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American Colonization Society
American Colonization Society
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American Colonization Society
The American Colonization Society (in full, The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America),
founded in 1816, was the primary vehicle to support the "return" of free African Americans to what was considered
greater freedom in Africa. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22 as a place for freedmen. Its founders
were Henry Clay, John Randolph, and Richard Bland Lee.[1] [2] [3]
Paul Cuffee, a wealthy mixed-race New England shipowner and activist, was an early advocate of settling freed
blacks in Africa. He gained support from black leaders and members of the US Congress for an emigration plan. In
1811 and 1815-6, he financed and captained successful voyages to British-ruled Sierra Leone, where he helped
African-American immigrants get established.[4] Although Cuffee died in 1817, his efforts may have "set the tone"
for the American Colonization Society (ACS) to initiate further settlements.
The ACS was a coalition made up mostly of Quakers who supported abolition, and slaveholders who wanted to
remove the perceived threat of free blacks to their society. They found common ground in support of so-called
"repatriation". They believed blacks would face better chances for full lives in Africa than in the U.S. The
slaveholders opposed abolition, but saw repatriation as a way to remove free blacks and avoid slave rebellions.[2]
From 1821, thousands of free black Americans moved to Liberia from the United States. Over 20 years, the colony
continued to grow and establish economic stability. In 1847, the legislature of Liberia declared the nation an
independent state.
Critics have said 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 its
declaration of independence. By 1867, the ACS had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to
Liberia. From 1825-1919, it published a journal, the African Repository and Colonial Journal. After that, the society
had essentially ended, but did not formally dissolve until 1964, when it transferred its papers to the Library of
Congress.[5]
Background
Colonization as a solution to the "problem" of free blacks
Following the American Revolutionary War, the "peculiar Institution" of slavery and those bound within it grew,
reaching four million slaves by the mid-19th century.[6] 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 with
legislated limits.[2] In the first two decades after the Revolutionary War, the percentage of free blacks rose in
Virginia, for instance, from 1% to nearly 10% of the black population.
Some men decided to support emigration following an abortive slave rebellion headed by Gabriel Prosser in 1800,
and a rapid increase in the number of free African Americans in the United States, which was perceived by some to
be alarming. Although the ratio of whites to blacks was 8:2 from 1790 to 1800, it was the increase in the number of
free African Americans that disturbed some proponents of colonization. From 1790 to 1800, the number of free
African Americans increased from 59,467 (1½ % of total U.S. population, 7½ % of U.S. black population) to
108,398 (2 % of U.S. population), a percentage increase of 82 percent; and from 1800 to 1810, the number increased
from 108,398 to 186,446 (2½ % of U.S. pop.), an increase of 72 percent.[7] The perception of change was highest in
some major cities, but especially the Upper South, where the most slaves were freed in the two decades after the
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American Colonization Society
Revolution.
This steady increase did not go unnoticed by an anxious white community that was ever more aware of 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, it was claimed,
were licentious beings who would draw whites into their savage, unrestrained ways. The 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.[8] Still others claimed that the
supposed 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 were said to threaten jobs of working class
whites in the North.
Southerners had their special reservations about free blacks, fearing that the freedmen living in in slave areas caused
unrest to slaves, and encouraged runaways and slave revolts. They had racist reservations about the ability of free
blacks to function. The proposed solution was to have free blacks deported from the United States to colonize parts
of Africa.[9]
Paul Cuffe
Paul Cuffee (1759–1817) was a mixed-race, successful Quaker ship
owner descended from Ashanti and Wampanoag parents. He advocated
settling freed American slaves in Africa and gained support from the
British government, free black leaders in the United States, and
members of Congress to take emigrants to the British colony of Sierra
Leone. He had an economic interest, as he intended to bring back
valuable cargoes. In 1816, Captain Cuffee took thirty-eight American
blacks to Freetown, Sierra Leone; other voyages were precluded by his
death in 1817. By reaching a large audience with his pro-colonization
arguments and practical example, Cuffee laid the groundwork for the
American Colonization Society.[10]
Origins
The ACS had its origins in 1816, when Charles Fenton Mercer, a
Federalist member of the Virginia General Assembly, discovered
Paul Cuffe in 1812.
accounts of earlier legislative debates on black colonization in the
wake of Gabriel Prosser's rebellion. Mercer pushed the state to support the idea, and one of his political contacts in
Washington City, John Caldwell, in turn contacted the Reverend Robert Finley, his brother-in-law, a Presbyterian
minister, who endorsed the scheme.
