Anglo-American Opposition to Liberian Colonization, 1831–1833

Anglo-Ame.P.icdn Opposition to Liberidn Colonixdtion, 1831 -1833

BY RJ.M. BLACKE-IT*

HE debate over expatriation has always been a persistent and highly emotive issue in Afro-American history. At one time or another, both blacks and whites have recommended the separation of the races: blacks on the grounds that America

has violated its claims to equality by its failure to reconcile the con- tradictions between the Declaration of Independence and the per- sistence of racism and oppression, and whites on the understanding that America, as a “white man’s country,” held out few hopes for blacks. Following the formation of the American Colonization Soci- ety (ACS) in December 1816, expatriation assumed a critical role in the burgeoning abolitionist movement. Blacks and white abolitionists debated the merits of colonization and invariably concluded that it fostered rather than undermined American slavery and racism. This paper will examine one feature of the debate: the efforts of American abolitionists to win British support for their opposition to the ACS.

The ACS aimed to remove the free black population-with their own consent-and manumitted slaves to a colony on the west coast of Africa. Through this mechanism it hoped to resolve the problem of racism in the North and slavery in the South. Growing racism in the North and the expansion and consolidation of slavery in the South, it argued, made it impossible for Afro-Americans to achieve full equality in America. The Society took the position that racism among whites, not an inherent inferiority of blacks, was the cause of poverty and destitution in the free black population. Further, the nature of Southern slavery, cushioned and jealously guarded by state laws, made it impossible for the Federal Government to inter- fere or significantly stem the tide of its expansion. Free blacks and concerned whites in the North, therefore, had to be persuaded that

T

* The author is Associate Professor in the Department of Black Studies, University of Pittsburgh. He wishes to acknowledge grants from the University of Pittsburgh’s Research Development Fund, Department of Black Studies, and University Center for International Studies which made possible the research for this study. He wishes to thank Professors Betty Fladeland, Bob Harris, and Murdo McLeod for their critical reading of the paper.

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Liberia the issue could be resolved only by providing blacks with a country free from an environment in which racism flourished. Simultane- ously, colonizationists, working with “Christian slaveholders” interested in the final abolition of slavery, should provide a colony (a sort of escape hatch) in which freed slaves could be settled. This reasoning was well summed up by a Philadelphia colonizationist, John P. Kennedy: “If we cannot remove the evil,” he argued, “it would be wise to remove from it.”‘

As a national organization formed in a rapidly changing social climate, the ACS attracted support from a wide range of disparate interests: Protestant clergy of the major “evangelical” denominations, adherents of the declining Federalist Party,* and slaveholders who for one reason or another either saw the Society as a means of removing unwanted or fractious slaves or were genuinely interested in the abolition of slavery. Throughout the first decade of its existence, the Society was able to maintain a delicate balance between those members who saw it as a vehicle for gradual abolition and those who advocated noninterference in Southern slavery. It achieved this by issuing simul- taneous statements advocating emancipation on the one hand and slaveholders’ rights to their property on the other. Such expediency, however, contained the seeds of future conflict for as Northern abolitionists moved from gradual to immediate emancipation, they began to question the sincerity of colonization as a means of effecting emancipation. In addition, as the tenets of Jacksonian democracy gained widespread popularity, the national society came under increasing attack from local and state colonizationists’ demands for devolution of power. This led to increasing conflict between headquarters and state societies, resulting in a loss of revenue. More important, the long- standing and well-organized opposition of free blacks continually undermined the Society’s ability to attract emigrants to Liberia. Under these rather strained circumstances, the Society commissioned Elliot Cresson, a Philadelphia colonizationist, to visit Britain in 1831 in the hope of winning financial support from British humanitarians.

Britain was a logical choice: she had established a colony for free blacks and recaptured slaves in Sierra Leone, and British humanitarians, particularly the Quaker William Allen, had supported the earlier colonization efforts of the black American sea captain, Paul Cuffe. Extensive correspondence between American and British humanitarians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had created the beginnings of an Anglo-American humanitarian connection. Colo- nizationists contended that support from British abolitionists, at a time when the antislavery movement was at its strongest, would not only guarantee a regular flow of funds to the Society but also enhance its

FreedomjJournal (New York), 28 September 1827. 2 George M. Fredrickson, The Black fmage in the White Mind (New York, 1971), 6.

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The Historian image in the eyes of American abolitionists.3 In opposition, both Brit- ish and American advocates of immediate abolition argued that support for Cresson would both legitimize the ACS as a genuine humanitarian movement and impede progress to full emancipation in America. Cresson’s visit, therefore, set the international stage on which the battle between colonizationists and abolitionists would be fought.

To some extent the visit was unfortunately timed. First, the issue of West Indian emancipation was demanding almost all the attention of British humanitarians. Second, soon after Cresson’s arrival, the Reverend Nathaniel Paul left America for Britain as agent of the newly established colony of Wilberforce in Canada. This settlement had been founded in 1829 by blacks who fled Ohio when that state moved to impose its Black Codes, which demanded, among other things, the posting ofa $500 bond as a guarantee of good behavior. Throughout his four-year sojourn in Britain, Paul articulated free black opposition to the efforts of the ACS and thus lent support to the anticolonization efforts of abolitionists like Captain Charles Stuart and James Cropper, the wealthy Liverpudlian merchant. Third and more important, evi- dence suggests that many leading British abolitionists were already aware of the depth of free black opposition to the ACS even before the arrival of Cresson. This opposition was expressed in the columns of the black newspapers, Freedom S Journal and the Rights ofAll, and Benja- min Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation, all of which had agents in England and had been read by British abolitionists.4

