Slavery And The Peculiar Solution: A History Of The American Colonization Society

241 Pages·2005·2.214 MB·English

by  Eric Burin

Burin
Slavery
From the early 1700s through the late 1800s, many
whites advocated removing blacks from America.
The American Colonization Society (ACS) epito-
mized this desire to deport black people. Founded
and the
in 1816, the ACS championed the repatriation of
S Peculiar Solution black Americans to Liberia in West Africa. Sup-
l ported by James Madison, James Monroe, Henry
a
v Clay, and other notables, the ACS sent thousands of
About the author e black emigrants to Liberia. In examining the ACS’s
“An exceptional work that will stand for years as the best study r (cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:1)
y activities in America and Africa, Eric Burin assesses
Eric Burin is assistant professor of history of the African colonization movement. Burin’s insights into this often

a the organization’s impact on slavery and race
at the University of North Dakota. misunderstood idea will be appreciated by all historians of the early national era.
n a history of the
relations.
The research, both archival and secondary, is excellent.” d
Burin focuses on ACS manumissions—that is,

Douglas Egerton, Le Moyne College th american colonization society instances wherein slaves were freed on the condition
Front cover: Idealized northern view e that they go to Liberia. In doing so, he provides the

of freedpersons emigrating from the “Burin adds significantly to our understanding of the world view of slaveholding P first account of the ACS that covers the entire South
United States to Liberia. Courtesy of colonizationists, of their negotiations with prospectively freed people, and e throughout the antebellum era. He investigates
c
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. of their struggle with proslavery critics of colonization. . . . Historians u everyone involved in the society’s affairs, from the
of proslavery thought will find new ideas and information here.” l emancipators and freedpersons at the center to the
i
a
colonization agents, free blacks, southern jurists,
Torrey Stephen Whitman, Mount St. Mary’s College r
newspaper editors, neighboring whites, proslavery
S
(cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:1)
o ideologues, northern colonizationists, and abolition-
l ists on the periphery. In mixing a panoramic view
u
t of ACS operations with close-ups on individual
i
o participants, Burin presents a unique, bifocal
n
perspective on the ACS.
University Press of Florida
Although colonization leaders initially envisioned
Order books from
their program as a pacific enterprise, in reality the
University Press of Florida (cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:1) push-and-pull among emancipators, freedpersons,
15 Northwest 15th Street and others rendered ACS manumissions logistically
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 complex, financially troublesome, legally compli-
http://www.upf.com cated, and at times socially disruptive enterprises.
Like pebbles dropped in water, ACS manumissions
rippled outward, destabilizing slavery in their wake.
Based on extensive archival research and a database
(cid:2)(cid:3)
of 11,000 ACS emigrants, Burin’s study offers new
insights concerning the origins, intentions, activities,
Eric Burin
UPF and fate of the colonization movement.
ISBN 0-8130-2841-8
,!7IA8B3-aciebf!
Slavery and the Peculiar Solution
southern dissent
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
southern dissent
Edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller
The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century,
by Carl N. Degler, with a new preface (2000)
Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War,
by Wayne E. Lee (2001)
“Lord, We’re Just Trying to Save Your Water”: Environmental Activism and Dissent
in the Appalachian South, by Suzanne Marshall (2002)
The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960–1968,
edited by Roy Peter Clark and Raymond Arsenault (2002)
Gendered Freedoms: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Household in the Delta, 1861–1875,
by Nancy Bercaw (2003)
Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland,
by Peter B. Levy (2003)
South of the South: Jewish Activists and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945–1960,
by Raymond A. Mohl, with contributions by Matilda “Bobbi” Graff
and Shirley M. Zoloth (2004)
Throwing Off the Cloak of Privilege: White Southern Female Activists in the Civil Rights Era,
edited by Gail S. Murray (2004)
The Atlanta Riot: Race, Class, and Violence in a New South City, by Gregory Mixon (2004)
Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society,
by Eric Burin (2005)
Slavery
and the
Peculiar Solution
a history of the american colonization society
(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:2)
Eric Burin
university press of florida
Gainesville Tallahassee Tampa Boca Raton
Pensacola Orlando Miami Jacksonville Ft. Myers Sarasota
Copyright 2005 by Eric Burin
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burin, Eric.
Slavery and the peculiar solution : a history of the American Colonization
Society / Eric Burin.
p. cm.—(Southern dissent)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8130-2841-5 (alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8130-3702-8 (e-book)
1. American Colonization Society. 2. Slaves—Emancipation—
Southern States. 3. African Americans—Colonization—Africa, West.
4. African Americans—Colonization—Liberia. 5. Liberia—History—
To 1847. I. Title. II. Series.
e448.b955 2005
326'.0973'09034—dc22 2005042238
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State
University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic
University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida
State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of
Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of
West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
For
Nikki
(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:2)

Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: American Colonization Society Manumissions
and Slavery 1
1. An Overview of the African Colonization Movement 6
2. ACS Manumitters: Their Ideology and Intentions 34
3. Slaves: Negotiating for Freedom 57
4. The Pennsylvania Colonization Society as a Facilitator
of Manumission 79
5. White Southerners’ Responses to ACS Manumissions 100
6. ACS Manumissions and the Law 121
7. Liberia: Freedpersons’ Experiences in Africa 141
Conclusion 160
Tables 169
Notes 175
Bibliography 201
Index 215

Foreword
From the origin of the American republic through the Civil War no issue was
more contentious than the question of what to do with freed slaves. Those
abolitionists who viewed slavery as a moral evil demanding immediate eman-
cipation advocated equal rights for all. But most white Americans, North
and South, opposed such a prospect, regardless of their fears about the dan-
gers slavery posed to civil liberties, prosperity, and republican government.
For slaveholders, free black people constituted a dangerous anomaly. For white
nonslaveholders, they threatened social and racial order. Like Thomas Jeffer-
son, most white Americans believed that blacks and whites could not live to-
gether in harmony if both were free. Therefore, linking black freedom to black
migration became a constant theme in discussions of individual manumis-
sion and general emancipation. By the late 1820s, black and white abolitionists
railed against this idea of tying freedom to migration, insisting that such link-
age denied black people their birthright as Americans and denigrated them as
unfit for freedom. Abolitionists charged that schemes for colonizing African-
Americans were intended to strengthen slavery by eliminating the free black
class. However, throughout the antebellum period, some black leaders advo-
cated colonization as the best route out of bondage and toward control of their
own communities, free of white interference, and some white reformers re-
garded colonization as the only way to persuade slaveholders to manumit
slaves voluntarily.
Within this complicated setting, the American Colonization Society (ACS)
emerged in 1816 as a national organization dedicated to promoting the manu-
mission of slaves and the settlement of free blacks in West Africa, specifically in
the colony of Liberia. During the early decades of the nineteenth century,