The Society was officially established in Washington at the Davis Hotel on December 21, 1816. The founders were
considered to be Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Richard Bland Lee. Mercer was unable to go to
Washington for the meeting. 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. Few members were slave-owners; the Society never enjoyed much support among planters in the
Lower South. This was the area that developed most rapidly in the nineteenth century with slave labor, and initially it
had few free blacks, who lived mostly in the Upper South.
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American Colonization Society
Motives
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.
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."[11] At this time, about 2 million African Americans lived in America of which
200,000 were free persons of color (with legislated limits).[2] Henry Clay, a congressman from Kentucky who was
critical of the negative impact slavery had on the southern economy, saw the movement of blacks as being preferable
to emancipation in America, believing that "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could
amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of
the population of the country, to drain them off".[12] Clay argued that because blacks could never be fully integrated
into U.S. society due to "unconquerable prejudice" by white Americans, it would be better for them to emigrate to
Africa.[12]
Finley suggested at the inaugural meeting of an African Society that a colony be established in Africa to take free
people of color, most of whom had been born free, away from the United States. Rev. 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." The organization established branches throughout the United States. It was instrumental in the
establishment of the colony of Liberia.
Fundraising
During the next three years, the society raised money by selling membership. The Society's members relentlessly
pressured Congress and the President for support. In 1819, they received $100,000 from Congress and in January
1820 the first ship, the Elizabeth, sailed from New York for West Africa with three white ACS agents and 88
emigrants aboard.
The ACS purchased the freedom of American slaves and paid their passage to Liberia. Emigration was offered to
already free black people. For many years the ACS tried to persuade the US 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. 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.
Preparation of colony
Jehudi Ashmun, an early leader of the ACS 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, who in 1821 established the site for Monrovia by "persuading" a local
chief referred to as "King Peter" to sell Cape Montserado (or Mesurado) by pointing a pistol at his head, 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, King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land to Ashmun 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. (The treaty is included in papers of the ACS in the U.S. Library of Congress.)
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American Colonization Society
First colony
The ship pulled in first at Freetown, Sierra Leone, from where it sailed south to what is now the northern coast of
Liberia. The emigrants started to establish a settlement. All three whites and 22 of the emigrants died within three
weeks from yellow fever. The remainder 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 had been denied the full rights of United States
citizenship. In Liberia, the native Africans resisted the expansion of the colonists, resulting in many armed conflicts
between them. 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 who were taken from illegal slave ships.
Expansion and growth of the colony
During the next 20 years the colony continued to grow and establish economic stability. Since the establishment of
the colony, the ACS employed white agents to govern the colony. In 1842, Joseph Jenkins Roberts became the first
non-white governor of Liberia. In 1847, the legislature of Liberia declared itself an independent state, with J.J.
Roberts elected as its first President.
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.
African Repository and Colonial Journal
In March 1825, the ACS began a quarterly, The African Repository and Colonial Journal, edited by Rev. Ralph
Randolph Gurley (1797–1872), who headed the Society until 1844. Conceived as the Society's propaganda organ,
the Repository promoted both colonization and Liberia. Among the items printed were articles about Africa, letters
of praise, official dispatches stressing the prosperity and steady growth of the colony, information about emigrants,
and lists of donors.
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.[13]
Early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlement of the kind the ACS supported, but
each arrangement failed (See Abraham Lincoln on slavery). By 1863, following the use of black troops, most
scholars believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea. Biographer Stephen B. Oates has observed that Lincoln thought it
immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for the US and then to remove them to Africa after their military service.
Others, such as the historian 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."[14] Mitchell, a former state director of the ACS in Indiana, had been appointed by
Lincoln in 1862 to oversee the government's colonization programs. In his second term as president, on April 11,
1865, Lincoln gave a speech supporting suffrage for blacks.
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American Colonization Society
Criticism and decline of the ACS
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. Beginning in the 1830s, some abolitionists increasingly attacked the ACS, criticizing colonization as a
slaveholders' scheme and the ACS' works as palliative propaganda to soften the continuation of slavery in the United
States. The presidents of the ACS tended to be Southerners. The first president of the ACS was Bushrod
Washington, the nephew of U.S. President George Washington and an Associate Justice of the United States
Supreme Court. From 1836-1849 the statesman Henry Clay of Kentucky, a planter and slaveholder, was ACS
president.