Historians of this period have tended to either overlook or un- derplay the importance of Freedom 3 Journal and the Rights of All in the debate over colonization. During 1827-29 these two newspapers provided a forum for examination of the issues involved in colonization, but emphasis on William Lloyd Garrison’s Thoughts on African Colonization (1832) and Charles Stuart’s series of pamphlets (1832-34) has inevitably played down the leadership of blacks in the anticolonization movement. An examination of Garrison’s and Stuart’s major anticolonization tracts shows little that goes beyond the views expressed by free blacks in the 1820s. This is not to sug-

For early Anglo-American contacts, see Betty Fladeland, M a and Brothers: Anglo- American Anf i s lavq Cooperation (Urbana, Ill., 1972), chap.4; J. Floyd Miller, The Searchfor a Black Nationality: Black ColonOation and Emigration, 1787-1863 (Urbana, Ill., 1975), chap.2; and Sheldon H. Harris, Paul Cuff: Black American and the African Return (New York, 1972).

* See lists of agents printed in the Genius of Universal Emancipation (Baltimore), Freedom $Journal, and the Rights ofAll (New York). Going through the private papers of James Cropper, I found repeated references to subscriptions for these newspapers. James Cropper Papers, held partly by the Cropper family, Kendal, England, and partly by Professor Kenneth Charlton, King’s College, University of London.

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Liberia gest that Garrison and Stuart had no impact on the thinking of abolitionists, for through the wide circulation of their works they were able to reach and influence a much larger audience than the two black newspapers could ever have done. But I do suggest that all the arguments against the efforts of the ACS are to be found in the pages of these two newspapers.

Throughout 1827, Freedom’s Journal opened its columns to a thor- ough discussion of the merits of colonization in Liberia. For the colonizationists, John H. Kennedy argued that the Society was an association of concerned philanthropists, not slaveholders. These men, recognizing the extent of racism in the North and the nature of American slavery and concerned for the elevation of blacks, were trying through persuasion, rather than criticism, to win support for the colony of Liberia. “When a respectable colony is established,” Kennedy argued, “and the coloured merchant shall visit our shores, argument in the case will be superseded. The coloured man at home, will imperceptibly rise in influence and respectability, through the indirect influence of those in the Colony. . . .” As Liberia expanded, it would increasingly undermine the slave trade since it controlled much of the slave-trading coast. Arguing that there were many slaveholders who abhorred slavery but were more afraid of the “inundation” of free blacks that would follow emancipation, he saw the ACS providing “a dyke . . . for their [the slaves’] gradual removal.” This he saw as a practicable scheme for the elimination of slavery.5

The editors of Freedom’s Journal and some of its correspondents, such as “Colored Baltimorean,” William Watkins, attacked what they saw as the fallacy of the colonizationist argument. While they acknowledged that Liberia was a useful missionary station for the spread of Christianity in Africa, they opposed the idea that blacks should leave the country of their birth, “a country for which they had given so much.” They (the ACS) have no right to meddle with “the free men of colour . . . who are as truly Americans as the President of the United States, and as much entitled to the protec- tion, rights and privileges of the country as he, while they behave themselves.” Blacks were, in Bishop Richard Allen’s words, “the first tillers” when compared with recent European emigrants who were welcomed with open arms.6 Freedom’s Journal condemned colonizationists for exaggerating the poverty and destitution among free blacks. Given that the majority were only recently eman- cipated, they saw great improvement. There were now many churches, schools, and benevolent societies in their communities, and a number of blacks had established themselves as successful businessmen. Using New York census figures for alms houses, they

Freedom’s Journal, 28 September and 5 and 12 October 1827. 6 Ibzd., 7 September and 26 October 1827.

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The Historian showed that there was a higher percentage of white than black resi- dents.’ Furthermore, they asked, if free blacks were as destitute and “vicious” as colonizationists had suggested, why use them as a missionary vanguard; a mere change in environment could not improve their character. Improvement of blacks in America and those who chose to emigrate voluntarily could be achieved only through the provision of an adequate education. This would necessitate an attack on prejudice by all those who acknowledged that the plight of blacks was a result of racism. As Watkins pointed out, the concerned must tackle the cause of black poverty rather than remove the consequence of white prejudice. Those who do not, he observed, are “without the moral courage to denounce those preju- dices, or the benevolence to attempt a reformation of those mor- als.”* Only the total and unconditional abolition of slavery, and the destruction of white racism, Watkins thundered, would improve the condition of black Americans.

If it is true, as we are suggesting here, that arguments against the ACS were already in circulation in Britain before Cresson’s amval, this may explain why he believed his first task was to counter opposition to the Society by “a patient elucidation of our peculiar circumstances and the character of the blacks.” By using Walker’s Appeal, which called on blacks to employ violence as a means of winning their freedom, he could, he thought, point out to influential people in Britain the need for emigration as a means of avoiding a race war.9 Given the popularity of the doctrine of immediate emancipation among British abolitionists, it would be necessary, Cresson argued, to emphasize the antislavery dimensions of colonization. His success, moreover, would be as- sured only if the Society was careful to avoid the publication of speeches and tracts which contained proslavery sentiments. Such views, he pointed out, were being used by Charles Stuart to expose the extent of slaveholding influence in the Society.10 In July 1831 Cresson went so far as to recommend the removal from office of the Society’s slaveholding President Bussrod Washington. “When I feel con- vinced,’’ he reported, “that slavery will soon be destroyed in England, I tremble for the fate of those who act as we are doing, and who must pay a bloody recompence unless we are [not?] to repeat some of our atrocious acts-[we should permit] the introduction of religious in-

7 Ibid., 30 March 1827. 8 Liberator (Boston), 23 March 1833; Freedom’s Journal, 5 October 1827, and 18

July 1828. 9 Elliot Cresson to Gurley, London, 23 June 1831; Cresson to Gurley, Liverpool,

23 June 1831, both in vols. 30-32, reel 1 1 , ACS Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as ACS Papers).

l o Cresson to My Dear Friend, London, 22 July 1831, vols. 30-32, reel 1 1 , ACS Papers.

