African Colonization by the Free Colored People of the United States

📗 The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, commonly known as the American Colonization Society (ACS), was a group established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey to encourage and support the migration of free African Americans to the continent of Africa. The society helped found settlements in Liberia as a place for free-born or manumitted (but not fugitive) American blacks, close to Sierra Leone where there was already a British colony for former slaves and free blacks. The ACS started out as a beneficent enterprise, aiming to help freed slaves by offering them opportunities they could not have in the US, but by the 1830s many of its former supporters were strongly opposed to it, feeling that rather than being anti-slavery, the ACS was helping to preserve it. This lecture on the African Missions by the Agent for the Ohio branch of the ACS was published in 1854.