Three of the reasons the movement never became very successful were the objections raised by free blacks and
abolitionists, the scale and costs of moving many people (there were 4 million freedmen in the South after the Civil
War), and the difficulty in finding locations willing to accept large numbers of black newcomers (no African tribe
accepted newcomers, so the society relied on creating settlements at small colonial ports).
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.
Sources
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Allen, Richard, "Freedom's prophet", NYU Press, New York, 2008.
Barton, Seth, "Remarks on the colonization of the western coast of Africa", Cornell University Library, 1850.
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.
Thomas, Lamont D. Paul Cuffe: Black Entrepreneur and Pan-Africanist (Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1988)
West, Richard, "Back to Africa", Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., New York, 1970.
Yarema, Allan E., "American Colonization Society: an avenue to freedom?", University Press of America, 2006.
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American Colonization Society
References
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents [15] of the Library of Congress.
[1] Bateman, Graham; Victoria Egan, Fiona Gold, and Philip Gardner (2000). Encyclopedia of World Geography. New York: Barnes & Noble
Books. pp. 161. ISBN 1-56619-291-9.
[2] "Background on conflict in Liberia" (http:/ / www. fcnl. org/ issues/ item. php?item_id=731& issue_id=75), Friends Committee on National
Legislation, 30 July 2003
[3] "Colonization: Thirty-Sixth Anniversary of the American Colonization Society" (http:/ / query. nytimes. com/ mem/ archive-free/
pdf?res=FB0F1FFD3F5C167493CBA8178AD85F478584F9), New York Times, 19 January 1853
[4] Thomas, Lamont D. Paul Cuffe: Black Entrepreneur and Pan-Africanist (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988) pp. 46-56,
93-106
[5] Loc.gov (http:/ / www. loc. gov/ exhibits/ african/ afam002. html)
[6] Introduction - Social Aspects of the Civil War (http:/ / www. itd. nps. gov/ cwss/ manassas/ social/ introsoc. htm)
[7] Barton (1850), pg. 9
[8] Newman (2008), pg. 203."Massachusetts politician Edward Everett spoke for many Northern colonizationists when he supported colonizing
free blacks, whom he described as vagabonds, criminals, and a drain on Northern society."
[9] Yarema (2006), pp. 26-27.
Free blacks, according to many Whigs, would never be accepted into white society ... so the only acceptable solution seemed to be emigration
to Africa.
"Northern philanthropic groups supported colonization as an effective way to elevate free blacks who migrated to northern states."
[10] Frankie Hutton, “Economic Considerations in the American Colonization Society’s Early Effort to Emigrate Free Blacks to Liberia,
1816-36", The Journal of Negro History (1983)
[11] Emigration vs. assimilation: the debate in the African American press, 1827-1861 (http:/ / books. google. com/
books?id=bZR2AAAAMAAJ& q=John+ Randolph,+ called+ free+ blacks+ "promoters+ of+ mischief& dq=John+ Randolph,+ called+ free+
blacks+ "promoters+ of+ mischief& cd=3) By Kwando Mbiassi Kinshasa (1988). University of Michigan
[12] Maggie Montesinos Sale (1997). The slumbering volcano: American slave ship revolts and the production of rebellious masculinity. p.264.
Duke University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8223-1992-6
[13] Academic.udayton.edu (http:/ / academic. udayton. edu/ race/ 02rights/ slave07. htm#Free them)
[14] Bates to Lincoln, November 30, 1864, Library of Congress (http:/ / memory. loc. gov/ mss/ mal/ mal1/ 388/ 3884500/ 001. jpg)
[15] http:/ / www. loc. gov/ exhibits/ african/ afam002. html
External links
• U.S. Library of Congress exhibition, based on materials deposited by the ACS. (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
african/afam002.html)
• A View of Liberian History and Government (http://www.africawithin.com/tour/liberia/hist_gov1.htm): A
critical view of the ACS
• PBS article (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1521.html)
• Article at Slavery in the North (http://www.slavenorth.com/colonize.htm)
• The American Colonization Society (http://personal.denison.edu/~waite/liberia/history/acs.htm)
• Records of the American Colonization Society from the U.S. Library of Congress (http://www.footnote.com/
documents/27399185/american_colonization_society/)
• The Liberator Files (http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/category/colonization-anti-colonization/), Horace
Seldon's collection and summary of research of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator - excerpts concerning
Colonization / Anti-Colonization original copies at the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
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