American Colonization Society

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The American Colonization Society ( dt. American Colonization Society ) was one of the American Kolonialisations companies , which are perched in the 19th century repatriation of part of the United States had set free black Africans living in Africa to the goal.

history

The establishment of the ACS

The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 on the initiative of the American clergyman Robert Finley. The founding of the Society was an attempt to please two groups in the United States in particular who were irreconcilable in the early 19th century on the issue of slavery .

One of the two groups consisted of philanthropists and missionaries whose aim was to free the African slaves and their descendants and to enable them to return to Africa. The other group was made up of slaveholders and slave traders who were so troubled by the very idea of ​​free black citizens that they wanted them to be as far removed from America as possible.

Both groups shared the conviction that free blacks could not possibly be integrated into white society in the USA. John Randolph , a well-known slave owner, saw in free blacks nothing more than "promoters of social unrest". There were about two million black people in the United States at the time, about ten percent of whom were free. Even Henry Clay , a Congressman from the south , who sympathized with the free blacks, admitted that due to "insurmountable prejudices" blacks would never be given the opportunity to their skin color, face the whites of the country equally.

Another motivation for the establishment of the colonial society was that a boom in trade in African raw materials was beginning to emerge, so that American and British merchants wanted to form a bridgehead in Africa.

Henry Clay

On December 21, 1816, a group of prominent representatives of the white upper class gathered at the Davis Hotel in Washington DC to establish the company, including James Monroe , Bushrod Washington , Andrew Jackson , Francis Scott Key, and Daniel Webster . Henry Clay chaired the founding meeting.

The first years

In the following three years, the society collected considerable sums, mainly through the sale of membership certificates. In addition, members of the colonial society urged Congress and the president to provide financial support to the society. So it was that in 1819 they received the sum of $ 100,000 from Congress. In January 1820 the first ship, the Elizabeth , set sail from New York for West Africa . On board were three white officials from the colonial society and 88 black “returnees”.

The Liberia project

Thanks to American and British military actions, the ACS received a concession on the West African coast, which was previously called the Pepper Coast . The ACS's original plan to use the slaves transported from America as cheap labor did not work out. Instead, they set up trading houses themselves with borrowed capital and set up a system of government in Liberia that was based on forced labor and oppression, as they had come to know first-hand in the United States. Over the decades, Liberia's political elite was formed, which did not allow the country's original population to participate in power.

Further colonies in Africa and North America

As early as 1829, the Indiana Colonization Society was established based on the ACS model . This organization also had the goal of creating a new home for the African Americans , in this case the Indiana Territory in the center of the North American continent was chosen because it had been recognized that repatriation to Africa would only be possible for a limited period of time and for a limited number of people . At the same time, several states in the ACS had spoken out in favor of their own projects on the West African coast, but of these only Maryland in Liberia achieved a brief independent development before it merged into the state of Liberia .

Liberia's independence

On July 26, 1847, Liberia's first congress declared the country's independence. Joseph Jenkins Roberts , the previous governor, was elected first president. At the expense of the autochthonous population, political power remained in the hands of the freed slaves who had emigrated from the USA and who later established a kind of “black” apartheid . The colony's hasty state independence became necessary because the leading European colonial powers Great Britain and France put the ACS governors in Monrovia under pressure. A substantial part of the income of the colony of Liberia came from these states and was "earned" through customs duties and fees. Liberia's declaration of independence, however, meant that some of the American supporters of the ACS saw their goals had been achieved and withdrew financial support from the society. The domestic political situation in the USA also had a negative impact on the ACS; the Fugitive Slave Law , which came into force in 1850 , caused great resentment because it expanded the rights of slave owners and slave captors with regard to escaped slaves. With the state recognition of Liberia by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 , the number of Afro-Americans willing to relocate rose again. One reason may be found in the course of the American Civil War (1861–1865), in which the southern states initially achieved military success. During this time, the Underground Railway was founded , a secret organization that helped escaped and persecuted African-Americans to flee to the north.

The ACS in the 20th century

In the 1920s, the ACS's relationship with the Liberian government deteriorated. The Fernando Po scandal is considered a low point . This blatant evidence of systematic human rights violations reached the League of Nations and resulted in Liberia being ostracized worldwide. A second indication was that the Liberian government authorities were less willing to accept emigrants. Evidently there were fears that the growing influx of liberal immigrants would lose power.

The ACS existed as an organization in the USA until 1964. When it disbanded, the extensive archive material was given to the State Archives Library of Congress . The almost complete collection contains the data of almost all persons who moved to Liberia as well as extensive files on the national history of Liberia and the USA.

