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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

Sebastian N. Page
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

From the Revolution to the Civil War, white Americans believed that the freedom of the slaves, should it ever come to pass, must end in blacks and whites living hundreds, even thousands of miles apart. Most famously, a coalition of slaveholders and reformers founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1816–17, which carved out the West African settlement of Liberia for black expatriates. But a vast array of contemporaries, black and white, American and foreign, also staked their claim to plans for moving African Americans from the United States, especially to other parts of the Americas. African American emigrants left for Canada, Haiti, and the British West Indies as well as for Liberia, while white institutions and individuals variously encouraged and resisted schemes to resettle them across the Caribbean and Latin America. Contemporaries were so sure that they would make at least one plan the locus of an African American exodus that, when the Civil War destroyed slavery in the United States at unexpected speed, they found themselves with few intellectual foundations on which to build a biracial nation.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Introduction
  • Sebastian N. Page, University of Oxford
  • Book: Black Resettlement and the American Civil War
  • Online publication: 21 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316493915.001
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  • Introduction
  • Sebastian N. Page, University of Oxford
  • Book: Black Resettlement and the American Civil War
  • Online publication: 21 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316493915.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Sebastian N. Page, University of Oxford
  • Book: Black Resettlement and the American Civil War
  • Online publication: 21 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316493915.001
Available formats
×