From the opposite extreme of opinion the Society suffered assault still more violent.  William Lloyd Garrison, in his intemperate zeal for “immediate emancipation without expatriation,” could see nothing but duplicity and treachery in the motives of its adherents.  His “Thoughts on Colonization” hold up the movement to public odium as the sum of all villainies, and in the columns of the Liberator no insult or reproach is spared.  His wonderful energy and eloquence brought over to his camp a number of the Society’s friends, and enabled him in his English campaign to exhibit it in a light so odious that he actually brought back a protest signed by the most eminent anti-slavery men of that country.

Assailed on one side and on the other the Society, as we have seen, serenely pursued its course.  Apparently it did not suffer.  But it can scarcely be doubted that its growth and expansion were seriously checked by the cross-fire to which it was subjected.  Among the negroes themselves prejudices were industriously disseminated, and everything was done to make them believe themselves duped and cheated.

From these reasons colonization never reached the proportions hoped for by those who looked to it for the gradual extinction of slavery.  But we should not fail to recognize in the movement an earnest and noble, if too ambitious, effort to solve, without violence or bloodshed, a problem only half disposed of by Lincoln’s edict and the Fifteenth Amendment.

2. As a Check to the Slave-Trade.

The coast upon which the colony was established had for several hundred years been one of the chief resorts of the slave dealers of the western shores of Africa.  Their “factories” were situated at numerous points on both sides of the early settlements.  The coast tribes, broken up and demoralized by the traffic, waged ceaseless wars for the sole purpose of obtaining for the trader a supply of his commodity.  It was their only means of getting supplies of the products and manufactures of civilization; and, as we have seen, when they found the presence of the newcomers an obstacle to their chief industry, they took up arms to expel them.

Until the year 1807 there was no restriction whatever on the traffic, and the proportions which it reached, the horrors it entailed, are almost incredible.  Sir T.F.  Buxton estimated on careful calculations that the trade on the western coast resulted in a loss to Africa of 500,000 persons annually.  At length the progress of humanity drove England to declare war on the infamous traffic, and her cruisers plied the length of the continent to prevent infractions of her decree.  At enormous expense the entire coast was put in a state of blockade.

The result was mortifying.  Instead of disappearing, the exportation of slaves was found actually to increase, while the attending horrors were multiplied.  Small, swift cutters took the place of the roomy slave-ships of older days, and the victims, hurriedly crowded into slave-decks but a few feet high, suffered ten-fold torments on the middle passage from inadequate supplies of food and water.