ACS publications

As editor of the monthly magazine The African Repository, the ACS has published a large number of letters, reports and documents on the history of Liberia, Sierra Leone and the United States; almost all of this material is searchable on Google Books for the period from 1821 to the beginning of the 1840s.

  • Edward Wilmot Blyden : Hope for Africa, Liberia's offering: being addresses, sermons, etc. New York 1862, p. 167 . (as a digitized version on Google Books)
  • JW Lugenbeel: The republic of Liberia: its geography, climate, soil and productions, with a history of its early settlements . GS Stockwell, New York 1868, p. 299 . (as a digitized version on Google Books)

ACS personalities

  • Henry Clay (1777–1852), influential politician, co-founder and first president of the ACS
  • Lott Carey (1780–1828), first African-American missionary (Providence Baptist Church), founder of the first churches and schools in Monrovia, governor of the ACS in 1828
  • Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–1876), businessman and entrepreneur, governor of the ACS and first president of Liberia
  • Bushrod Washington (1762–1829), constitutional judge and politician, co-founder of the ACS
  • Samuel Wilkeson (1781-1848), Mayor of Buffalo ( NY ), General Agent (CEO) of the ACS since 1838

ACS colonial agents and governors in Liberia

# Surname Taking office End of office Duration
(days)		 title
Cape Mesurado Colony
1 Eli Ayers W. Dec 15, 1821 Apr 25, 1822 131 agent
2 Frederick James B. Apr 25, 1822 Jun 4, 1822 40 agent
3 Elijah Johnson B. Jun 4, 1822 Aug 8, 1822 65 agent
4th Jehudi Ashmun W. Aug 8, 1822 Apr 2, 1823 237 agent
5 Elijah Johnson B. Apr 2, 1823 Aug 14, 1823 134 agent
6th Jehudi Ashmun W. Aug 14, 1823 Aug 15, 1824 367 agent
Colony of Liberia
7th Jehudi Ashmun W. Aug 15, 1824 March 26, 1828 1319 agent
8th Lott Carey B. March 26, 1828 Nov 8, 1828 227 agent
9 Colston Waring B. Nov 8, 1828 December 22, 1828 44 agent
10 Richard Randall W. December 22, 1828 Apr 19, 1829 118 agent
11 Joseph Mechlin, Jr. W. Apr 19, 1829 Feb. 27, 1830 314 agent
12 John Anderson B. Feb. 27, 1830 Apr 12, 1830 44 agent
13 Anthony D. Williams B. Apr 13, 1830 Dec. 4, 1830 235 agent
14th Joseph Mechlin, Jr. W. Dec. 4, 1830 Sep 24 1833 1025 agent
15th George McGill B. Sep 24 1833 Jan. 1, 1834 99 agent
16 John B. Pinney W. Jan. 1, 1834 May 10, 1835 494 agent
17th Nathaniel Brander B. May 10, 1835 Aug 12, 1835 94 agent
18th Ezekiel Skinner W. Aug 12, 1835 25 Sep 1836 44 agent
19th Anthony D. Williams B. 25 Sep 1836 Apr 1, 1839 1284 agent
Commonwealth of Liberia
20th Thomas Buchanan W. Apr 1, 1839 3rd Sep 1841 886 governor
21st Joseph Jenkins Roberts B. 3rd Sep 1841 Jan. 3, 1848 2313 governor
Source: Wikipedia (English) Abbreviations: W = White; B = African or Creole

literature

  • Eric Burin: Slavery and the peculiar solution: a history of the American Colonization Society . University Press of Florida, Gainesville 2005, ISBN 0-8130-2841-8 , pp. 223 .
  • Darlene Clark Hine, Jacqueline McLeod: Crossing boundaries: comparative history of Black people in diaspora . In: African American Studies . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis 1999, ISBN 0-253-21450-5 , pp. 495 .
  • Allan Yarema: The American Colonization Society: An Avenue to Freedom? Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham (MD) 2006, ISBN 0-7618-3359-5 , pp. 102 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Antonio McDaniel: Swing low, sweet chariot. The mortality cost of colonizing Liberia in the nineteenth century . Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995, ISBN 0-226-55724-3 , pp. 191 .
  2. ^ Wilson Jeremiah Moses: Liberian dreams. Back-to-Africa narratives from the 1850s. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pa. 1998, ISBN 0-271-01710-4 , pp. 234 .
  3. ^ Indiana Emigrants to Liberia. (PDF; 544 kB) In: The Indiana Historian. A Magazine Exploring Indiana History (Indiana government website). Retrieved December 10, 2010 .
  4. ↑ US Department of State (Ed.): Self Study Guide for Liberia . Washington DC 2003, The Early Twentieth Century, p. 12–13 ( full text [PDF; 1.5 MB ]).