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Table of Contents

Dismal condition of Africa—Hopes of Wilberforce disappointed—Organization of the American Colonization Society—Its necessity, objects, and policy—Public sentiment in its favor—Opposition developes itself—Wm. Lloyd Garrison, James G. Birney, Gerrit Smith—Effects of opposition—Stimulants to Slavery—Exports of Cotton—England sustaining American Slavery—Failure of the Niger Expedition—Strength of Slavery—Political action—Its failure—Its fruits.

Another question, "How shall the slave trade be suppressed?" began to be agitated near the close of the last century. The moral desolation existing in Africa, was without a parallel among the nations of the earth. When the last of our Northern States had freed its slaves, not a single Christian Church had been successfully established in Africa, and the slave trade was still legalized to the citizens of every Christian nation. Even its subsequent prohibition, by the United States and England, had no tendency to check the traffic, nor ameliorate the condition of the African. The other Europeon powers, having now the monopoly of the trade, continued to prosecute it with a vigor it never felt before. The institution of slavery, while lessened in the United States, where it had not yet been made profitable, was rapidly acquiring an unprecedented enlargement in Cuba and Brazil, where its profitable character had been more fully realized. How shall the slave trade be annihilated, slavery extension prevented, and Africa receive a Christian civilization? were questions that agitated the bosom of many a philanthropist, long after Wilberforce had achieved his triumphs. It was found, that the passage of laws prohibiting the slave trade, and the extermination of that traffic, were two distinct things—the one not necessarily following the other. The success of Wilberforce with the British Parliament, only increased the necessity for additional philanthropic efforts; and a quarter of a century afterwards found the evil vastly increased which he imagined was wholly destroyed.

It was at the period in the history of Africa, and of public sentiment on slavery, which we have been considering, that the American Colonization Society was organized. It began its labors when the eye of the statesman, the philanthropist, and the Christian, could discover no other plan of overcoming the moral desolation, the universal oppression of the colored race, than by restoring the most enlightened of their number to Africa itself. Emancipation, by States, had been at an end for a dozen of years. The improvement of the free colored people, in the presence of the slave, was considered impracticable. Slave labor had become so profitable, as to leave little ground to expect general emancipation, even though all other objections had been removed. The slave trade had increased twenty-five per cent. during the preceding ten years. Slavery was rapidly extending itself in the tropics, and could not be arrested but by the suppression of the slave trade. The foothold of the Christian missionary was yet so precarious in Africa, as to leave it doubtful whether he could sustain his position.

The colonization of the free colored people in Africa, under the teachings of the Christian men who were prepared to accompany them, it was believed, would as fully meet all the conditions of the race, as was possible in the then existing state of the world. It would separate those who should emigrate from all further contact with slavery, and from its depressing influences; it would relax the laws of the slave States against emancipation, and lead to the more frequent liberation of slaves; it would stimulate and encourage the colored people remaining here, to engage in efforts for their own elevation; it would establish free republics along the coast of Africa, and drive away the slave trader; it would prevent the extension of slavery, by means of the slave trade, in tropical America; it would introduce civilization and Christianity among the people of Africa, and overturn their barbarism and bloody superstitions; and, if successful, it would react upon slavery at home, by pointing out to the States and General Government, a mode by which they might free themselves from the whole African race.

