[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] ing something other than Americans. That some- thing would have to be outside the United States. This, of course, was the position of the Ameri- can Colonization Society, founded late in 1816, three years after Forten published his Letters from a Man of 144 RACE AND CI TI ZENSHI P I N THE EARLY REPUBLI C Colour. A peculiar mixture of southerners and north- erners, of pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates, of conservatives and liberals, the ACS proposed to pu- rify the nation through the removal of dark-skinned residents, in effect announcing that America was a white man s republic.26 Black Philadelphians such as James Forten and Richard Allen at first believed that emigrationism would be voluntary and occur on black terms, not white. They would shortly change their minds. For black Philadelphians, the question of national identity came to a dramatic head on a cold, wintry night in January 1817. Believing themselves a part of a biracial republic, not yet equal but progressing to- ward full citizenship, they flocked to a clamorous meeting in the city s main black sanctuary, Richard Allen s African Methodist Episcopal Church. Squeez- ing his way forward to the pulpit, Forten marveled at three thousand men packing the main floor, over- flowing the U-shaped balcony, and spilling into the street. Nearly three quarters of the city s black men had gathered to speak their minds on citizenship and national identity. Forten had been pondering the meeting of white political leaders who three weeks before in Washington had founded the ACS and is- sued statements that repatriating free black Ameri- 145 THE FOR GOTTEN FI FTH cans to Africa was the only solution to the nation s growing racial problem. Forten thought of his Rhode Island friend Paul Cuffe, the Afro-Indian ship cap- tain who for more than a decade had been promot- ing resettlement in Africa, believing that black Amer- icans had no future in the United States.27 So Forten, chairing the meeting, rose to address a sea of dark faces. The man who had staked his iden- tity as an American and had prospered in the city of his birth called on Philadelphia s three notable black ministers Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and John Gloucester. All spelled out the advantages of return- ing to ancestral homelands. Then Forten endorsed the idea, reluctantly admitting that black Americans  will never become a people until they come out from amongst the white people. Now came time for a straw vote. Forten called first for the  ayes, those fa- voring a return to Africa. Not a voice was heard nor a hand lifted. Then he called for those opposed to this. One tremendous  no arose, Forten later wrote,  as if it would bring down the walls of the building . . . There was not a soul that was in favor of going to Af- rica. 28 The emotional meeting at Richard Allen s church in 1817, repeated throughout the nation over the next 146 RACE AND CI TI ZENSHI P I N THE EARLY REPUBLI C few years, had an annealing effect among black Americans. The black masses instinctively under- stood what some of their leaders did not that while some white ACS leaders were sincere about helping black Americans and others were zealous to send black Christian missionaries to convert all Africans to Christianity, the colonization scheme was mostly the instrument of southerners whose main interest was a massive deportation of free blacks while pro- viding cover for slavery s expansion. Forten, Allen, and other black leaders in Philadel- phia would dabble in colonization schemes in Can- ada and Haiti in the future, but never again would they speak on behalf of repatriation to Africa. The unanimously endorsed resolution presented after the vote taken at Richard Allen s church expressed a new commitment to abolitionism and racial equality.  Whereas our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, the resolution affirmed,  we their descendants feel our- selves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil which their blood and sweat ma- nured. Again referring to the founding documents on which common citizenship was based, black Phil- adelphians avowed  that any measure . . . having the 147 THE FOR GOTTEN FI FTH tendency to banish us from her bosom, would not only be cruel, but in direct violation of those princi- ples which have been the boast of the republic. 29 Local supporters of the American Colonization Society still retained hope to win black northerners over to the idea of returning to Africa and in this way render moot the entire matter of black citizenship rights. In mid-1818, a Philadelphia newspaper printed a faux debate between William Penn (dead for almost a century), the recently deceased Absalom Jones, founder and minister of Philadelphia s St. Thomas African Episcopal Church; and Paul Cuffe, James Forten s friend who supported colonization of free black Americans to Sierra Leone. In the  dialogues on the African colony, Jones rejected repatriation as a deportation scheme designed to smother the efforts of abolitionists. Cuffe tried to convince him otherwise, and Penn, having consulted George Wash- ington (also dead since 1799), reported that the founding father greatly favored the return to Africa for the good of black Americans. Finally, Absalom Jones swallowed his doubts that whatever pleased slavemasters could benefit free blacks.  My objec- tions have been refuted, he said in this mock debate;  my scruples vanquished. And all my doubts satis- fied, Heaven speed the undertaking! 30 148 RACE AND CI TI ZENSHI P I N THE EARLY REPUBLI C Few black Philadelphians hearing or reading the dialogues packed their bags, left the city, and headed home to Africa. Rather they remonstrated in 1818 and 1819 against the Colonization Society and spoke with their feet when the ACS dispatched the first two ships to establish the colony of Liberia in 1819 and 1820. Of about 10,000 free black Philadelphians, only twenty-two joined the expedition, though economic conditions in the city had worsened greatly. A few years later, another recruitment campaign netted only another handful for settlement in Liberia. By 1818, Tench Coxe must have wished that Phila- delphia s black masses had opted for immigration to West Africa. The deep depression that followed the end of the War of 1812, the most severe ever experi- enced in the northern cities, may have shattered his earlier optimism about the assimilation of free black people and their potential as respectable citizens. Or had he fallen in line with the Jeffersonian faith in state-centered democracy, which was leading toward restrictions on black citizenship? Or had Philadel- phia s white workingmen, who formed the Jefferso- nian party s spine, changed his mind as they grew in- creasingly rabid on race issues? Or had the essays of men such as Charles Caldwell and Thomas Branagan reconfigured his thinking? Whatever the causes, Coxe 149 THE FOR GOTTEN FI FTH reversed course, now viewing free African Americans concentrated in northern cities as an impoverished, uneducated mass for whom the rights of full citizen- ship were inappropriate. But if free black people were a pariah group, how [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl blacksoulman.xlx.pl