Robert Finley founded the American Colonization Society with the intention of resettling freed slaves in Africa. Some former slaves later settled in the Republic of Liberia, which was founded in 1822.
The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 by Presbyterian minister Robert Finley and others. The organization’s members believed that free blacks and whites could not live in an integrated society. Instead, they planned to purchase land in Liberia on the west coast of Africa to relocate free blacks there. Many abolitionists opposed colonization, arguing that its aim was only to remove free blacks from America rather than end slavery itself. Before the end of the Civil War, the Society settled about 10,000 black Americans in...
