Against Wind and Tide. Ousmane K. Power-Greene

that grew among free blacks in the North during the 1820s. Although historian Arthur O. White characterizes Saunders’s address as an “ironic moment,” where the “foremost black colonizationist” lectured an anticolonizationist audience about educational uplift and Haitian emigration, the evidence suggests that free blacks in Philadelphia distinguished the emigration proposals initiated by blacks from those of the white-led African colonization project.³² The Haitian emigration movement, he insists, differed from the ACS-derived colonization movement to Africa. Thus, Saunders’s goal was to convince his audience that black Americans had the chance to lead a transnational movement against slavery, the slave trade, and nation building on a grand scale.

      As the idea of Haitian emigration gained popularity throughout the North in the 1820s, some black Americans, such as a man named James Tredwell, wrote directly to Haitian officials to inquire specifically about the benefits of leaving the United States for Haiti. The secretary general of Haiti, Joseph Inginac, responded that “the men of color, who may desire to become Haytians, will find but little difference in our manner of living from that of the places they shall leave. . . . Men of all arts, of all trades—smiths, braziers, tinmen, ship and house carpenters, millwrights, caulkers, coopers, cabinet makers, boot and shoemakers—can earn in this place from six to twelve dollars per week, and even more, according to their talents and activity.”³³

      While this letter reads like an advertisement for Haitian emigration as an alternative to living “under the dominion of a barbarous prejudice” in the United States, Secretary General Inginac expressed his sincere desire to see African Americans enjoy the fruits of liberty in a way that reflected his sense of African diasporic unity. For example, he wrote that “this message, sir, could not but be received with the greatest satisfaction by those who have sacrificed twenty-eight years of their life, in order to efface the traces of a yoke to which other men, who pretend to virtue and justice, had long enchained them.” The secretary-general deliberately and explicitly framed Haitian independence within an oppositional tradition that linked emigration to Haiti with the black American struggle against slavery in the South and racial discrimination in the North.³⁴

      After gaining support from prominent blacks from Boston to Philadelphia, Saunders shifted his appeal to the mostly white antislavery organization, the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and Improving the Condition of the African Race. In 1818, just over a year after the formation of the American Colonization Society, colonization was at the center of debate at the American Convention’s annual meeting, the largest gathering of American Convention members in its history. It was here that Saunders read his “Memoir,” based upon his experience in Haiti, in an effort to build a network of white American philanthropists with the financial wherewithal to fund African American emigration to Haiti. Saunders also utilized this opportunity to differentiate between colonization and emigration, and he expressed to the delegates the general fear among free blacks that a large-scale colonization scheme had been hatched to expel them from the United States. In his conclusion, he explained that a movement encouraging free black emigration to Haiti would undermine the American Colonization Society, while providing blacks with a new home.³⁵ Saunders read his “Memoir” to show these antislavery reformers that Haitian emigration was a more realistic alternative than African colonization.While it is unclear how influential Prince Saunders’s presentation of his “Memoir” was to the members, the outcry against colonization among some of the delegates compelled the Convention’s leadership to establish a committee to investigate colonization.³⁶ This committee was also instructed to investigate Haitian emigration within the context of the ACS’s African colonization project.³⁷

      After deliberating on the merits of colonization, the American Convention’s committee reported back that it found the ACS’s plan unrealistic, and that it would neither improve the lives of African Americans nor eradicate slavery in the United States. The committee determined that the $82,000,000 in estimated expenses was too costly, and the fact that most African Americans rejected colonization only further compromised the ACS in their eyes.³⁸ While committee members believed that colonization and emigration would benefit some free blacks, they declared that ultimately both the ACS colonization plan and the Haitian emigration movement would undermine universal emancipation, which many wholeheartedly supported.³⁹ Thus, little enthusiasm for either colonization to Africa or Haitian emigration took root among white American Convention members in the late 1810s.

      Although the committee rejected colonization or emigration schemes, it did recommend, instead, a black settlement west of the Missouri River, which would allow benevolent whites to support resettled blacks as they lifted themselves from their “degradation.”⁴⁰ This, the committee argued, would benefit the nation because these industrious African Americans were capable of populating the western frontier with upright, Christian communities that would resemble the ones they would leave in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By spreading Christianity to indigenous tribes who viewed the United States and Western culture with disdain, African Americans had the potential to serve as intermediaries for those native peoples on the outskirts of American civilization.⁴¹ The committee’s recommendations were included in the American Convention’s annual statement, which was mailed out to abolition societies across the nation.

      Although these recommendations reflected white American Convention members’ generally positive attitude about black potential, they were also worded in a way that illustrates the paternalistic attitude of white reformers of the time. For example, the committee believed neither African colonization nor resettlement in Haiti had any chance of succeeding on the grounds that African Americans were unprepared for self-rule. Of course, James Forten and Prince Saunders must have balked at such conclusions, even if they were well intended. What made the committee’s recommendations particularly irksome to free black leaders were the specific comments that sounded nearly identical to the types of racialist comments made by members of the American Colonization Society. For example, William Rawle, the president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and a member of the American Convention, opposed colonization yet agreed with one of the main colonizationist tenets: White racial hostility and African American poverty were major obstacles for assimilating blacks within northern cities.⁴² Even so, Rawle was well aware of free blacks’ animosity toward colonization, and for this reason he supported the idea of settling free blacks in the West. Fearful perhaps that Rawle’s comments sounded too much like those of colonizationists, other members reminded him that the Convention’s constitution forbade supporting such a plan, and this may have halted further efforts that year to promote the creation of an African American settlement in the West.

      However, this did not end the debate over colonization.⁴³ When the American Convention met for its next annual meeting in 1819, some members arrived still determined to discuss colonization further. In fact, some of them had heard of blacks who were indeed considering colonization to West Africa, and this contingent called on their peers to reopen debates about colonization and the ACS. These members pointed to a report from the Kentucky Abolition Society affirming that a group of blacks in Kentucky had written to both the American Colonization Society and its Kentucky state auxiliary to request passage to Africa. Thus, they called on their American Convention colleagues to take a closer look at colonization and not dismiss it outright without a more thorough examination of its potential benefits. But as historian Beverly Tomek has shown, in the end the majority of American Convention members held firm in their rejection of colonization as a waste of resources that could better be used for other humanitarian purposes.⁴⁴

      While the Convention had moved on, Prince Saunders toured northern cities in the late 1810s, promoting Haitian emigration and struggling against such skepticism. He hoped his close ties with British abolitionists would help persuade people that his Haitian emigration plan had merit. As he had done in the preface to his Haytian Papers, Saunders frequently reminded white audiences that he was “personally acquainted” with Wilberforce and Clarkson, and that he had their unwavering support for “any object, which might serve to advance the great cause of African improvement and happiness.”⁴⁵ Such references to distinguished English abolitionists, esteemed in the minds of American Convention members, suggest that Saunders understood emigration to Haiti as part of a larger human rights struggle transcending national borders and