"Can there be a nobler cause," Clay said, "than that which, whilst it proposes to rid our country of a useless and pernicious, if not dangerous portion of its population, contemplates the spreading of the arts of civilized life, and the possible redemption from ignorance and barbarism of a benighted quarter of the globe?"
The AME Church, under Richard Allen, organized protests against the plan and what they feared would be forced emigration of those most committed to the complete abolition of slavery. Nonetheless, Daniel Coker, an AME minister from Baltimore, packed his bags and set off for what would become Liberia, establishing a beachhead for missionary activity there. By 1847, Liberia was an independent country, and would become prominent in the thinking of two towering figures in the history of black Americans who were also men of faith: Alexander Crummell and Edward Blyden.
Crummell, a freeborn New Yorker and an Episcopalian minister, had been a prominent critic of colonization. But after enduring a series of indignities from his fellow Episcopalians, he embarked for Liberia in 1853. By then more than 8,000 African-Americans had settled in Liberia. Using their control of political and educational affairs and their American cultural orientation, they drew lines of caste between themselves and the indigenous people. Crummell, too, held notions of African "crudeness" but also championed "African nationality." He maintained that Africa had been the true cradle of civilization.