1. As a Southern Movement toward Emancipation.

This thesis will doubtless meet with the most strenuous opposition; but a careful and impartial study of the writings and addresses of those most prominent in the movement will convince anyone of their profound hope that colonization would eventually lead to the extinction of slavery in the United States.  It must be remembered that at the time of the formation of the Society the pro-slavery feeling in the South was by no means so strong as it became in later years, when the violence of Abolition had fanned it to a white heat.  Indeed, during the whole period before 1832 there seems to have been a prevailing sentiment in favor of emancipation—­at least throughout Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.  But the condition of the free blacks was notoriously such that the humane master hesitated to doom his slaves to it by emancipating them.  The colonizationist hoped, by offering to the free Negro an attractive home in Africa, to induce conscientious masters everywhere to liberate their slaves, and to give rise to a growing popular sentiment condemning slavery, which would in time result in its extinction.  Of course there were those in the Society who would not have subscribed to this doctrine; on the other hand, many held views much more radical.  But it is the men who formed and guided the Society, who wielded its influence and secured its success, whose opinions must be regarded as stamping its policy.

The Constitution of the Society did not touch upon this subject.  It was needless to give unnecessary alarm or offense.  But when in 1833 the Maryland Society adopted its Constitution—­a much larger and more explicit one—­the attitude taken is boldly announced: 

“Whereas the Maryland State Colonization Society desires to hasten as far as they can the period when slavery shall cease to exist in Maryland, and believing that this can best be done by advocating and assisting the cause of colonization as the safest, truest and best auxiliary of freedom under existing circumstances,” etc.

It may well be questioned whether such a plan would ever have succeeded:  but it must not too hastily be called chimerical.  As a practical result it secured the emancipation of several thousand slaves, many of whom were supplied by former owners with money for transportation and establishment in Africa.  What further success it might have had was prevented by the rise of the Abolition Movement.  The intense pro-slavery feeling which this stirred up in the South caused the Colonization Society to be regarded with distrust and even active hostility.  It was accused of secretly undermining slavery and exciting false hopes among the slaves.  It was even said to foment discontent and raise dangerous questions for sinister purposes, and was subjected to bitter attack as “disguised Abolitionism.”