I think it is difficult to characterize people like Coles. He was not an
"abolitionist" in the Garrison-Phillips-Dougalss or even Chase way.  I
think the best characterization is that he and others (Lincoln for
example) were deeply opposed to slavery and hated it, but they had no
fixed program to end it.  Colonization seems absurd to us today, but
surely it was no more visionary or absurd than Garrisonian demands for
disunion or "immediate abolition gradually obtained."   For some
colonization was motivated by racism  -- a plan to get rid of blacks;
for others it merely a recognition that the Jacksonian world was racist
and there was little chance that blacks would get equality even if they
were free.  I suspect Coles, like many otehrs at the time, was willing
to try anything that might work, and before 1861 colonization along with
exclusion of slavery from the territories may have been, for many, the
most likely way of effecting some change.  The ACS did  send some people
to Africa who had been freed only on condition that they go to Africa.
 WIthout defending the ACS (I personally remain a latter-day
Garrisonian) I can imagine a debate between a Garrisonain and a
Coles-like Colonizationist.  The Colonizationist would ask the
Garrisonian:  How many slaves has your organization liberated?  The
answer would be one or two fugitives, who had already in effect
liberated themselves; the Colonization would say, "we have been
responsible for  thousands gaining their freedom." Colonization was at
once utterly impractical and truly impossible and at the same, the only
practical way to free some slaves.

Paul Finkelman

J. Douglas Deal wrote:

>McCoy says (p.316) that it is "difficult to tell just when Coles became an
>ardent colonizationist, but he later asserted that he had been 'among the
>first to advocate the establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa for
>the removal to & settlement of our Negro population.'" He had tried to
>persuade his own former slaves to move to Liberia, but they refused. See,
>on these and related issues, pp.310-318 of The Last of the Fathers. I
>think it's likely that his project of emancipation took shape before he
>became enthused about colonization, even though the ACS existed by the
>time (1819) Coles actually made his journey to Illinois and freed his
>slaves.
>
>Douglas Deal
>Professor of History and Chair of History Department
>State University of New York at Oswego
>Oswego, NY 13126
>[log in to unmask]
>(315)-312-5632
>
>
>
>
>On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>
>
>>Thanks, Douglas.  What I don't understand is how Coles could have taken
>>his own slaves to Illinois to free them on American soil if he believed in
>>colonization.  That seems a contradiction to me.  I wonder if he embraced
>>the idea of colonization later.  Thanks for the reference.
>>
>>HW
>>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK   74104-3189

918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)

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