The Society had thus undertaken as great an amount of work as it could perform. The field was broad enough, truly, for an association that hoped to obtain an income of but five to ten thousand dollars a year, and realized annually an average of only $3,276 during the first six years of its existence. It did not include the destruction of American slavery among the objects it labored to accomplish. That subject had been fully discussed; the ablest men in the nation had labored for its overthrow; more than half the original States of the Union had emancipated their slaves; the advantages of freedom to the colored man had been tested; the results had not been as favorable as anticipated; the public sentiment of the country was adverse to an increase of the free colored population; the few of their number who had risen to respectability and affluence, were too widely separated to act in concert in promoting measures for the general good; and, until better results should follow the liberation of slaves, further emancipations, by the States, were not to be expected. The friends of the Colonization Society, therefore, while affording every encouragement to emancipation by individuals, refused to agitate the question of the general abolition of slavery. Nor did they thrust aside any other scheme of benevolence in behalf of the African race. Forty years had elapsed from the commencement of emancipation in the country, and thirty from the date of Franklin's Appeal, before the society sent off its first emigrants. At that date, no extended plans were in existence, promising relief to the free colored man. A period of lethargy, among the benevolent, had succeeded the State emancipations, as a consequence of the indifference of the free colored people, as a class, to their degraded condition. The public sentiment of the country was fully prepared, therefore, to adopt colonization as the best means, or, rather, as the only means for accomplishing any thing for them or for the African race. Indeed, so general was the sentiment in favor of colonization, somewhere beyond the limits of the United States, that those who disliked Africa, commenced a scheme of emigration to Hayti, and prosecuted it, until eight thousand free colored persons were removed to that island—a number nearly equaling the whole emigration to Liberia up to 1850. Haytien emigration, however, proved a most disastrous experiment.

But the general acquiescence in the objects of the Colonization Society did not long continue. The exports of cotton from the South were then rapidly on the increase. Slave labor had become profitable, and slaves, in the cotton-growing States, were no longer considered a burden. Seven years after the first emigrants reached Liberia, the South exported 294,310,115 lbs. of cotton; and, the year following, the total cotton crop reached 325,000,000 lbs. But a great depression in prices had occurred,[7] and alarmed the planters for their safety. They had decided against emancipation, and now to have their slaves rendered valueless, was an evil they were determined to avert. The Report of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, which appeared at this moment, was well calculated, by the disclosures it made, to increase the alarm in the South, and to confirm slaveholders in their belief of the dangers of emancipation.

At this juncture, a warfare against colonization was commenced at the South, and it was pronounced an abolition scheme in disguise. In defending itself, the society re-asserted its principles of neutrality in relation to slavery, and that it had only in view the colonization of the free colored people. In the heat of the contest, the South were reminded of their former sentiments in relation to the whole colored population, and that colonization merely proposed removing one division of a people they had pronounced a public burden.[8]

The emancipationists at the North had only lent their aid to colonization in the hope that it would prove an able auxiliary to abolition; but when the society declared its unalterable purpose to adhere to its original position of neutrality, they withdrew their support, and commenced hostilities against it. "The Anti-Slavery Society," said a distinguished abolitionist, "began with a declaration of war against the Colonization Society."[9] This feeling of hostility was greatly increased by the action of the abolitionists of England. The doctrine of "Immediate, not Gradual Abolition," was announced by them as their creed; and the anti-slavery men of the United States adopted it as the basis of their action. Its success in the English Parliament, in procuring the passage of the Act for West India emancipation, in 1833, gave a great impulse to the abolition cause in the United States.

In 1832, William Lloyd Garrison declared hostilities against the Colonization Society; in 1834, James G. Birney followed his example; and, in 1836 Gerritt Smith also abandoned the cause. The North everywhere resounded with the cry of "Immediate Abolition;" and, in 1837, the abolitionists numbered 1,015 societies; had seventy agents under commission, and an income, for the year, of $36,000.[10] The Colonization Society, on the other hand, was greatly embarrassed. Its income, in 1838, was reduced to $10,000; it was deeply in debt; the parent society did not send a single emigrant, that year, to Liberia; and its enemies pronounced it bankrupt and dead.[11]

But did the abolitionists succeed in forcing emancipation upon the South, when they had thus rendered colonization powerless? Did the fetters fall from the slave at their bidding? Did fire from heaven descend, and consume the slaveholder at their invocation? No such thing! They had not touched the true cause of the extension of slavery. They had not discovered the secret of its power; and, therefore, its locks remained unshorn, its strength unabated. The institution advanced as triumphantly as if no opposition existed. The planters were progressing steadily, in securing to themselves the monopoly of the cotton markets of Europe, and in extending the area of slavery at home. In the same year that Gerritt Smith declared for abolition, the title of the Indians to fifty-five millions of acres of land, in the slave States, was extinguished, and the tribes removed. The year that colonization was depressed to the lowest point, the exports of cotton, from the United States, amounted to 595,952,297 lbs., and the consumption of the article in England, to 477,206,108 lbs.

