American Colonization Society

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The American Colonization Society (in full, The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America) founded Liberia, a colony on the coast of West Africa in 1820 and transported free negroes there, in an effort to remove them from the United States. The Society closely controlled the development of Liberia until 1847, when it was declared to be an independent republic. The organization was formally dissolved in 1964.

1 History
2 Review: failures
3 Library of Congress
4 See also
5 External links

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History

The ACS had its origins in 1816, when a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Robert 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.

Beginning in the 1830s, the society was harshly attacked by 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. The presidents of the ACS tended to be Southerners. The first president of the ACS was former U.S. President James Monroe of Virginia, for whom Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, was renamed. Statesman Henry Clay of Kentucky was ACS president from 1836 to 1849.

The ACS did not intend to purchase the freedom of American slaves and pay their passage to Liberia as is sometimes imagined. Emigration was offered to already-free black people. 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. 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.

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, 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 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.

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.

The Society controlled the colony of Liberia until 1847 when, under the perception that the British might annex the settlement, Liberia was proclaimed a free and independent state, and provided with a constitution that was said to be fashioned after the American model. By 1867, the Society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants. 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.

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Review: failures

The aims of the society were various. It was not supported by those who were abolitionists on moral grounds, and also by southerners fearful of losing their source of cheap labor, and Northerners concerned that an exodus of Negroes would leave them bereft of cheap labor, which would hurt the economic opportunities of the bankers.

Rumors have surfaced that while President, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlements of the kind the ACS supported, but each arrangement failed (See Abraham Lincoln on slavery). According to those rumors, by 1865 Lincoln was one of the few strong advocates of colonization remaining in the United States Government, causing the program's abandonment after his assassination.

Reasons the movement eventually dissolved were the objections raised by capitalists and the owners of large farms and plantations who feared the loss of their source of cheap labor. The colonization of Africa had proceeded to where there was no place left in Africa to put the former slaves.

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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.

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