A freedmen’s school (National Park Service)
As news of the Union victory at Fort Fisher (North Carolina) continues spreading throughout the North and South, U.S. General William T. Sherman, still in Savannah, is anxious to march into South Carolina. To his dismay, rain and high water serve to delay his departure.
Today the American Colonization Society, an organization supported by many Baptists, convenes in Washington, D.C. for its annual meeting.
One report notes the continuing interest and financial support of the organization’s efforts to relocate American blacks to Liberia. Moreover, the ACS now seemingly has a monopoly on colonization: “Objections have disappeared, and other schemes of colonization have become obsolete.”
The presidential address includes encouraging words about Liberia College, while observing that independence is the “besetting problem” confronting the nation of Liberia: “This country will have to work out its own destiny.”
The American Civil War is also acknowledged:
It is with sincere regret that I have to refer to the continuance of the American contest, in which, as a people, we cannot but feel the deepest interest. As a part of the African race, and as immediately allied to the victims of American slavery, the war is of enormous importance to us, and I cannot but express the ardent hope that it may be brought to a speedy termination, in such a manner as to secure the complete triumph of justice over injustice, and of right over wrong.
Beneath the positive words voiced this week concerning colonization, currents of uncertainty ripple. Few freedmen are expressing interest in moving to Africa, even as the efforts of the U.S. government to provide former slaves with land and education along the Southern seaboard are embraced with great enthusiasm.
Justice and right, one might conclude, point more to a future of black Americans living as equals to whites on American soil, more so than separating the races by transplanting black Americans to Liberia.
Sources: The African Repository, Volume XLI, Washington: American Colonization Society, 1865, pp. 65ff (link); image (link)