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Liberia structions and enable them to read their bibles and to institute mar- riage among them instead of the intercourse now permitted and even encouraged.”ll

It is difficult to determine whether Cresson’s antislavery posture was genuine or a mere ruse to win support for colonization. By late 183 1 Stuart had already launched his attack on the Society, and the arrival of Paul, advocating the merits of a competing colony in Canada which had the support of the free black leadership, must have influenced Cres- son’s stand. It is rather difficult to assess Cresson’s antislavery position. Like American abolitionists, he took the position that the problems confronting free blacks were a product of white racism rather than any innate inferiority. But like his fellow colonizationists he argued that these circumstances had so hopelessly degraded the black population that only a change of country, away from whites, who had refused any form of association with blacks, could possibly effect a change in their “character.” Emancipation, in his view, could only be achieved by the very gradual process of persuading slaveholders to free their slaves on the condition that they would be transported to Liberia.’* In a Circular addressed to the British public, he said, “The great objects of that Society were the final and entire abolition of slavery, providing for the best interest of the blacks, by establishing them in independence upon the coast ofAfrica; thus constituting them the protectors of the unfortu- nate natives against the inhuman ravages of the slaver and seeking, through them, to spread the lights of civilization and Christianity among the 50 millions who inhabit these dark regions.”’3

If Cresson did see the Society as a genuine antislavery organization, and recognized the strength of immediatist sentiment among British abolitionists, one is hard pressed to understand why he repub- lished a speech by Henry Clay to the Colonization Society of Kentucky, a speech replete with ill-disguised proslavery views. 14 Such views were grist for the anticolonizationists’ mill, as we shall see later. Although Cresson may have genuinely seen the Society and Liberia as the most practical means of bringing about emancipation, opposition from Stuart, Paul, and Cropper, in the early months of his agency, forced him increasingly to emphasize the Society’s antislavery role and under- play its other features. This, of course, would expose him to charges of duplicity and distortion by his opponents.

l 1 Cresson to Gurley, London, 6 September 1831, vols. 33-35, reel 12; Cresson

l2 William Innes, Liberia, Or the Early History and Signal Preservation of Be American

l 3 Herald of Peace (London), July-September 183 I ; Eclectic Review (London), Janu-

l4 Rgbort of the Managers of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society (London, 1831),

to Gurley, London, 23 June 1831, both in vols. 30-32, reel 1 1 , ACS Papers.

Colony ofFreeNeFoes on the Coast ofAfrica (Edinburgh, 1832), 230.

ary 1832.

3 4 4 6 .

28 1

The Historian Soon after his arrival in England, Cresson put into effect a well-

organized scheme for winning the support of British abolitionists. At a series of private meetings with the leading members of local communities, he emphasized the antislavery thrust of the Society and the potential of Liberia to impede the slave trade and introduce Christian- ity to Africa. He consolidated these initial contacts through a series of letters to the local press extolling the merits of the Society and Liberia. These letters were particularly important for they emphasized Li- beria’s commercial progress and spoke of benevolent slaveholders free- ing their slaves, the Society’s commitment to black leadership in Li- beria, and the increasing demands of blacks to leave America under the auspices of the Society.15 The plan then called for a second round of visits to most of these cities and towns at which time public meetings were to be held, With the support of local humanitarians won on his first visit, these meetings aimed to achieve a wider popular approval of Cresson’s efforts. At these meetings he reiterated the philanthropic nature of the ACS. As he told a Manchester audience, the Society’s work followed in the philanthropic traditions of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. Its aim in Africa was the introduction of Christi- anity, civilization, and “legitimate” trade. Through the agency of black Americans, “sufficiently instructed in the arts of civilization,” America and Great Britian could atone for their past wrongs to Africa. The establishment of Liberia, and similar colonies of blacks along the coast of Africa, would not only impede the slave trade and finally destroy it but would also act, in the words of Innes, as a “moral cordon sanitaire” in the spread of civilization. Liberia, after only ten years, controlled over two hundred miles of coast with a population of twenty-five hundred colonists and over twenty thousand natives. Churches, Sunday schools, temperance, tract, and missionary societies, and a newspaper published by a black colonist were symbolic of the colony’s progress. This success had persuaded increasing numbers of slaveholders to offer their slaves to the Society as colonists.16

This approach met with some success in the early months of the mission. As George Thompson said, Cresson’s efforts showed “a spirit of the purest friendship,” and Wilberforce wrote to Clarkson that he was particularly impressed by Cresson’s arguments in favor of the Society and Liberia.” But by far the most important supporter was Thomas Clarkson. After a number of meetings with Cresson, Clarkson wrote commending the efforts of the ACS and its work in Liberia. The

15 For example, see Cheltenham Chronicle, 25 January 1832; Scotsman (Edinburgh),

16 Manchester Couner, 14 April 1832; Liverpool Mercury, 13 April 1832; Innes, Labena. 17 Wilberforce to Clarkson, Bath, 1 1 October 1831, vol 7, Clarkson Papers, British

Museum; George Thompson to Jenny, Hastings, 1 November 1831, Raymond English Deposit, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, England.

