LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

leaders and expressed “satisfaction” about free blacks’ efforts to initiate a Haitian emigration movement in New York.⁷² Described in the mainstream press as “a man of respectable talents and acquirements, possessing all the finer feelings of men in polished society, and exhibiting the elevated deportment of a gentleman,” Granville explained that Boyer had offered to “defray part of the expense of the transportation of the colonists.”⁷³ Furthermore, Granville claimed to have the authority to arrange for six thousand black American emigrants to set sail to Haiti. Once they arrived, according to Granville, they would be provided with land, citizenship, and temporary provisions.⁷⁴

      In Baltimore, white antislavery newspaper editor Benjamin Lundy had been following Granville’s recruitment efforts in northern cities, writing in one editorial that “it is now supposed, that between four and five thousand coloured persons have already embarked for Hayti, or will have done so before the end of this month, under the direction of citizen Granville, whose arrival in New York was announced on the 13th day of June last.”⁷⁵ Black American interest in Haiti encouraged Lundy and reinforced his belief that “the prejudice of the white people, against the blacks, operates as an almost insurmountable barrier to the progress of emancipation.” This conviction motivated Lundy to put all his efforts behind Haitian emigration. Some whites with power and influence joined Lundy’s Haitian emigration cause, and, according to a report describing a meeting of the Baltimore Emigration Society on September 4, 1824, “the Board proceeded to the election of officers, when the honorable Edward Johnson, Mayor of the city, was chosen President . . . [and] Citizen Granville, Agent from the Haytien [sic] was then introduced to the Society, and explained in a very lucid manner the object of the Government of the Hayti, in sending him on his present mission.” The previous day, the article stated, Baltimore’s “respectable men of colour” met with Granville at the Bethel Church to discuss President Boyer’s offer and African American interest in Haitian emigration. According to an article in the Genius of Universal Emancipation, those who gathered resolved “That we highly appreciate the liberal offers of President Boyer, and that we will use all honourable means to procure a speedy and effectual emigration of the free people of colour . . . [and] That Robert Cowley be appointed to take the names of persons disposed to emigrate, to whom application may be made as early as possible, at the African Bethel Church, in Fish street.”⁷⁶

      In New York, Peter Barker wrote a letter to Lundy explaining that he planned to travel to Haiti as a representative of the Haytien Emigration Society of New York. The letter claimed that he intended to “make definitive arrangements with president Boyer for the future transportation of coloured persons to Hayti.” Prominent African American leader Peter Williams joined Barker “as agents of this Society, to confer with President Boyer on this important subject of Emigration, investigate the situation of the emigrants, and settle upon a solid basis the order and arrangement of our future transactions.”⁷⁷

      By January 1825, African American emigrants living in Haiti had begun to send letters describing their experiences to family and friends in the United States. While, according to Lundy, “they are generally well pleased with their new situation,” and although “the government has completely fulfilled the reasonable expectations of all who have thus sought an asylum from the tyranny of prejudice under the fostering wing of its protection,” nevertheless, rumors were circulating in the United States that African American emigrants were miserable in Haiti. Lundy seemed relieved that the most recent letters he had received “contain a complete refutation of many of those rumors,” which he felt should put to rest potential emigrants’ fears about embarking on a voyage to the Caribbean island. One letter from a black man from Baltimore claimed, “I like the place much; we have been sick, but are all well at this time. It is much better here than I expected to find it.” In another letter, an emigrant remarked, “The district is well watered by numerous streams, and seems only to require the art and industry of man.” He concluded that “it appears that our choice of this place was wisely directed.”⁷⁸

      Lundy believed that the negative rumors he had encountered only reflected a growing resentment from certain segments of the nation that did not want to see Haitian emigration succeed. According to Lundy, “Late accounts from every quarter, in fact, tend to corroborate the sentiment expressed in the last number of this work, viz. that the unfavourable reports respecting the situation of the emigrants to Hayti, were circulated by persons unfriendly to the removal of our coloured people to that island.”⁷⁹ This group, he deduced, represented slaveholding interests and others who simply failed to understand the great benefit of Haitian emigration. Lundy explained that “there are, it is true, some honest well-meaning persons who are conscientiously scrupulous as to the propriety of it; but these are, comparatively, few in number; and I hesitate not to believe that their doubts arise from a want of the necessary information.”⁸⁰

      Lundy’s argument in favor of Haitian emigration was, of course, taken as a challenge to those who favored African colonization, and this led to a counterattack against Lundy in white pro-colonization newspapers. One supporter of the ACS wrote a letter to Lundy claiming that Lundy’s “interesting paper, endeavours to prejudice your readers against the members of the American Colonization Society, by remarks, as unfounded as uncharitable . . . [and] there has been no opposition of any description, to the emigration to Hayti, of such free blacks, as may prefer the government of President Boyer.” According to the letter, the American Colonization Society applauded President Boyer’s offer regarding African American emigration to Haiti. Furthermore, it stated that “what has been denominated ‘strenuous opposition’ was in fact, applause for the object of President Boyer: but a persevering adherence to the ends, which the Colonization Society have kept steadily in view; the formation on the coast of Africa, of a line of colonies already existed in Sierra Leone . . . the advocates for African colonization have never opposed the wishes of any, but their own members, to aid by money, or moral influence, the emigration to Hayti.”⁸¹

      In his defense, Lundy explained that “In the first place, I have ever been aware, that a considerable portion of its [the ACS’s] members were averse to the abolition of slavery in this country. This has been admitted by one of the managers. Secondly, although many of them desire the riddance of the whole of the black population, it appears very unwise to choose a situation for that purpose, so far distant, that it will be almost impossible to effect the object.”⁸² Certainly Lundy’s abolitionist network provided him with inside information about the Colonization Society. As an advocate of gradual emancipation, Lundy had supported the principles behind colonization, yet he believed that the ACS was controlled by southern slaveholders. In his response to one claim that the ACS never discouraged blacks from Haitian emigration, he asked with a hint of sarcasm, “Why did an influential member of the Society aforesaid, from Virginia, repair to New York, and ‘strenuously’ oppose the emigration to Hayti, in a meeting [not of the Auxiliary Colonization Society, but] of the citizens generally, who had assembled for the purpose of considering the propriety of seconding the propositions of President Boyer?”⁸³

      This conflict between Lundy and the American Colonization Society foreshadowed the battle between the ACS and William Lloyd Garrison, Nathanial Paul, and other advocates of “immediate” emancipation in the early 1830s. And, like other well-known white abolitionists, Lundy’s opinions mirrored those of black leaders who often voiced their anticolonization views at public meetings or, after 1827, in Freedom’s Journal.⁸⁴ Lundy challenged ACS members to prove that their mission on the coast of West Africa sought to end the illegal practice of trading slaves nearly two decades after Great Britain and the United States had banned it in 1807 and 1808, respectively. He also doubted the credibility of colonizationists who claimed to share anti–slave trade beliefs, arguing that they only “talk loudly” about their efforts to end the slave trade “now as [the slave trade] has become unpopular.” Lundy argued: “Even those among them who are opposed to emancipation, make [the slave trade] the frequent theme of declamation . . . because the measures adopted for its annihilation do not prevent them from procuring as many slaves as they desire.”⁸⁵

      Colonizationists refused to give up, and they continued to mail Lundy letters defending the ACS, which Lundy regularly published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation. One

Скачать книгу