FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Colonization has come to be looked upon with
unmerited indifference with an apathy which its history and
achievements surely do not deserve. To some, perhaps the
present condition of the republic seems a discouraging and
inadequate return for the life and treasure lavished upon
it; for others, hoping for a bloodless and gradual
extinction of slavery, the civil war carried away the chief
element of interest. Others still, who looked for a ready
solution of the negro problem in this country, have
gradually lost heart in the face of the increasing millions
of the race. And so, some from one cause, some from another,
have lost interest in colonization and in Liberia, until a
time has come when few have more than the vaguest knowledge
of these terms. Sometimes the voice of contempt is heard;
but this is always a proof of ignorance. Liberia stands
forth historically as the embodiment of a number of ideas,
efforts, principles, any one of which ought to secure at the
least our respect, if not our sympathy and enthusiasm.
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.