25 January 1832; and Laverpool Mercury, 13 and 27 April 1832.

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Liberia Society, it appeared to him, had two major objectives-first, to assist in the emancipation of American slaves, and second, to send the newly freed to Africa as a means of stemming the slave trade and civilizing Africa. But he was concerned that emigration should not be seen as the sole and most important agent of total emancipation. In order to achieve their aims, the Society had to provide Liberia with skilled and educated colonists. It should, therefore, pressure slaveholders partial to the cause to provide their slaves with an education and Christian instruction. 18

Although Clarkson’s endorsement was not unconditional, the mere fact that the doyen of British abolitionism had publicly acknowledged the merits of the ACS’s colonization scheme, on the one hand, guaran- teed Cresson a measure of increased support but, on the other, forced anticolonizationists to intensify their public opposition to Cresson’s efforts. Charles Stuart, in reply to Clarkson’s letter, disagreed that the Society aimed at the final extinction of slavery. The opinions of its advocates, as presented in the Society’s annual reports and its newspaper, the African Repository, suggested a strong proslavery influence. While Liberia would further civilization, introduce Christianity, and help to abolish the slave trade, he argued that immediate emancipation would achieve the same ends in a shorter time. Not only was the education of slaves illegal in the South but supporters of the Society had actively led the opposition to the establishment of schools for free blacks in the North. Clarkson’s hopes for the Society would not be fulfilled until “the people of the United States see the criminal absurdity of the plan of removing upwards to one-sixth of their whole population, without even the pretence of a crime against them, to a foreign and barbarous land . . . ; until they see that emancipation burthened with transportation, is a boon little worthy ofan enlightened people; until, in short, they learn that coloured men have feelings as true and as tender as white men.” If the British public wished to support any colonization effort, the Wilberforce colony was a more practical and humanitarian effort since emigration was totally voluntary and the colony provided an accessible asylum from American slavery.19

Between January 1832 and the arrival of William Lloyd Garrison in the summer of 1833, anticolonizationists organized their opposition to Cresson mainly through a series of pamphlets by Charles Stuart, the lectures of Nathaniel Paul, and confronting Cresson wherever he lec- tured. Stuart argued that the ACS was conceived in a spirit of racism and nurtured by proslavery sentiments, both of which violated the precepts of Christianity and contradicted the teachings ofJesus Christ. The Society failed to recognize the equality of man in the eyes of God by pandering to white racism and openly accepting the slaveholder’s

18 The Patriot (London), 11 July 1832. ‘gIbid. , 18Julyand 1 August 1832.

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The Historian right to his property. These were the twin pillars on which free blacks in the 1820s and white abolitionists in the 1830s built their opposition to the Society in America. Stuart argued that all philanthropists should support that element of the Society’s work which aimed to civilize Africa, but only on the principle that colonization was voluntary. He accused the Society of open hostility to free blacks, a hostility which fostered racism and increased poverty. How can free blacks, he asked, “declared as a body to be a little better than devils in the United States . . . be commuted, by mere transportation to Africa, into almost an- gels!”ZO By quoting extensively from the Annual Reports of the Soci- ety, Stuart was able to show the strength of proslavery sentiment among colonizationists who supported the ACS. Along with the circulation of Garrison’s Thoughts and its serialization in many British peri- odicals, Stuart’s pamphlets became the handbooks of British anticolonizationists in their attack on Cresson. Cheaply produced and sold for a couple of pence, these pamphlets were widely circulated.*l

Paul’s arrival in Britain posed a particularly thorny problem for Cresson. Here was a black American soliciting support for a colony that was not only a competitor of Liberia but was also the consequence of racial laws enacted against free blacks. British philanthropists, as Cresson quickly realized, might associate the efforts of the ACS with other plans of compulsory expatriation, a point which was continually being made by his opponent. Therefore, success of his agency, he argued, depended on the ability of the ACS to undermine the Cana- dian Colony’s credibility with British humanitarians. In April he wrote to the secretary of the ACS, the Reverend R. R. Gurley, “I think it deserves consideration whether the awful consequences which may spring from the Canadian Colony if patronized to an extent, and which Paul . . . is now urging upon the Government ought not to be pointed out by you.”2* With the endorsement of Stuart and other anticolonizationists, Paul undertook an extensive tour of the British Isles, advocating support for the Wilberforce colony and condemning the efforts of the ACS. As a minister, he had easy access to numerous pulpits from

20 Charles Stuart, Remarks on the Colony of Liberia and the American Colonization Society. With Some Account of the Set theni of Coloured People, At Wilberforce, U@er Canada (London, 1832). 7.

The pamphlets were A Letter to Thomas Clarhon, By J a m s Cropper and Prejudice Vincible; or the Practicability of Conqm’ng Prqudice by Better Means than by Slavery and Exile; In Relation to the American Colonization Society (London, 1832); and Remarks on the Colony of Liberia; The American Colonization Scheme Further Unravelled (Bath, 1833). Stuart may also have written, under the name Clericus, Facts Designed to Exhibit the Real Character and Tendency of the American Colonization Society (Liverpool, 1833). There is a great deal of repetition in all these works; for this reason, I have chosen to quote only from Remarks on the Colony of Libetia as its arguments are representative of Stuart’s views.

z2 Cresson to Gurley, Liverpool, 16 April 1832, vols. 39-41, reel 14, ACS Papers.

