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Influential abolitionists were also attacking this policy of the colonizationists. William Jay, however, delivered against them such diatribes and so wisely exposed their follies that the advocates of colonization learned to consider him as the arch enemy of their cause. Jay advocated the education of the Negroes for living where they were.
Meantime they were for obeying the Constitution, although the obligation to restore fugitive slaves was felt to be obnoxious, and there grew up a disposition to avoid compliance with it. The "colonizationists" diminished in number. There were various types and degrees of anti-slavery sentiment.
In 1821 Lundy began publishing his Genius of Universal Emancipation, seconded, from 1829, by the more radical Garrison. In 1831 Garrison founded the Liberator, whose motto, "immediate and unconditional emancipation," was intended as a rebuke to the tame policy of the colonizationists.
When the industrial revolution with the attendant rise of the plantation cotton culture made abolition in the South improbable, some of them became colonizationists, hoping to destroy the institution through deportation, which would remove the objection of certain masters who would free their slaves provided they were not left in the States to become a public charge.
They educated for work in Liberia a number of youths, who, given the opportunity to attend good schools, demonstrated the capacity of the colored people. More important factors than the colonizationists were the free people of color. Brought into the rapidly growing urban communities, these Negroes began to accumulate sufficient wealth to provide permanent schools of their own.
The more liberal colonizationists endeavored to furnish free persons of color the facilities for higher education with the hope that their enlightenment would make them so discontented with this country that they would emigrate to Liberia.
Many thinkers controlling public opinion then gave audience to the colonizationists and circles once closed to them were thereafter opened. There was, therefore, a tendency toward a more systematic effort than had hitherto characterized the endeavors of the colonizationists. The objects of their philanthropy were not to be stolen away and hurried off to an uncongenial land for the oppressed.
In their ranks were all sorts: gradualists and immediatists, advocates of unconditional emancipation, and colonizationists, thus making it impossible to discuss the main question without excitement. Therefore all discussion was discouraged and even forbidden. The Society never counted among its members many colored persons.
In fact, many of the colored schools of the free States were supported by ardent colonizationists. The later plan of most colonizationists, however, was to educate the emigrating Negroes after they settled in Liberia. Handsome sums were given for the establishment of schools and colleges in which professorships were endowed for men educated at the expense of churches and colonization societies.
If the Colonizationists will work zealously and judiciously in this department, pretend to do nothing more, and let others work in another and more efficient way, they will deserve the thanks of the country; but while it is believed that they do all the good which can be done in this important cause, they will do more harm in America, than they can atone for in Africa.
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