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superficially good record, is the very sort of association to attract respectable, rich, lazy, and conservative people.
The Colonization Society in 1830 presented an extreme case of sham reform.
It had been started in 1816 in Virginia, with the avowed object of transporting free negroes to Africa.
It had been pushed with diligence and paraded as the cure for the evils of slavery, and its benevolence was assumed on all hands.
Everybody of consequence belonged to it. Garrison, himself, joined it in good faith.
This Colonization Society had, by an invisible process, half conscious, half unconscious, been transformed into a serviceable organ and member of the Slave Power.
In order to investigate the real functions of this society, Garrison, in 1831, obtained from its headquarters at Washington, the files of its documents and of its newspaper, the African Repository.
“The result of his labors,” says Oliver Johnson, “was seen in a bulky pamphlet, that came from the press in the spring, entitled ‘Thoughts on African Colonization; or, an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society; together ’”
Boston, the. Atlantic Monthly. Press, 1921.
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