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Liberia which he attacked colonization. Cresson lamented to Gurley that Paul was touring Baptist chapels throughout the country attacking Liberia and never failing “on all occasions to poison their minds against us.” A circular issued by Paul and signed by a number of Baptist ministers condemned American slavery and racism and accused the ACS of being the handmaiden of American oppression.23

Although in later assessments of their victory over Cresson, both Garrison and George Thompson underestimated the contribution of Paul, British abolitionists were conscious of his influence.24 As a black man and “representative” of the views of black Americans, Paul had both authenticity and appeal to British abolitionists. The partiality of British humanitarians for the black antislavery advocate was an interest- ing feature of the antebellum Anglo-American antislavery connection. All the leading black American abolitionists who visited the British Isles during 183 1-61 had similar experiences, and all had relatively easy access to antislavery circles. The Secretary of the Edinburgh Anti- Slavery Society captured this in a letter to George Thompson: “I never saw one [Paul] more kindly treated by men ofall parties. The color ofhis skin was an excellent introduction to him, something surely to surprise brother Jonathan. . . . Here there is no prejudice about the color of a man’s skin. The darker he is, the more likely is he to receive. kind attention and support.”25 Cresson was not slow to recognize this and suggested to Gurley the need to find a black man who could counteract Paul’s impact. He suggested that the Society train Robert McDowell, a mulatto of Scottish extraction, as a doctor for work in Liberia. McDow- ell’s letters home, detailing the progress of Liberia, “will overturn all the machinations of our enemies.” When this failed to elicit any response from Gurley, Cresson suggested sending John Russwurm, editor of the Libm’un Herald, on a tour of Britain.*6 But by the summer of 1832, Paul, Stuart, and other anticolonizationists had destroyed the likelihood that even that would happen. Cresson was weekly losing the support of prominent British abolitionists. In February Wilberforce had refused to sign a memorial issued by Cresson’s supporters in Cirencester, and in the following month both Zachery Macaulay and J.J. Gurney publicly condemned the Colonization Society.27

23 Cresson to Gurley, London, 22 May 1832, vols. 3 9 4 1 , reel 14; Cresson to Gurley, Derby, 2 September 1832, both in vols. 4 2 4 4 , reel 15, ACS Papers.

Z4 Compare Joseph Phillip’s view that Paul was exposing the duplicity of colonization and the ACS during his lecture tours (Liberator, 15 December 1832) with Thompson’s rather self-gratifying assessment (Liberator, 3 1 August 1833 and 1 1 January 1834).

*5 Liberator, 7 February 1835. *6 Cresson to Gurley, London, 22 May 1832, vols. 3 9 4 1 , reel 14, ACS Papers:

27 Cresson to Gurley, Birmingham, 20 February 1832, and Bradford, 17 March African Repositoly (Washington, D.C.),July 1833.

1832, vols. 3 6 3 8 , reel 13, ACS Papers.

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The Historian The success of the anticolonizationists forced Cresson to the de-

fensive. He avoided the challenges to public debate issued by Stuart and the “lying mulatto preacher” as he called Paul, thus further under- mining his credibility. But his opponents would not desist; they attended and disrupted his public meetings and flooded local newspapers with letters denouncing the ACS and Liberia. By late 1832 his lectures became less aggressive and more conciliatory towards what he thought were British interests. In his lecture at Hull, he argued that it was impossible to eliminate overnight an institution like American slavery which had had such a long historical maturation. Given that Britain had introduced slavery into America, all concerned humanitarians should support the efforts of the ACS, which aimed at the final elimination of slavery without the destruction of American society. In addition, Liberia was a potentially lucrative market for British goods. As Cresson played on the conscience and pockets of his British audi- ences, he was not averse to stretching the truth when necessary. He told his Hull listeners that the popularity of the Society was growing daily and that in the ten years of its existence it had won the confidence of almost one-half of the American population.*8 But all this had little effect, for Cresson was only running fast to stand still; he continued to lose supporters, and the ranks of the anticolonizationists continued to increase.

Cresson’s main support in this period came from the noted British physician, Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, who produced three procolonization pamphlets between 1832 and 1834. Although Hodgkin was a strong supporter of the ACS, he differentiated between colonization as a policy beneficial to the slave and Africa, and the means proposed by the Society. The Society, in his view, must categorically condemn slavery as a sin if it ever hoped to win support.*g In his pamphlet On Negro Emancipation and American Colonization published in 1833, Hodg- kin attempted to counter the arguments of the anticolonizationists and win support for Cresson’s mission. He argued that colonization was a form of gradual emancipation which replaced the heated and vitriolic denunciations of slaveholders with reasoned discussion.30 Immediate recognition that emancipation was necessary and the preparation of the slaves for entry into the ranks of the free in an orderly and peaceful

28 Hull Advertiser, 26 October 1832; see also Inness, Liberia, v, 223. For similar views, see Hull Rockingham, 1 1 May 1833, and York Herald, 1 June 1833.

*9 Thomas Hodgkin to James Fortune, 17 November 1840. Hodgkin Papers, held privately by the Hodgkin family, Warwickshire, England.

3O Thomas Hodgkin, On Negro Emancipation and American Colonization (London, 1833), 3-4. Hodgkin’s other two pamphlets, An Inquiry Into t h Merits of the American Colonization Society: And a Reply to Charges Brought Against It. With an Account of the British African Colonization Society (London, 1833) and On the British African Colonization Society (London, 1834), are to a large extent repetitions of the arguments found in his first work.

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Liberia manner was a more realistic and beneficial scheme than unconditional emancipation. “It seems due to the most orderly producing and saving slaves,” he argued, “who may have accumulated nearly enough to redeem themselves, if a fair price was fixed, and the difficulty of manu- mission were obviated, that they should first receive the benefits of freedom. Their example would be a stimulus to their inferior brethren, and prepare the planter for the universal emancipation which should ultimately and speedily, but gradually, foll0~.”31 This approach would not only punish the profligate slave and force him to reform but would also show him that consistent labor was advantageous to his freedom. The planter would also see that his work was being properly per- formed and that he ran no risks of financial ruin. Such measures, Hodgkin predicted, would bring about peaceful emancipation, “an immediate partial benefit, with the prospects of an ultimate general reformation.”32

