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This chapter tells the story of Elliott Cresson, a staunch proponent of the colonization movement. Cresson began working for the American Colonization Society (ACS) diligently in 1829 and continued his efforts until he died in 1854, but the high point of his involvement came in the 1830s. He joined the movement because he saw the scheme as the only realistic way to end slavery in the United States. The image of fellow human beings waiting in chains and groaning under the lash galvanized Cresson and his colleagues into action, and this group of philanthropists became Pennsylvania's most diehard colonizationists. Thanks to their efforts the ACS went from sending mostly free blacks to Liberia to sending mainly manumitted slaves. This change was due largely to Cresson's determination that colonization was founded on the humanitarian principles of antislavery and black uplift.

This book explores African Americans' organized resistance to colonization, and specifically their battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS) and those who believed that African colonization was the best way to “deal” with free blacks who lived outside the slave South. Focusing on free black struggle against colonization in Britain, Africa, Haiti, and Canada, the book examines the efforts of activists and reformers who opposed the colonization movement because they saw it as a major obstacle to African Americans' efforts to gain citizenship in the United States. It considers the participation of many whites and free blacks in the post-1830 abolition movement and their denunciation of the ACS and settlement in Liberia for fear that colonization to Liberia would become national policy. It also discusses emigrationism as an ideology of empowerment for African Americans who were fighting racism. Finally, it explains how anticolonization discourse and activism reaffirmed African Americans' faith in republican and democratic ideals.

This chapter examines the contributions of Philadelphia's Benjamin Coates, a young white Quaker who shared most of Elliott Cresson's vision and played an important role in shifting Pennsylvania colonization's focus from freeing slaves to uplifting the black race through the Free Produce movement. He also provided an important bridge between gradualism and colonization because he remained an important figure in both the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) and the Pennsylvania Colonization Society (PCS), fighting for black education and uplift through each organization. He also brought an economic agenda into the colonization movement, combining a dream of cotton cultivation in Africa with Cresson's emphasis on spreading Christianity.

This chapter discusses the debates over the efficacy of colonization; the various motives behind the colonization movement; and the consideration of Haiti as a potential destination for African Americans. In early 1825, the brig Hunter approached the coast of West Africa with the first of thousands of black North Carolinians who would migrate to a colony named Liberia, meaning “a settlement of persons made free.”

This chapter tells the story of former Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) member Mathew Carey. Carey was a Philadelphia printer and Catholic exile from Ireland who opposed bondage and oppression of any class of people. At the same time, however, he was an ardent supporter of the political aspects of colonization and was enticed by the movement's promise that it would be a modernizing force for the young republic. The story of his life and of his work for the American Colonization Society (ACS) illustrates the political side of the movement. For Carey colonization was a way to ride 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. His writings offer a clear picture of the America he envisioned and the role of colonization in it.

This chapter examines the growth of the colonization movement. The American Colonization Society (ACS) initially received a lukewarm reception in Pennsylvania, but within a decade of its founding in 1817, national ACS leaders were desperately seeking the support of the middle states and began to agitate in earnest for converts to the cause. The chapter shows how, through an effective marketing plan, the organization tapped into Pennsylvanians' existing fears of retribution and racial mixing, while emphasizing the humanitarian aspects of colonization in an all-out push to win support in Pennsylvania. By the end of the 1820s the ACS had gained many important members.

This chapter examines Pennsylvania's three antislavery movements, all of which competed for space within the state's antislavery movement at the same time. It was not a matter of steps in which one replaced another. Sometimes their agendas and work overlapped, but often they conflicted quite publicly. Indeed, bickering between the immediatists and colonizationists led to violence and strife, and often caused both groups to at least temporarily lose sight of their true goal—black freedom. Members of all three groups, blacks as well as whites, also suffered from a degree of paternalistic thinking, but the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and Benjamin Coates at least made efforts at biracial cooperation while the Pennsylvania Colonization Society (PCS) and most members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) refused to break the conservative mold and challenge society in a more radical sense. In all cases, black Americans continued to push their white sympathizers to take the movement further and fight for both freedom and equality.

This chapter explains the origins of the African colonization movement. It discusses North Carolina Quakers' opposition to slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the idea of African Americans migrating from the country as a solution to the dilemma of black bondage; and the efforts of the Manumission & Colonization Society of North Carolina to obtain local and government support for manumission and relocation.

This chapter focuses on Pittsburgh's Martin R. Delany, who advocated a black-led back-to-Africa movement much like the one proposed first by James Forten and Paul Cuffee, and then developed by Benjamin Coates. Like his predecessors, Delany hoped that a successful colony under black leadership would create the conditions for both self-rule and economic independence, proving black equality while combating both slavery and racism. Like Forten, he was convinced that this could be achieved only under genuine black leadership. Delany's emigrationist vision was actually an extension of the self-help and racial uplift agenda created by the gradualists and Forten. Based on the premise of select emigration, it can best be described as a “City on a Hill”—an intended showcase of black self-sufficiency and achievement. It was part of, rather than a departure from, his lifelong efforts to gain a legitimate place for blacks in American society.

Chapter 2 establishes the background and context for the colonization movement, examines motives of supporters and opponents, and examines the establishment of the Liberian colony. For ninety-three years, the American Colonization Society supports emigration of freed slaves and freeborn black people from the United States to Liberia, ultimately transporting 16,000 people across the ocean. It is the largest out-migration in American history.

Published history of the 1800s typically focuses on the accomplishments of white men. But a discussion of the colonization of Liberia would be incomplete without including the women. This chapter focuses on the involvement of women, black and white, in the colonization movement and the settlement of Liberia. Only about 10 percent of all slave owners were women, yet 21 percent of those who emancipated and colonized slaves were female. In the first two decades of colonization, 45 percent of the immigrants to Liberia were female, many of them widows or single mothers with small children. This chapter opens with the tale of Emily Tubman, a white woman from Georgia striving to free her slaves for migration, and the chapter includes the stories of several black women who start new lives in Liberia.