306 Political Activity and Resistance to Oppression: From the American Revolution to the Civil War
and independently from the ACS. State groups had their
own offi cers, constitutions, and fund-raising eff orts but
used the national group to help coordinate emigration.
Th e founders and early supporters of the ACS typifi ed
the fragile coalition of slave-owning Southerners and an-
tislavery Northerners who worked together to reduce the
number of African Americans in the United States. North-
ern members were oft en opposed to slavery and hoped that
the ACS would reduce the number of slaves in the United
States and pave the way to the end of the peculiar institu-
tion. Southerners, who usually came from the Upper South
states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, had a
variety of reasons for supporting colonization. Some hoped
to rid their region of free blacks who served as a tangible
reminder to slaves of the benefi ts of freedom. Th ese slave
owners wanted to remove a population that undermined
control and plantation discipline. Other Southerners saw
the declining state of agriculture in the Upper South and
despaired at freeing their slaves without transporting them
outside their region. Th ey saw the ACS as a way to handle
the demands of declining agricultural production without
subjecting their slaves to further bondage in the United
States. Th e ACS, as a result, was founded on the contradic-
tory premises of both weakening and strengthening slavery
and could never identify its central mission.
Even before the ACS established a colony overseas, it
came under fi re from its critics. Bushrod Washington, who
served as president of the organization and who inherited
his uncle’s Mount Vernon estate, sold 52 slaves to 2 men
from Louisiana. Th e new owners, who paid over $10,000 to
Washington, transported the slaves in chains out of Virginia.
Critics reported the incident as an example of the hypocrisy
of the ACS because it looked like Washington participated
in the interstate slave trade. Although Washington was able
to defuse the situation, the burgeoning interstate slave trade
operated as a brake on manumission in the Upper South.
Many owners sold their slaves to the expanding regions of
the Deep South rather than consider freeing their bond-
speople and shipping them to Africa.
Th e ACS also met criticism from African Americans,
the vast majority of whom rejected colonization. Many
slaves, when given the option between inequality in the
United States and colonization, chose to remain in their na-
tive land. Th ey considered themselves to be Americans and
had no desire to return to the continent of their ancestors.
Northern blacks were oft en outspoken in their criticism;See also: Abolition, Slavery; Douglass, Frederick; Garrison,
William Lloyd; Immediatism; Tappan, Arthur; Tappan, Lewis
Francesca GamberBibliography
Hoganson, Kristin. “Garrisonian Abolitionists and the Rheto-
ric of Gender, 1850–1860.” American Quarterly 45, no. 4
(1993):558–95.
Mayer, Henry. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Aboli-
tion of Slavery. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Newman, Richard S. Th e Transformation of American Abolition-
ism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic. Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Stewart, James Brewer. “Th e Aims and Impact of Garrisonian Abo-
litionism, 1840–1860.” Civil War History 15 (1969):197–209.
American Colonization Society
Th e American Society for Colonizing the Free People of
Color in the United States, better known as the American
Colonization Society (ACS), was founded in 1816 to trans-
port free blacks and manumitted slaves to a colony outside
the United States. Its mission was founded in white racism,
the belief in black inferiority, and the premise that whites
and black could not live in peaceful coexistence. Th e ACS
refl ected the widespread belief among 19th-century whites
that people of African American descent could never be
free or equal. Although the ACS sent more that 13,000 emi-
grants to Africa by 1867, it ultimately failed.
Th e roots of colonization are deep and obscure. Various
plans surfaced during the 18th century, but none were seri-
ously considered. Conditions changed in the 19th century,
when it became clear that the number of African Ameri-
cans in the United States was increasing, and slavery was
becoming stronger, not weaker. Th e ACS took shape in De-
cember 1816. A number of infl uential politicians, Presbyte-
rian ministers, and wealthy residents of Washington, D.C.,
draft ed a constitution for the organization. Either present
at the organizational meeting or named one of the organi-
zation’s offi cials were Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel
Webster, John Randolph, Francis Scott Key, and Bushrod
Washington, George Washington’s nephew. Other promi-
nent supporters included John Marshall, James Monroe,
and Abraham Lincoln. A number of auxiliary organizations
appeared in various states to buttress the work of the na-
tional group. Th ese societies operated both in concert with