American Colonization Society

The American antislavery movement was not monolithic nor did all its members believe in the equality of races. Some who thought slavery wrong also believed that the races were sufficiently different that they could not live together without discord. The movement is sometimes divided into “gradualists” who favored a gradual emancipation and “immediatists” who would accept only an immediate emancipation. In truth it was much more complex, with numerous approaches proposed by diverse antislavery factions. One of these was colonization.

The origins of the colonization movement are often traced to Paul Cuffee, a Quaker ship owner descended from the African Ashanti and the Native American Wampanoag tribes. Cuffee proposed sending emancipated American slaves to Africa, where they could live in freedom without the discrimination they would face in the United States. He took the first group of 38 freed slaves to Sierra Leone in 1816 and brought back valuable cargo to make the trip financially viable.

Cuffee died the following year, but his idea outlived him with the founding of the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, or simply the American Colonization Society, in 1816. The genesis of society began with Virginian Charles Fenton Mercer's concern about the possibility that freed slaves might foment a rebellion. Through a political acquaintance, Mercer interested Presbyterian minister Robert Finley in the idea, resulting in a meeting at the Davis Hotel in Washington, D.C., on December 21, 1816, which is generally considered the origin of the society.

The meeting was chaired by Henry Clay and attended by such notables as Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, and Daniel Webster. One week later the group adopted a formal constitution. Its first officers were president Bushrod Washington (eldest nephew of George Washington), vice presidents Robert Finley, Henry Clay, and Richard Rush (the son of Benjamin Rush), and secretary John Caldwell. The organization attracted clergy, philanthropists, and other antislavery people who earnestly believed that “repatriation” to Africa would provide those of African descent with a better opportunity for equal treatment and successful lives. Though not a member of the group, another prominent supporter of the colonization idea was Abraham Lincoln.

Paul Cuffee was a successful mixed-race ship owner who planned to bring freed slaves to Africa and then return with lucrative cargo. In 1816, he took 38 American blacks to Sierra Leone but died before he could complete other such journeys.

Given its guiding premise that people of African ancestry could not enjoy equal freedom and opportunity with other Americans, the society has often been criticized as racist and was generally opposed by African American leaders at the time. For the same reason, the society was often at odds with abolitionists, the Republican Party, and other groups favoring the elimination of the peculiar institution of slavery and the extension of citizenship rights to freed slaves.

Initially, the society also brought together two otherwise opposing groups—Quakers and [Page 192]plantation owners, the latter mostly from the upper south. Many of the early antislavery Quakers also believed that those of African descent stood a better chance of success through repatriation since they faced near-universal discrimination in the United States. At the same time, the growing number of free people of African ancestry proved increasingly worrisome to southerners who feared the organization of slave rebellions. They also believed that freed slaves could never be successfully integrated into society and saw in the colonization movement a means of ridding their states of this potential menace.

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