Of course the idea of going to Liberia did not appeal to most free blacks, though it certainly saw an up-tick from the Upper South states after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act which made the possibility of being kidnapped and sold in the Deep South a real possibility. But the largest number of African American emigrants to Liberia were emancipated slaves who had little choice in the matter.
There is some excellent material on this subject, most notably:
Marie Tyler-McGraw, An African Republic, Black & White Virginians in the Making of Liberia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007)
and The Virginia Emigrants to Liberia Project at: the Virginia Center for Digital History
http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia/index.php?page=Home
Last, there is my own case study of this in an article I published "The Kelley Brothers and the American Colonization Society: From Northumberland to Liberia." in The Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society (Vol. 45, 2008)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9i939b575qddhm/kelley%20brothers%20article.pdf
This last link is a download of the article.
The idea appealed to next to nobody and Lincoln quickly ditched the idea.
Craig
On May 9, 2012, at 11:01 AM, David Kiracofe wrote:
> Colonization has always struck me a fascinating pipe dream. The fact that only a small number of free blacks ever bought into it while the horrors of slavery were still ongoing strongly suggests the limits of its appeal and I think points toward how unworkable it might be to attempt the total removal of the black population. Colonization on such a large scale would also be -- beyond a problem of money and logistics -- a military matter of forced migration. Just as some Native Americans voluntarily moved west but others had to be driven out on the Trail of Tears, African colonization would have seen, along with any number of more-willing emigrants, a similar uprooting of many people who would not want to leave their homeland for some foreign place in Africa -- so they would have to be forcibly removed. The scale of that undertaking would be much larger compared to the numbers of relocated Native Americans. What would white Americans think of the expansion of government power that would come from this? I can well imagine people might consider Lincoln a tyrant for exercising so much power (at least as much as some do for a few Civil War executive orders.)
> And on the other side, would Liberia even be able to absorb millions of refugees in such a short span of time? How would European colonial powers have reacted?
>
> David Kiracofe
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeff Southmayd [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 3:53 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>
> Topic for another forum on how different America would be today fs they had found the money and ships and undertaken the colonizing project. I note that since the 1840s Lincoln, who was an admirer of Henry Clay, had been an advocate of the American Colonization Society program of colonizing blacks in Liberia.
>
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>> Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 17:04:54 +0000
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Hard to imagine where would have found the ships and money for a mass exodus to Liberia.
>>
>> ========================================
>>
>> Paul Finkelman
>> President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
>> Albany Law School
>> 80 New Scotland Avenue
>> Albany, NY 12208
>>
>> 518-445-3386 (p)
>> 518-445-3363 (f)
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> www.paulfinkelman.com
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>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Kilby
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 12:34 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>>
>> I wrote that, and it was in connection Lincoln's initial plan to send freed slaves to Liberia. I clearly stated that that was veering off topic of this thread. Lincoln abandoned that plan due to vocal opposition from the black community.
>>
>> That sentence was part of a larger "conjecture" of how slavery would have ended had the South won, whenever it ended, if it would ever end (and it surely would.)
>>
>> Craig Kilby
>>
>> On May 7, 2012, at 11:53 PM, Finkelman, Paul <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> One post suggested that "hundreds of thousands of blacks" might have gone to Liberia? On what boats? How many ships were around to move them? Who would pay for it?
>>
>>
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