In recent years, there has been an outpouring of scholarship on the African colonization movement. The one major shortcoming of this burgeoning literature, however, is that scholars have failed to define exactly what they mean by “colonization.” The result has been a discourse akin to the proverbial conversation among the blind men who each describe a different part of the elephant. No one has done more to rectify this historiographical problem than Beverly C. Tomek, whose superlative book delineates the disparate versions of colonization that black and white Pennsylvanians espoused over time, and how their myriad ideas fit within the larger anti-slavery movement.
Tomek makes a good case for examining Pennsylvania. The state's residents championed different varieties of colonization, as well as two other brands of anti-slavery activism (i.e. the “gradualism” associated with the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and the immediatism associated with Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society). In illuminating the robust and diverse debate among anti-slavery Pennsylvanians, Tomek explicitly challenges Richard Newman's argument that the epicenter of the anti-slavery movement shifted from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts during the early antebellum period.
According to Tomek, white Pennsylvanians had long fretted about the institution of slavery and the presence of black people. During the colonial and Revolutionary eras, they concocted a two-pronged strategy to resolve these concerns. First, they sought to limit the size of the black population by restricting the importation of Africans and, on occasion, devising colonization schemes. Second, they aimed to control extant African Americans by instilling within them habits of industry, thrift, and morality, a program of “uplift” that often received the support of affluent black leaders such as James Forten and Richard Allen and resembled efforts to keep the white rabble in line. The principles of “exclusion” and “control” would shape all varieties of anti-slavery thought in subsequent years.
Tomek uses case studies to explore different strains of colonizationist sentiment. Essayist and publisher Matthew Carey represents a politically oriented version of colonization that promised to strengthen the Union by dismantling an inefficient, lamentable system of slavery and by removing an inassimilable, dangerous population of free blacks. Philanthropist Elliot Cresson exemplifies the “humanitarian” colonizationists who badgered the national ACS to take stronger anti-slavery measures even it if meant alienating southern allies, secured the liberation and emigration of hundreds of southern slaves, endorsed black education and other ameliorative programs, sought African American leaders’ support, and insisted that Liberia would redeem Africa and demonstrate black people's capacity for self-governance, all done with the goal of “uplifting” black folk everywhere. The African American sailmaker James Forten was at first intrigued by the “humanitarian” colonizationists’ agenda, for he believed that selective emigration under black leadership might help in the fight for abolition and racial equality, but once Forten realized that ACS leaders regarded colonization as a program for and not by black people, he joined the black masses in resisting the ACS, lobbied white reformers to do likewise, and trumpeted immediatism (though he never forsook the idea of a small-scale, black-initiated emigration project). More so than most white colonizationists, Philadelphian Benjamin Coates understood such perspectives and embraced them. A Quaker who befriended Henry Highland Garnet and Liberian President Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Coates envisioned colonization as a black-led venture that would entail the emigration of some skilled black Americans, who would Christianize Africans and help them cultivate cotton, a venture would render southern slavery unprofitable and pave the way for emancipation and equality in America. Similar ideas about how colonization could affect the economies of Africa and America were proffered by Pittsburgh's Martin R. Delany, who believed that black uplift had to be achieved without white assistance; that elite men like himself were uniquely qualified to lead the way; and that other black people, and especially those in Africa, needed their aid. In the end, Delany's ambitious plans and inadequate funding compelled him to seek white allies, a fitting metaphor for how the colonization movement actually functioned: those who championed different strains of colonization often quarreled, but they sometimes worked together as well.
The same can be said of colonizationists’ relationship with “gradual” abolitionists and “immediatists.” Indeed, because Tomek sees virtues and shortcomings in all forms of anti-slavery activism, she concludes that the individuals “who were most influential in the long run were the ones who were adaptable to both social and political tactics and willing to explore a number of different antislavery avenues” (239).
An insightful work, Tomek's book will be required reading for scholars who are working on the colonization movement and all others who wish to remain conversant with historical debates over the anti-slavery crusade.
