The Missouri Crisis and the “Changed Object” of the American Colonization Society

Nicholas Wood traces the effect of the Missouri Crisis on the American Colonization Society’s efforts to gain support from the federal government. Like Ericson, Wood highlights the desire of ACS leaders to gain government support, and he traces their initial success in that endeavour before examining how the relationship changed as a result of the situation in Missouri. According to Wood, the ACS program became increasingly controversial in the 1820s and 1830s, leading Congress to reject the society’s appeals for greater aid. He concludes that the Missouri Crisis played a large role in destroying the cross-sectional trust that would have been essential for a federal colonization program to pass.

The American Colonization Society’s Not-So-Private Colonization Project

Ericson traces the efforts of the American Colonization Society to gain the financial support of the U.S. government and the public-private partnership that ensued. He maintains that this partnership was not only one of the first of its kind on the federal level, but that it was also the most enduring prior to the Civil War. He concludes that without federal support, the society probably would never have founded Liberia and that the support was crucial to the colony’s survival.

The Past, Present, and Future of Colonization Studies

Introduces the key themes in the book by tracing the historiography on African recolonization. Discusses the connection between colonization and emancipation. Examines the motives for African colonization and the movement’s relationship with the U.S. government.

Rewriting Their Own History; or, the Many Paul Cuffes

Paul Cuffe was one of the earliest black supporters of African recolonization efforts but this fact became inconvenient for abolitionists in the 1830s as they worked hard to resist the movement. A hero of many and revered for his independence and leadership, Cuffe’s interest in emigration complicates the story of black resistance to colonization. Antislavery leaders of the 1830s realized this and sought to rewrite the historical record and erase this aspect of Cuffe’s life. This chapter traces this process and seeks to restore the complex side of Cuffe and his work.

“A Desire to Better their Condition”

This chapter points out that colonizationist rhetoric was, in some ways, more important than the practical consequences of the movement. Even as the American Colonization Society facilitated some six thousand emancipations over the course of its existence, it also played a large role in shaping antislavery discourse that portrayed outright emancipation as too radical and colonization as the only practical solution. Colonizationists depicted the practicality of their movement by comparing it to the movement of European immigrants into the United States, and this chapter looks at this rhetoric.

The American Colonization Society and the Civil War

Page calls for a new assessment of the American Colonization Society by shifting the focus from the often-discussed Early Republic and Antebellum years to the period of the U.S. Civil War. This period is important because it covers the time in which an essentially northern-managed society suffered an abrupt severance from its associates in the South while the federal government enacted emancipation, recognized Liberia as an independent nation, and finally officially endorsed colonization. The society’s efforts during the Civil War reveal a great deal about its leaders’ understanding of their mission as well as the government’s relationship with colonization.

Experiments in Colonial Citizenship in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Looking at African resettlement in Sierra Leone and Liberia within the context of the Atlantic world and movements like that in Haiti to define citizenship and subjecthood, Everill argues that these resettlement projects spawned numerous innovations in self-representation and constitutionalism. She maintains that, experimenting with ideas of colonial citizenship and representation, empires sought to retain and expand their influence in the wake of the American, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions for indepedence. Polities that did not consider themselves empires, however, like the United States, had to navigate ideas of citizenship, representation, and independence as they expanded beyond their original borders. As a result, she argues, the structures of colonial governance in early Sierra Leone and Liberia reflected the emergence of two competing models of constitutional colonial development.

Situating African Colonization within the History of U.S. Expansion

Mills addresses historians’ reluctance to place the African colonization movement within the history of American expansion and nation building. He maintains that the reluctance has resulted from historians’ preoccupations with the domestic side of the movement, as well as the difficulty of integrating such a distinct and mutli-faceted movement into traditional narratives of U.S. expansion. He suggests a fundamental reconsideration of the movement’s impact on early U.S. politics by examining how it connected domestic racial policies to the United States’s practices of both continental and overeas expansion.

James Monroe and the Practicalities of Emancipation and Colonization

Of all of the politicians who supported the American Colonization Society, James Monroe did the most to support the colony financially. Through his efforts, the federal government assisted in the resettlement of African Americans in Liberia. Preston considers Monroe’s motives for supporting the society and explores his ideas about race and slavery in the process.

The End of Emancipation Street

Using the historiography of “whiteness studies,” Murray looks at race in new ways by examining the racial attitudes of indigenous Africans toward Liberian settlers. He also examines the attitudes of Liberians themselves. Through the process of emigration, black Americans became theoretically white, at least in the minds of their indigenous neighbors, and he explores this racial transformation. He also examines the geographical layout of the colony in terms of race and racial exclusion.