Such Smilesian notions predated and to some extent predicted the apprenticeship scheme introduced in the West Indies after emancipation. They were, as Fredrickson argued, the “conservative response” of antislavery colonizationists who were committed to peaceful and gradual emancipation. While they recognized the right of slaveholders to their property, they saw “the producing and saving slaves” as the wedge which would open the door to increased voluntary manumis- sion. But it was precisely on these grounds that anticolonizationists attacked the supporters of the ACS. As Benjamin Lundy and free black opponents of the Society pointed out in the early twenties, very few slaveholding colonizationists had freed their slaves for emigration to Liberia. Moreover, in the eyes of immediate abolitionists, recognition of the slaveholder’s right to his property was nothing short of support for the continuation of slavery.33

The arguments of antislavery colonizationists were predicated on one central “fact” of American society-the existence of an insur- mountable prejudice against blacks. Although Hodgkin condemned American prejudice, he argued that it would be removed when interests, not censure, dictated. The choices for black Americans, given this fact, were clear-cut: they must remain in America under the present situation which in itself was a form of exile, run the risk of being forcefully expatriated in the future, or work for the success of Liberia. The attraction to slaveholders of Hodgkin’s scheme was that it would eliminate the prospect they feared most-slave revolts.34 Liberia, by

31 Hodgkin, On Negro Emancipation, 4. 34 Ibid., 17. 33 Fredrickson, The Black Image, 6; Genius of Universal Emannpation, October 1821

and January 1822; Stuart, Remarks on the Colony of Liberia, 4; William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization (Boston, 1832).

34 Hodgkin, On Negro Emantipation, 11-12.

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The Historian providing an escape valve, would help those blacks who remained in America, for slaveholders, no longer afraid of a rapidly rising free black population, would be less inclined to impose and enforce laws limiting the rights of blacks. Given the recognized intensity of white racism, this “reflex reaction” argument in no way predicted full equality for those blacks who remained in America but merely suggested a benevolent indifference, or what has more recently been called a “be- nign neglect.”

As we have seen, similar views expressed by John P. Kennedy in the columns of Freedom’s Journal ran counter to the twin goals of immediate abolition, namely, unconditional emancipation and equality of the races. Hodgkin’s work met with immediate opposition from anticolonizationists. While he may have hoped that his pamphlet would shift the issue of colonization to a more philosophical discussion of the merits of the ACS and Liberia, Stuart and others continued to attack the Society and Cresson’s mission on the old grounds that their program violated the precepts of Christianity by acquiescing to slavery and racial prejudice. An anonymously written pamphlet, raising the specter of national jealousies, accused Cresson of deluding the British public “into a belief that the object and tendency of the Colonization scheme was the abolition of slavery,” a scheme which “nothing but American impudence could devise and per~ecute.”3~

Such attacks continued to keep colonizationists on the defensive. In response they confronted each accusation by turning to the speeches of American colonizationists and the African Repository to show the antislavery nature of the Society, a recourse that was already discredited in the eyes of abolitionists. This is not to say that anticolonizationists did not employ the same old attacks dressed in new garb. But in battles for public approval, those on the defensive, as the colonizationists were, cannot afford the luxury of repetition, regardless of the sophistication of the arguments used; they must burst the con- straints of the dispute if they hope to gain the offensive and the advan- tage. Throughout this dispute, anticolonizationists were able to keep Cresson and his supporters on the defensive and in so doing to destroy their credibility with British abolitionists.36

Garrison’s arrival in Britain in the summer of 1833 was the denoue- ment of the colonization drama being played out on the British stage.

35 Strictures on Dr. Hodgkin 5 Pamphht on Negro Emanriprtion and American Colonization (London, 1833), 7 ; Stuart, Remark on the Colony ofLiberia, 10. Cresson told an audience in York that a British abolitionist had made it clear to him that “John Bull does not like to have his cow milked by strangers; England is the preserve of the Anti-Slavery Society and you a poacher in it.” York Herald, 1 June 1833. Hodgkin in An Inquiry, 3, observed that the colonization argument was characterized by two types of prejudice, British national prejudice against America and white American prejudice against blacks.

36 For an example, see African Repository, November 1833.

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Liberia Even before his arrival Cresson had expressed his deep sense of isolation from British abolitionists and from the Society in Washington. These were related. On the one hand, his inability to win substantial support in Britain significantly curtailed his remittances to Washington at a time when the finances of the Society were being severely strained by an economic depression and competition from the state societies, demanding greater freedom from Washington. On the other, the proslavery element in the Society lost him a great deal of support in Britain. By the summer of 1832, Cresson’s persistent criticism of the Society’s proslavery sentiments in his letters to Gurley and his failure to remit sufficient funds strained relations between Washington and its agent. In June 1832 Cresson wrote to Gurley condemning the Society for continuing to print proslavery materials and bemoaning the fact that Washington had isolated him by not providing recent information to counteract accusations in Britain. The circulation of Garrison’s Thoughts was harming the cause in Britain and yet the Society continued to remain silent, offering little refutation of its views. “If, in my zeal to serve the cause,” he pleaded with Gurley, “I have written or spoken . . . ought amiss . . . why not frankly tell me so? Why not as a brother, set me right?” Cresson’s plea continued to go unheeded, and in the following months he threatened on more than one occasion to return home.37

Garrison arrived in England to a warm welcome from abolitionists. His Thoughts, serialized in the Eclectic Review at the end of 1832, had added ammunition to the forces of anticolonization led by Stuart and Paul. “Your ‘Thoughts on Colonization,”’ Paul wrote him, “are the thoughts of the people here. I only regret that your book had not come sooner.’’S* Soon after his arrival, Garrison challenged Cresson to a public debate on the merits of the ACS. When Cresson demurred, he organized a series of public lectures with the aid of Cropper, Paul, Stuart, and George Thompson, at which he accused Cresson of raising money from British abolitionists under false pretenses. At the first meeting Garrison reiterated arguments developed in Thoughts. Paul followed with a stirring exposition of free black opposition to the Society. America is the home of the black man, he pleaded, for they have fought to build and protect her. In the War of Independence “complexion was entirely out of the question [cheers]; the black man was then considered as good as the white. We were all brethren-we were all kindred-we were bone of each other’s bone, and flesh of each other’s flesh. . . . I hold that I have as good a right to that country as any white man whatever may be said to the reverse [cheers].” He went on to point out that free blacks in every major city in America had

