SLAVERY IN LIBERIA
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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—A partial reply, at any rate, to those critics who say, in effect, with regard to the recent revelations of slavery in Liberia, " See what sentimental idealism comes to ! The philanthropists' paradise for ex-slaves founded a century ago has become the world's worst centre of slavery," is to be found in a recent book by one of the leading American negroes. In Black Manhattan, published last autumn, Mr. James Weldon Johnson, the negro poet, author and former U.S. Consul in Nicaragua and Venezuela (who has just resigned from his successful secretaryship of the National Association for the Advancement of the Coloured People), deals with the repatriation of American negroes at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This took concrete form in the foundation of the Colonization Society in 1816, and co-operation with the American Government led to the establishment of Liberia. " But," Mr. Johnson points out, " from its inception the Colonization Society was an amalgam of diverse ideas and ideals. The common end was the transporting of free negroes out of the United States. Working side by side were those who were moved by a sincere desire to ameliorate the negroes' condition ; thoSe who wished only to rid themselves of all moral and social responsibility for a troublesome situation ; and those who were determined to banish for ever what they considered a threat to the security of the slave system. The only group interested in the negro not to affiliate was the Abolitionist group. And at no time did the Colonization Society attack slavery as such even in the mildest manner."
Mr. Johnson also points out that all the free negroes strenuously opposed the Society and its operations, and at their Convention at Philadelphia in 1831 they declared that such schemes had the inevitable tendency of strengthening their enemies and retarding the advancement of the free negroes. Twenty years later similar schemes were equally opposed by Frederick Douglass, the negro friend of Lincoln.
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