In 1816, the American Colonization Society (ACS) was organized in
Washington, D.C., with the objective of encouraging, and paying for,
free black Americans to establish and live in a colony in Africa.
Why colonization?
For a time, the colonization project seemed to appeal to everyone. Many
of the first members of the ACS were Southerners who supported a gradual abolition (elimination) of slavery. (See Abolition Movement.) They
promoted colonization as a means to deal with the growing numbers of
free blacks that would result from abolition. Soon many Northerners
joined the society, believing, like the Southerners, that free blacks and
whites could not live together without conflict. Colonization appealed to
Southern slave owners as a way to rid the South of troublesome free
blacks, who they feared would incite rebellions among their slaves. It was
also popular with some Northern antislavery advocates, who hoped it
would make slaveholders more willing to free their slaves. Some African
Americans also endorsed the idea in the belief that Americans would
probably never treat them as equals and that they might have a better life
in distant Africa.
Most black Americans, though, argued that the United States had
been the home of their families for generations. They had a clear right to
live there as equals and were willing to fight for that right. Most abolitionists came to strongly oppose the ACS.
Liberia
After a long search for a location for the new colony, the ACS bought a
large area of land on Cape Montserado, in West Africa, about 225 miles south of Sierra Leone. There, in 1822, the society established the colony
of Liberia. Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, was named in honor of the fifth
president of the United States, James Monroe (1758–1831; served
1817–25), who, along with Congress, gave the society close to $100,000
to transport black Americans to Liberia. In the project’s first ten years,
about 2,638 blacks migrated to Liberia.
To encourage the colonization of Liberia, the ACS published letters
from blacks who had moved there and had good things to say about it.
It also published The African Repository and Colonial Journal, which
served as strong propaganda (the spreading of ideas or information, both
true and otherwise, to promote or damage a cause) by painting a positive picture of Liberia for black Americans. The ACS also promised to
provide colonists with land and economic support for six months. This
promise was not always kept, and emigrants were at times left stranded
on the Cape.
In 1838, the Commonwealth of Liberia was formed under the administration of a governor appointed by the ACS, and the ACS governed
the country until it became a republic in 1847. By 1846, thirteen to
fourteen thousand free black Americans had immigrated to Liberia
under the plan. Joining these emigrants in Liberia were slaves rescued
from illegal slave-trading ships off the coast of Africa. (See Slave Ships
and the Middle Passage.)
Conflict
By the 1840s, the ACS was mired in controversy. Abolitionists, black and
white, opposed the society’s basic assumption that African Americans
could not live and work in the same communities as white Americans.
They argued that African Americans had worked hard in the United
States and had earned the right to call it home. They thought the ACS
was creating a distraction from what abolitionists considered the only
reasonable course of action—the immediate abolition of slavery in the
United States. Most Southern plantation owners did not approve of the
ACS either. They did not want to see African Americans, a group they
considered the region’s labor force, shipped across the Atlantic.
The news from Africa was not much better. The native people of
Liberia resented the newcomers from the United States. Armed conflict
and bloodshed erupted in the colony. In 1847, the ACS went bankrupt
(did not have enough money to cover its debts). The American Liberians took the opportunity to found the independent Republic of Liberia.
Seizing power, they dominated the native groups as well as the Africans
rescued from slave ships, creating a rigid class system in the new country. The ACS stopped promoting colonization as part of its agenda, and
by the end of the century the group had disbanded.