37 Cresson to Gurley, London, 9 and 16 June and 6 July 1832, vols. 39-41, reel

313 Liberator, 22 June 1833; Eclectic Review, November 1832. 14, ACS Papers.

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The Historian consixently opposed the Society-which welcomes European immi- grants who have made no contribution to the country and at the same time contrives to expel to Africa a group of its native sons. To a group of men and women who were soon to witness the successful culmina- tion of their work in the abolition of West Indian slavery, such pleas would have a decided impact.39

Following the third meeting at Exeter Hall at which most of the leading British abolitionists endorsed the position of the anticolonizationists, Cresson took the only course left open to him: letters to newspapers. The alternative was to remain silent. By issuing a challenge to a public debate, as Stuart and Paul had previously done, Garrison again forced the issue of credibility. Cresson had to either accept the challenge to a debate, which he had very little chance of winning, as public sentiment grew increasingly hostile to colonization, or refuse and leave the stage completely free to the anticolonizationists. As the London Patriot observed, “Mr. Elliot Cresson, notwithstanding the countenance he has been so fortunate as to obtain in high quarters, will do well to grapple with the charges brought against the Society he represents, or take his passagefor Philadelphia. ’’40 Like Hodg- kin, Cresson pointed out that in recognizing the pervasiveness of prejudice the Society was attempting to provide an alternative home for blacks who wished to leave America. The success of such a colony would aid the position of those blacks who chose to remain in America. He concluded rather imploringly, if not in an attempt at reconciliation, that both colonizationists and abolitionists had different tasks to per- form in the ultimate abolition of slavery and the elevation of blacks, tasks which might not be as mutually exclusive as some But Cresson was merely whistling in the dark in the hope that the anticolonizationists would go away. The successes of the opposition had already destroyed his mission.

One month later Cropper, Buxton, Macaulay, William Smith, George Stephens, William Allen, and Wilberforce, among others, issued their “Protest” against the ACS. Soon after, Wilberforce died. As Fladeland observed, “The fact that signing it was one of Wilberforce’s last public acts before his death made it a document worthy of venera- tion by abolitionists everywhere.”4* The “Protest,” with an economy of words, reiterated all the points of opposition to the ACS. In this sense it said nothing new, but the fact that most of the leadership of British abolitionism had signed the document symbolized the final rejection and defeat of Cresson’s mission. As Garrison rather haugh- tily put it, the “Protest” became “a millstone around the neck of the

39 Liberator, 19 October 1833; 9 November 1833; 16 November 1833. 40 Quoted in the Liberator, 26 October 1833. 41 The Patriot, 31 July 1833. 4P Fladeland, Men and Broths, 217.

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Liberia American Colonization Society, sufficiently weighty to drown it in an ocean of public indignation.”43 But one name was conspicuously ab- sent from the list of signatories to the “Protest”-Clarkson. Soon after the July meetings, Garrison and Paul journeyed to Norwich in the hope of persuading Clarkson to publicly condemn the Society, as he had once praised it. According to Garrison’s account of the meeting, Paul’s statement of free black opposition to the Society persuaded Clarkson to question his previous support. Although Clarkson refused to issue a public statement, Garrison and Paul won an important concession. Garrison reported that Clarkson concluded the meeting with the following words: “Tell them [the Americans] that he refused to comply with the solicitation of Mr. Cresson to become an honorary member of it; and also refused to give his sanction to the British Colonization Society. . . . My letter to Mr. Cresson in favor of the American Coloni- zation Society was extorted by his statement . . . that one hundred thousand slaves had been offered to the Society gratuitously, to be sent to Liberia.”44 Garrison could sail for America in the fall with the knowledge that one aim of his visit-the final defeat of Cresson’s mission-had been a success.

But what did Cresson have to show for his efforts? He had managed, in the early days of his mission, to persuade a group of Edinburgh philanthropists to raise funds for the establishment of the new settlement in Liberia, called Edina. Even in this success there was a measure of failure. Mainly because of opposition generated by Stuart and Paul, Cresson was forced to alter his plans away from winning general British acknowledgement of and financial support for the work of the Society to an advocation of support for specific projects, like Edina. British philanthropists, he quickly found out, differentiated between Liberia, as a missionary and “civilizing” enterprise, and the activities of the ACS, and were thus willing to support the colony while condemning the Society. Cresson’s plans to harness this support to some extent explain his isolation from Gurley and the Society. Al- though his mission of about two and one-half years netted roughly E2,246 for the Society, Gurley objected that his strategy lost the Soci- ety considerably more than commensurate support.45 To some extent Gurley was correct, for Hodgkin reported to Cresson in April 1836 that there was still unspent money, which had been raised for specific

43 Quoted from the Christian Advocate, n.d., in the Liberator, 12 October 1833. 44 Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison,

1805-1879; the Story ofhis Lqe Told by his ChiMren (New York, 1885), 1: 364. 45 Gurley informed Tendall that Dr. Cox, the English clergyman, “does not think

Mr. Cresson’s Agency has been very efficient among the most enlightened and cultivated of England. Mr. Cresson is full of zeal, has laboured hard and perhaps merits thanks, but I do not rely especially upon his wisdom.” Gurley to Tendall, Philadelphia, 27 November 1833, vols. 54-56, reel 19, ACS Papers; Ajncan Repository, March 1834.

