Existing comment:
Founding of Sierra Leone, 1787:
During the Revolutionary War, thousands of African Americans joined the British forces. Promised freedom for their allegiance, many actually left with the British after the war and settled in Nova Scotia and the West Indies. Others returned with the British to England. In 1787 interested British leaders established a colony named Sierra Leone on the West Coast of Africa and began resettling free blacks there.
Some Americans closely watched the development of this settlement. The development of such a place, they believed might overcome one obstacle to emancipation -- the unwillingness of many whites to live alongside large numbers of free blacks. There, blacks could be citizens and enjoy civil and political rights. Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Bushrod Washington, Frances Scott Key, Paul Cuffee, and others began to explore possibilities of settling American blacks in Sierra Leone.
Interest in Sierra Leone led to the founding of the American Colonization Society in 1817 and in 1822 the establishment of another West African nation, Liberia, just south of Sierra Leone. Liberia was originally a place for the resettlement of freeborn blacks but soon freed blacks were also encouraged to move to Africa.
Abraham Lincoln supported the Colonization Society and considered colonization of African Americans to be an effective solution to racial friction in the nation. |