Against Wind and Tide - Ousmane K. Power-Greene Early American Places

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Quebec in 1807, and then to Maine in 1812. Although his mother’s African origins most greatly limited his life opportunities, it was his father’s liberality that enabled him to live in a manner few African Americans would ever know.101 Aware that his mother’s status, rather than his father’s, determined the types of obstacles he would face in the predominantly white New England community where he lived, he never lost his sense of being an African, and he cast his lot with his fellow blacks from Boston to Port-au-Prince to Liverpool.102

      Russwurm did consider joining the wave of emigrants leaving for Haiti. Winston James points out that Russwurm, having graduated from Bowdoin, planned on leaving for Haiti, yet by October 1826 he still remained in America. He travelled initially to Boston to work at the African Free School, but there was no position for him. Some tried to entice him to travel to Liberia under the ACS banner, but he turned down the offer. Soon he left Boston for New York and the opportunity to join the community of abolitionists seeking to respond to antiblack attacks in newspapers in advance of the forthcoming 1827 emancipation decree in New York State.103

      In the fall of 1827, Russwurm took command of the Freedom’s Journal when Samuel Cornish resigned to direct the African Free School and work as an agent for the New York Manumission Society. When Russwurm began to publish both pro- and anticolonization views in the paper, some free blacks became alarmed. At the time, Russwurm had not made public his drift away from his anticolonizationist stance and toward joining the American Colonization Society’s Liberian colony.104 Yet free blacks in New York and other parts of the North held such negative impressions of the ACS that Russwurm’s inclusion of pro-colonization views raised the suspicion that he had become sympathetic to the Colonization Society. By February 1829, Russwurm did indeed announce his support for the ACS, explaining to his readers that his decision to leave for Liberia had come after prolonged contemplation. Regardless, Russwurm was attacked viciously by his former anticolonization peers in public meetings and in letters to the newspaper.105

      One interpretation of Russwurm’s shift suggests that he came to believe that Liberia was becoming a place where African Americans could build political and social institutions that would challenge white assumptions about black inferiority. Others argue that Russwurm accepted ACS secretary Ralph Gurley’s offer to join him in his colonization mission because Russwurm believed that emancipation would never take place unless “blacks already freed could move to Liberia.” Historian Sandra Sandiford Young argues: “Russwurm’s drive to establish himself in the absence of business opportunities and his abhorrence of the violence perpetuated against free blacks were the likely catalysts for his decision.”106

      Regardless of the reason, some African Americans viewed Russwurm’s shift in sentiment as treasonous.107 Before leaving the paper he did attempt to explain his change of heart through a series of editorials. In the first of these, on February 14, 1829, Russwurm announced, “As our former sentiments have always been in direct opposition to the plan of colonizing us on the coast of Africa: perhaps, so favourable an opportunity may not occur, for us to inform our readers, in an open and candid manner, that our views are materially altered.” By March, he explained that “The change in our views on colonization seems to be a ‘seven days wonder’ to many of our readers. But why, we do not perceive: like others, we are mortal like them, we are liable to change.”108 Russwurm argued that Liberia offered African Americans fertile soil, liberty, and opportunities denied them in America. As for the trials and tribulations that black colonists had endured in Liberia, Russwurm viewed them as analogous to the trials and tribulations of the first American colonists in Roanoke and Plymouth. Even so, some African Americans were unconvinced.

      Although the opportunity to castigate Russwurm presented itself, Samuel Cornish, Russwurm’s former coeditor, passed on the chance. When addressing “the sudden change of the late Editor of ‘The Freedom’s Journal,’ in respect to colonisation,” Cornish wrote that he would only say a few words about it “and I am done.” In brief, he acknowledged that “to me the subject is equally strange as to others,” and he placed it “with the other novelties of the day.”109 Choosing not to attack Russwurm personally, Cornish ended his editorial by stating that

      . . . my views, and the views of the intelligent of my brethren gennerally, are the same as ever in respect of colonisation; we believe it may benefit the few that emigrate, and survive, and as a missionary station, we consider it as a grand and glorious establishment, and shall do all in our power to promote its interests. . . . But as it respects three million that are now in the United States, and the eight millions that in twenty or twenty five years, will be in this country, we think it in no wise calculated, to meet their wants or ameliorate their condition.110

      The American Colonization Society wasted little time publicizing Russwurm’s “Candid Acknowledgment of Error” in the African Repository and Colonial Journal, where an editorial explained that “The Editor of Freedom’s Journal, Mr. Ruswurm [sic], who has for several years, been decidedly and actively opposed to the Colonization Society, in his paper on the 14th of February, candidly and honourably confesses that his opinions in regard to our Institution, have become entirely changed.” There is little question that Russwurm was welcomed as an important ally for the ACS, and his support must have boosted the spirits of many colonizationists.111

      What led John Russwurm to shift from interest in emigration to Haiti and anticolonization beliefs, toward supporting the American Colonization Society and colonization? According to his editorial on February 21, 1829, Russwurm explained, “We have generally wrong ideas of the society and the members thereof. . . .” After reflecting on the successes of the ACS in southern manumissions, he came to believe that “The society have done much in favor of emancipation; for it is a fact, that there are many in the colony, who are indebted for that liberty which they now enjoy to the door which the establishment offers to liberal and humane slave holders to emancipate their slaves.” Regardless of how many ACS members held firm in their opposition to interfering “with the legal rights and obligations of slavery,” Russwurm observed that “as we well know, there are four or five hundred slaves now waiting [for want of funds] to be landed on the shores of Liberia, to become freemen.”112

      When one considers the plight of African Americans in bondage, it should not be too surprising that some would support colonization as a condition of freedom. Russwurm’s account of blacks waiting for passage to Liberia, having never lived as free men and women in territories or states where slavery was illegal, failed to convince the vast majority of northerners that Africa generally, and Liberia specifically, offered more opportunity than Haiti or Canada. Thus, even while some black anticolonizationists recognized the benefit of forming a separate nation or colony outside of U.S. borders, they stood in firm opposition to an organization so closely aligned with slaveholders.

      What complicates the matter is that Russwurm’s positions on slavery and emancipation differed from those of many white colonizationists. While some ACS members believed that colonization must never be allowed to threaten the existence of slavery, Russwurm and his white northern emancipationist associates viewed gradual emancipation as one of the most important reasons to support the ACS. Several notable antislavery advocates came to regard gradual emancipation and colonization as the only realistic way to promote their cause. So he concluded, “As the work of emancipation has thus commenced under the immediate auspices of the society, we cannot consider it out of the natural course of things to conclude that as the means and patronage of the society extend, this great and glorious work will also advance in the same ratio, until the blessed period come, so ardently desired by the Friends when the soil of this happy land shall not be watered by the tears of poor Afric’s sons and daughters.”113 Russwurm continued to argue in favor of colonization after he moved to Liberia and became the editor of the Liberia Herald. Besides, within the ACS there were people pushing its other members to move beyond their evasive stance on emancipation.114

      John Russwurm’s transformation from advocate of Haiti to colonization to Liberia demonstrates the complexity of black emigrationist and colonizationist thought during the 1820s. Once Russwurm decided he was going to “quit America,” the next question centered on where he should go. Haitian emigration remained

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