29 1

The Historian land purchases, in the account of the defunct British African Coloniza- tion Society (BACS).46

Following this line of thinking, Cresson, in early 1833, had suggested to his small coterie of supporters the formation of a British counterpart to the ACS. The new Society, in order to avoid the stigma of association with the ACS, would be independent of Washington but supportive of its efforts in Liberia. As he told Gurley, his intention was to avoid any open conflict with anticolonizationists and to attempt instead to win support from aristocratic Whigs and Tories in the hope that they could influence the British government to recognize Liberia. The new thrust aimed to raise E1,OOO for the purchase of land at Cape Mount on which two settlements, Sussex and Wilberforce, “villages with at least 200 blacks of high chuructt~, ” would be established.47 Such settlements, according to Hodgkin, would not only provide Britain with an opportunity to repay Africa for past wrongs but would also establish markets on the west coast of Africa by encouraging a “taste for British productions, which British merchants may supply.”4S This new approach was not likely to win Cresson support from Washington, where they were concerned with possible encroachment from Sierra Leone on Liberia’s sphere of influence.49

The founding meeting of the BACS was held at Hanover Square, London, in early July 1833 with the Duke of Sussex in the chair. The sparse attendance was symptomatic of anticolonization feeling. And as if that was not enough, the proposed society’s opponents got wind of the meeting and attended in large numbers, so much so that one report suggested that if fifteen more abolitionists had been present, the BACS might never have been formed. Stuart, Thompson, and Garrison disrupted the meeting by challenging the chair on every point at issue. Although the meeting agreed to form the BACS, few held out much hope for its success. Its list of prominent aristocratic supporters could do little to forestall its rapid demise. Only the tireless efforts of Thomas Hodgkin would keep the Society afloat for one year. In late 1834, he wrote Cresson informing him that the BACS was defunct because of a lack of interest among its members.50

When Cresson returned to America in the fall of 1833 he had very little to show for his efforts. The settlement of Edina was the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal situation. The series of branch

46 Hodgkin to Cresson, 5 April 1836, Hodgkin Papers. 47 Cresson to Gurley, London, 28 June 1833, vols. 45-47. reel 16, ACS Papers. 48 Hodgkin, An Inquiry, 56-7. 49 For expressions of these concerns in the late 1850s. see my paper, “In Search

of International Support for African Colonization: Martin R. Delany’s Visit to England, 1860,” CanadianJournal of History 10 (December 1975).

50 Hodgkin to Cresson, 4 November 1834, Hodgkin Papers.

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Liberia societies formed in the first year of his mission had all disbanded under the systematic pressure of his opponents, and the BACS was little more than a society in name, notwithstanding its very prominent officers. Opponents to his mission, led by Charles Stuart, Nathaniel Paul, and later William Lloyd Garrison, had mounted a well-planned and well- organized public campaign against the Society he represented. They wrote pamphlets, which were widely disseminated, flooded local newspapers with condemnations of the ACS, challenged him to public debates, which because of their popularity he was forced to refuse, and where possible followed him about the country, challenging him every step of the way. It was no wonder that Cresson lamented to the editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser that he had “very often felt, when thus surrounded by enemies of the fiercest stamp, that unless I had been supported by the consciousness of performing an imperative and holy duty for the good of man, and the extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom, that I must have been utterly overwhelmed.”51 One could forgive Cresson’s rather pious claim, for the struggle for British approval had been long, exhausting, and acerbic. It took much argument by his supporters to persuade Cresson to reject the many challenges issued by Stuart, Paul, and Garrison, for he was never one to shun a fight. As Stuart said, in a backhanded compliment, Cresson “was a staunch idolater, and displays an energy, a tact and a perseverance, worthy of a totally different cause.”5*

The defeat of Cresson’s mission destroyed the possibility of British support for the ACS and its efforts in Liberia, although it did very little to undermine the image of Liberia as a missionary and “civilizing” agent in Africa. More important for the antislavery movement, the anticolonizationists’ victory over Cresson’s mission was a major success at a time when contacts between British and American abolitionists were becoming increasingly important. It confirmed in abolitionists’ minds the importance of international alliances against slavery. Blacks, who bore the brunt of American slavery and prejudice, were even more aware of its significance and up until the Civil War kept a careful vigil against efforts by the ACS to win British support. In 184 1, when the Reverend Gurley visited Britain in the hope of succeeding where Cresson had failed, Charles Lenox Remond, along with James G. Birney and others who were attending the first World Anti-Slavery Convention, won renewed confirmation of British opposition to the ACS. Eight years later when it was rumored that a Mr. Miller had arrived in Britain, unannounced, to raise money for the Society, the Reverends J.W.C. Pennington and Alexander Crummell rekindled the

51 Quoted in the Liberator, 21 September 1833. 5 1 Stuart to Arnold Buffum, London, 29 June 1833, quoted in the Liberator, 31

August 1833.

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The Historian anticolonization spirit.53 And even when Crummell decided to go to Liberia as a missionary in 1852, he, like British abolitionists, differentiated between Liberia, as a “civilizing” agency, and the work of the ACS.54

53Anfz-S1avery Refiorh, 1 June 1849; John Cropper to n.n., 21 July 1849, C156/162, British and Foreign Antislavery Society Papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford Univer- sity, England.

54 Alexander Crummell, Hope for Afnra. A S m o n on Behalf of the Ladies’ Negro Education Society (London, 1853), 4 7 4 8 ; The Slave (Newcastle), July 1853.

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Documents

Anglo-American Opposition to Liberian Colonization, 1831–1833