The Quaker and the Colonist

This chapter examines the correspondence between Samuel McGill, a black emigrant to Liberia, and Moses Sheppard, a white Quaker supporter of the American Colonization Society (ACS). It casts light on the vexed role of the ACS in abolitionist thought of the 1850s, as well as on Quaker notions of interracial communication and friendship. The ACS was founded in 1816 by a coalition of northern reformers and southern slaveholders. Its stated goal was to establish a colony in Africa that was to be populated by American free blacks. The ACS would also help to promote the growth of that colony by assisting free blacks who consented to become colonists. Many of its northern supporters (and some of its southern supporters as well) hoped that these efforts would help make possible the gradual end of slavery in the United States. However, the majority of northern free blacks vigorously opposed the ACS and African colonization, denouncing it as a proslavery plot to remove American free blacks from the land of their birth.