at the Funeral of Jehudi Ashmun Esq. A Discourse Preached in the Center Church, in New Haven, August 27, 1828, at the Funeral of Jehudi Ashmun,1 Esq. Colonial Agent of the American Colony of Liberia … With the Address at the Grave by R. R. Gurley (New Haven, CT: Printed by Hezekiah Howe, 1828).

  The following three texts all express the zeal and rationale of the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS’s principal founder was Robert Finley (1772–1817), a graduate of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and instructor of classical education at Princeton until 1817 when he accepted the presidency of the University of Georgia. In 1795 Finley was ordained as pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where he originated the concept of the modern Sunday School curriculum. Finley sought for grand social reform, however. He had visited Charleston South Carolina after college and witnessed slavery at first-hand, and was distressed by the deprivations of free blacks he encountered in the North.

  In 1816 Finley travelled to Washington to lobby the US president and Congress for support for an African colonization scheme; the ACS was founded on 21 December 1816. Finley died shortly thereafter, but under the new secretary Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797–1872), a Yale College graduate and Presbyterian minister, colonization became a movement that swept New England’s churches and college campuses. As ACS secretary, Gurley edited the African Repository and Colonial Journal

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  Colonization and Its Discontents

  Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania

  • Beverly Tomek(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • NYU Press

    (Publisher)

  Historian David Brion Davis was perhaps the first to place abolition in this context. He argued that the abolition societies in both Philadelphia and New York were “parts of an interlocking network of public and private organizations designed to give order and direction to municipal life,” adding that leading abolitionists in both places also served in internal improvement organizations. Douglas Egerton and Daniel Walker Howe both applied this test to the colonization movement by demonstrating that many border-state colonizationists such as Clay were National Republicans or Whig nationalists who shared a vision of an industrialized society based on a free labor economy of both factory and farm. Seen this way, ACS efforts to send free blacks to the colony were just the first steps toward emancipation. Thus, Clay and Carey saw colonization as a way of ridding the nation of an outdated system of production. It would also encourage cultural uniformity and solidify the bonds of interest between farmers, merchants, and manufacturers. Carey’s writings offer a clear picture of the America he envisioned and the role of colonization in it. His efforts are less well known than Clay’s, who served as ACS president from 1836 to 1849, since in the colonization movement, as in politics, he chose to fight from behind the printing press rather than seek public office. Even so, examining his roles both in fighting for American political and economic nationalism and in the colonization movement reveals how closely the two agendas were linked in the minds of men such as Clay and Carey. 3 Ironically, the man who would provide the strongest support for American economic nationalism spent the first twenty-five years of his life in Ireland. Mathew Carey was born in Dublin in 1760 to a Catholic family who had to endure daily the religious persecution of the Penal Laws

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  Race and Ethnicity in America

  From Pre-contact to the Present [4 volumes]

  • Russell M. Lawson, Benjamin A. Lawson, Russell M. Lawson, Benjamin A. Lawson, Russell M. Lawson, Benjamin A. Lawson(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  In a work evidently progressive, who shall assign limits to the good that zeal and perseverance shall be permitted to accomplish? Your memorialists beg leave to state that, having expended considerable funds in prosecuting their inquiries and making preparations, they are now about to send out a colony, and complete the purchase, already stipulated for with the native kings and chiefs of Sherbro, of a suitable territory for their establishment. The number they are now enabled to transport and provide for, is but a small proportion of the people of color who have expressed their desire to go; and without a larger and more sudden increase of their funds than can be expected from the voluntary contributions of individuals, their progress must be slow and uncertain. They have always flattered themselves with the hope that when it was seen they had surmounted the difficulties of preparation, and shown that means applied to the execution of their design would lead directly and evidently to its accomplishment, they would be able to obtain for it the national countenance and assistance. To this point they have arrived; and they, therefore, respectfully request that this interesting subject may receive the consideration of your honorable body, and that the Executive Department may be authorized, in such way as may meet your approbation, to extend to this object such pecuniary and other aid as it may be thought to require and deserve.

  Your memorialists further request, that the subscribers to the American Colonization Society may be incorporated, by act of Congress, to enable them to act with more efficiency in carrying on the great and important objects of the Society, and to enable them, with more economy, to manage the benevolent contributions intrusted to their care.

  Signed by John Mason, W. Jones, E. B. Caldwell, and F. S. Key, committee. WASHINGTON February 1, 1820

  Source: Address of the Board of Managers of the American Colonization Society to the Auxiliary Societies and the People of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Davis and Forge, 1820), 23‒27.

  4. Jedidiah Morse, Reflections on the Impact of White Settlement among the Indians, 1822

  Jedidiah Morse, on his journey on behalf of the U.S. government to investigate the state of Indian tribes in America, wrote this reflection on how the American Indian had been impacted by white settlement.

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