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...

Henry Bibb (1815–1854) was a former slave who became a well-known abolitionist. Bibb escaped from slavery in Kentucky twice but was recaptured both times when he returned to free his wife and daughter. After being transferred among several owners, he finally escaped slavery for good in 1841. He soon began delivering accounts of his life story at anti-slavery gatherings, and in 1849 his Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave was published in 1849. After the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850,...

Charles Lenox Remond (1810–1873) was an abolitionist and orator. Remond was born in Massachusetts to free black parents and was influenced by their abolitionism. In 1832, Remond began working for William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. He later toured as an anti-slavery lecturer with Frederick Douglass, but after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Remond became impatient with the non-violent Garrisonian approach to abolition. After the Civil War, Remond pushed for civil rights for African Americans, further alienating him...