COLONIZATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA, The National. An association to colonize free negroes in Africa or elsewhere. The idea was evolved by friends of negro ad vancement and opponents of slavery. Dr. Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, R. I., in 1770 sug gested the Christianizing and civilizing of Africa and the assisting of emancipation here by providing a place to which free negroes could go; and this was proposed by Jefferson during the Revolution. But about 1800 it was taken up by the slaveholding interests, for exactly the opposite purpose—to strengthen their system by deporting the free negroes, who made the slave discontented and were consid ered otherwise objectionable. Virginia tried repeatedly to obtain a national grant for colo nizing purposes, and failing this, in 1806 en acted that any slave thereafter free should leave the State within a year or be again re duced to slavery; and in 1816 the petition to Congress was renewed, to force some national action. On the first of January the society above was organized. The president (Judge Bushrod Washington), all the managers and all but a small minority of the vice-presidents, -were slave holders; its constitution professed no purpose to benefit the blacks, and its ablest Northern advocate denied that it had any. Support was asked for it in the North on the ground of its civilizing Africa and lead ing to gradual emancipation; in the South, on the ground of its contributing to the continu ance and strengthening of slavery., augmenting the value of slave property and providing an overflow for the excess of slaves beyond profit able employment. This impossible gstraddleo of purposes ruined its chance of accomplishing much; though a number of the best Northern philanthropists, and their Southern peers like Bimey, clung to it for some years and hoped for good from it. A great many State branthes were organized and vigorous public appeals made for it. Charles Carroll, James Madison,
Henry Clay and Latrobe the architect were its presidents. In 1820 a colony of a few hundreds was sent to Sherbro Island, West Africa, with tools and arms, and in 1822 another was sent to found Liberia, with sincere hopes. But the per petual vilification of the free negroes by the managers, advocates and organs of the Society, their anxiety to do nothing to antagonize the slaveholders and their advocacy of the severest ("black laws° to force the freedmen into desiring deportation as a refuge, alienated the anti-slav ery element, who felt that they were being used as cats'-paws of the slave interest. Even Daniel Webster in 1825 refused to join it on that ground, though in 1822 he favored it. By 1830 the Tappans, Gerrit Smith, Birney, Lundy, Gar rison and others had withdrawn from it, and the last-named was openly denouncing it. In 1833 he went to England to expose it before the anti-slavery people there, and they united in a public protest against it. A similar society was organized there, but accomplished nothing. The American society maintained its organization even after the War, though its problem was altered, as well as the Southern attitude toward it An effort a few years since to promote a large negro emigration to Kansas or Oklahoma was met with strong objection from Southern employers of labor. Consult Wilson, 'Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America' (Vol. I, Chap. 15) ; Alexander, 'History of Coloniza tion on the West Coast of Africa' (Philadel phia 1846) ; Birney, 'Letter on Colonization' (New York 1834); Jay, 'Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of the American Col onization and Antislavery Societies' (ib. 1834).