Colonization was a movement, gaining in popularity in the 1830s, to send black people to Africa.
In the North, colonization was billed as a moderate anti-slavery approach: Slaves should be freed, but the difficulties posed by racial integration would best be avoided by sending freed slaves to Africa.
In the South, however, colonization was billed as a "neutral" option for dealing with the "problem" of the increasing black population in America.
Some considered it anti-slavery; some did not. Even Henry Clay, himself a prominent Southern slave owner, supported colonization largely as a means of avoiding insurrections (121) .
The most prominent Yale
officials supporting colonization were:
In many ways, colonization was merely an ill-fated, inadequate response to an extreme evil. Its southern supporters were upset to discover the anti-slavery colonizationist literature from the North. Its Northern supporters were upset to discover the uses to which southern slave owners put colonization, such as sending black leaders to Africa so as to retain a more docile slave force.
The colonizationist arguments played an important role in the budding disputes over educational opportunities for African Americans.
On the one hand, abolitionists, who opposed colonization, supported education for African-Americans as a means to promote integration and end racial prejudice. Simeon Jocelyn explained, after the "Negro college" had been stopped in New Haven:
On the other hand, colonizationists often opposed education for free black people. New Haven's Religious Intelligencer reported in July 1831, before the town meeting, that any attempt to raise the status of black people, "whether by founding colleges, or in any other way, [tended] to counteract and thwart the whole plan of colonization" (125). Education helped to integrate free black people into American society. Integration made it less important, and more difficult, to send black people to Africa (126).
Colonization was a moderate response to slavery. Those who could not abide moderation in the face of slavery-especially free black people and abolitionists-could not abide colonization. Whatever we think of such moderation, however, one fact is clear: Colonizationist arguments were used against efforts to
In 1834, the Philadelphia Convention continued its protests, saying of colonizationists:
Each of these "artifices" took place in Connecticut between 1831 and 1835. Perhaps this is why Tappan would say that the colonization society was "a device of Satan and owes its existence to the single motive to perpetuate slavery" (130).