This thesis will doubtless meet with the most strenuous opposition; but
a careful and impartial study of the writings and addresses of those
most prominent in the movement will convince anyone of their profound
hope that colonization would eventually lead to the extinction of
slavery in the United States. It must be remembered that at the time of
the formation of the Society the pro-slavery feeling in the South was by
no means so strong as it became in later years, when the violence of
Abolition had fanned it to a white heat. Indeed, during the whole period
before 1832 there seems to have been a prevailing sentiment in favor of
emancipation--at least throughout Maryland, Virginia, and North
Carolina. But the condition of the free blacks was notoriously such that
the humane master hesitated to doom his slaves to it by emancipating
them. The colonizationist hoped, by offering to the free Negro an
attractive home in Africa, to induce conscientious masters everywhere to
liberate their slaves, and to give rise to a growing popular sentiment
condemning slavery, which would in time result in its extinction. Of
course there were those in the Society who would not have subscribed to
this doctrine; on the other hand, many held views much more radical. But
it is the men who formed and guided the Society, who wielded its
influence and secured its success, whose opinions must be regarded as
stamping its policy.
The Constitution of the Society did not touch upon this subject. It was
needless to give unnecessary alarm or offense. But when in 1833 the
Maryland Society adopted its Constitution--a much larger and more
explicit one--the attitude taken is boldly announced:
"Whereas the Maryland State Colonization Society desires to hasten as
far as they can the period when slavery shall cease to exist in
Maryland, and believing that this can best be done by advocating and
assisting the cause of colonization as the safest, truest and best
auxiliary of freedom under existing circumstances," etc.
It may well be questioned whether such a plan would ever have succeeded:
but it must not too hastily be called chimerical. As a practical result
it secured the emancipation of several thousand slaves, many of whom
were supplied by former owners with money for transportation and
establishment in Africa. What further success it might have had was
prevented by the rise of the Abolition Movement. The intense
pro-slavery feeling which this stirred up in the South caused the
Colonization Society to be regarded with distrust and even active
hostility. It was accused of secretly undermining slavery and exciting
false hopes among the slaves. It was even said to foment discontent and
raise dangerous questions for sinister purposes, and was subjected to
bitter attack as "disguised Abolitionism."
From the opposite extreme of opinion the Society suffered assault still
more violent. William Lloyd Garrison, in his intemperate zeal for
"immediate emancipation without expatriation," could see nothing but
duplicity and treachery in the motives of its adherents. His "Thoughts
on Colonization" hold up the movement to public odium as the sum of all
villainies, and in the columns of the _Liberator_ no insult or reproach
is spared. His wonderful energy and eloquence brought over to his camp a
number of the Society's friends, and enabled him in his English campaign
to exhibit it in a light so odious that he actually brought back a
protest signed by the most eminent anti-slavery men of that country.
Assailed on one side and on the other the Society, as we have seen,
serenely pursued its course. Apparently it did not suffer. But it can
scarcely be doubted that its growth and expansion were seriously checked
by the cross-fire to which it was subjected. Among the negroes
themselves prejudices were industriously disseminated, and everything
was done to make them believe themselves duped and cheated.
From these reasons colonization never reached the proportions hoped for
by those who looked to it for the gradual extinction of slavery. But we
should not fail to recognize in the movement an earnest and noble, if
too ambitious, effort to solve, without violence or bloodshed, a problem
only half disposed of by Lincoln's edict and the Fifteenth Amendment.