Peculiar Voice

In response to the creation of the American Colonization Society, a Counter Memorial against the group was published by a purported group of free blacks in the District of Columbia. The exact authorship was called into question by the editors in the paper. This chapter uses the Counter Memorial and the question of authorship to explore the instability of voice as it pertained to blackness and colonization.

Peculiar Proposal

Abraham Lincoln was a life-long supporter of colonization. Even after issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, but before it took effect, Lincoln offered a plan for compensated emancipation and colonization in his second Annual Message. This chapter puts Lincoln’s second Annual Message in context with decades of colonization advocacy to show how Lincoln refined the arguments in a last effort for the scheme before the Emancipation Proclamation rendered such efforts moot.

Peculiar Planning

Louis Sheridan was a wealthy merchant and free black man. This chapter examines his negotiations with the American Colonization Society and other groups for passage to Liberia. Despite his willingness and resources, the negotiations were fraught. The analysis of the correspondence illuminates deeper concerns of black identity related to notions of Afro-Pessimism and black optimism.

Conclusion

This chapter traces the legacy of the peculiar rhetorics of colonization in the advocacy of Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Black-led emigrationists movements emerged and grappled with the vestiges of white-led colonization advocacy. Although slavery was abolished and colonization’s position between the extremes no longer existed, the difficult negotiation of identity and belonging through peculiar rhetoric endured.