1827 COLONIZATION SOCIETY. Proposed "Mass Deportation" of "Free People of Color" to Liberia.

An important report of a proposal before the United States Congress to formally allow the American Colonization Society to draft a plan that would enact a "mass deportation" of all free persons of color to Liberia. The proponents of the Colonization Society believed this to be the only solution on the grounds that meaningful integration between white and black persons was simply neither desirable or possible.

The present document is among the most detailed and clear articulations of the “colonization” perspective opposed by most abolitionists, for reasons which should be obvious from the text.

Extracts:

 The existence of a distinct race of people, in the bosom of the United States who, both by their moral and political condition and their natural complexion, are excluded from a social equality with the great body of the community, invited the serious attention and awakened the anxious solicitude of many American Statesmen . . . in many States, their total number was, as it still continues to be, so great, that universal or general emancipation could not be hazarded without endangering a convulsion fatal to the peace of society. No truth has been more awfully demonstrated by the experience of the present age, than that to render freedom a blessing, man must be qualified for its enjoyment; that a total revolution in his character cannot be instantaneously wrought by the agency of ordinary moral and physical causes or by the sudden of unprepared revolution.

. . .

No where in American has emancipation elevated the coloured race to perfect equality with the white; and, in many States, the disparity is so great that it may be questioned whether the condition of the slave, while protected by his master, however degraded in itself, is not preferable to that of the free negro.

. . .

It is not easy to discern any object to which the pecuniary resources of the Union can be applied, of greater importance to the national security and welfare, than to provide for the removal, in a manner consistent with the rights and interests of the several States, of the free coloured population within their limits.

United States, House of Representatives. Colonization of Free People of Color. March 8, 1827. 19th Congress, 2nd Session. Rep. No. 101. 95pp.

Removed from a larger sammelband with attendant flotsam to spine. Generally good and clean. Text is generally solid, with generally bright pages, and light to moderate foxing.