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American Colonization Society

The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C.

The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 to address the prevailing view that free people of color could not integrate into U.S. society; their population had grown steadily following the American Revolutionary War, from 60,000 in 1790 to 300,000 by 1830. Slave owners feared that these free Black people might help their slaves to escape or rebel.

The African-American community and the abolitionist movement overwhelmingly opposed the project. According to "the colored citizens of Syracuse," headed by Rev. Jermain Loguen,

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In most cases, African American families had lived in the United States for generations, and their prevailing sentiment was that they were no more African than white Americans were British. Contrary to claims that their emigration was voluntary, many African Americans, both free and enslaved, were pressured into emigrating. Indeed, enslavers, such as Zephaniah Kingsley, sometimes freed their slaves on condition that the freedmen leave the country immediately.

According to historian Marc Leepson, "Colonization proved to be a giant failure, doing nothing to stem the forces that brought the nation to Civil War." Between 1821 and 1847, only a few thousand African Americans, out of millions, emigrated to what would become Liberia, while the increase in Black population in the U.S. during those same years was about 500,000. By 1833, the Society had transported only 2,769 individuals out of the U.S. According to Zephaniah Kingsley, the cost of transporting the Black population of the United States to Africa would exceed the annual revenues of the country. Mortality was the highest since accurate record-keeping began: close to half the arrivals in Liberia died from tropical diseases, especially malaria; during the early years, 22% of immigrants died within one year. Moreover, the provisioning and transportation of requisite tools and supplies proved very expensive.

Starting in the 1830s, the society was met with great hostility from abolitionists, led by Gerrit Smith, who had supported the society financially, and William Lloyd Garrison, author of ''Thoughts on African Colonization'' (1832), in which he proclaimed the society a fraud. According to Garrison and his many followers, the society was not a solution to the problem of American slavery—it actually was helping, and was intended to help, to preserve it. Provided by Wikipedia