When Mr. Birney seceded from colonization, he encouraged his new allies with the hope, that West India free labor would render our slave labor less profitable, and emancipation, as a consequence, be more easily effected. How stood this matter six years afterward? This will be best understood by contrast. In 1800, the West Indies exported 17,000,000 lbs. of cotton, and the United States, 17,789,803 lbs. They were then about equally productive in that article. In 1840, the West India exports had dwindled down to 427,529 lbs., while those of the United States had increased to 743,941,061 lbs.

And what was England doing all this while? Having lost her supplies from the West Indies, she was quietly spinning away at American slave labor cotton; and to ease the public conscience of the kingdom, was loudly talking of a free labor supply of the commodity from the banks of the Niger! But the expedition up that river failed, and 1845 found her manufacturing 626,496,000 lbs. of cotton, mostly the product of American slaves! The strength of American slavery at that moment may be inferred from the fact, that we exported that year 872,905,996 lbs. of cotton, and our production of cane sugar had reached over 200,000,000 lbs.; while, to make room for slavery extension, we were busied in the annexation of Texas and in preparations for the consequent war with Mexico!

But abolitionists themselves, some time before this, had, mostly, become convinced of the feeble character of their efforts against slavery, and allowed politicians to enlist them in a political crusade, as the last hope of arresting the progress of the system. The cry of "Immediate Abolition" died away; reliance upon moral means was mainly abandoned; and the limitation of the institution, geographically, became the chief object of effort. The results of more than a dozen years of political action are before the public, and what has it accomplished! We are not now concerned in the inquiry of how far the strategy of politicians succeeded in making the votes of abolitionists subservient to slavery extension. That they did so, in at least one prominent case, will never be denied by any candid man. All we intend to say, is, that the cotton planters, instead of being crippled in their operations, were able, in the year ending the last of June, 1853, to export 1,111,570,370 lbs. of cotton, beside supplying near 300,000,000 lbs. for home consumption; and that England, the year ending the last of January, 1853, consumed the unprecedented quantity of 817,998,048 lbs. of that staple.[12] The year 1854, instead of finding slavery perishing under the blows it had received, has witnessed the destruction of all the old barriers to its extension, and beholds it expanded widely enough for the profitable employment of the slave population, with all its natural increase, for a hundred years to come!!

If political action against slavery has been thus disastrously unfortunate, how is it with anti-slavery action, at large, as to its efficiency at this moment? On this point, hear the testimony of a correspondent of Frederick Douglass' Paper, January 26, 1855:

"How gloriously did the anti-slavery cause arise ...... in 1833-4! And now what is it, in our agency!...... What is it, through the errors or crimes of its advocates variously—probably quite as much as through the brazen, gross, and licentious wickedness of its enemies. Alas! what is it but a mutilated, feeble, discordant, and half-expiring instrument, at which Satan and his children, legally and illegally, scoff! Of it I despair."

Such are the crowning results of both political and anti-slavery action, for the overthrow of slavery! Such are the demonstrations of their utter impotency as a means of relief to the bond and free of the colored people!

Surely, then, if the negro is capable of elevation, it is time that some other measures should be devised, than those hitherto adopted, for the melioration of the African race! Surely, too, it is time for the American people to rebuke that class of politicians, North and South, whose only capital consists in keeping up a fruitless warfare upon the subject of slavery—nay! abundant in fruits to the poor colored man; but to him, "their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their vine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps."[13]

The application of this language, to the case under consideration, will be fully justified when the facts, in the remaining pages of this work, are carefully studied.