CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository EXPORTING THE RACIAL REPUBLIC: AFRICAN COLONIZATION, NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S. EXPANSION, 1776-1864 BY BRANDON MILLS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Kristin Lee Hoganson, Chair, Co-Director of Research Professor David R Roediger, Co-Director of Research Professor Antoinette M Burton Professor Frederick E Hoxie ABSTRACT The effort to create a colony of African Americans on the west coast of Africa was one of the most celebrated and influential movements in the United States during the first half of the 19th century. While historians have often viewed African colonization through the lens of domestic anti-slavery politics, colonization grew from an imperial impulse which promised to transform the identities of black colonists and indigenous Africans by helping them to build a democratic nation from the foundation of a settler colony. By proposing that persons of African descent could eventually become self- governing subjects, the liberal framework behind colonization offered the possibility of black citizenship rights, but only within racially homogenous nation-states, which some proponents of colonization imagined might lead to a “United States of Africa.” This dissertation examines how the notion of expanding democratic ideals through the export of racial nationhood was crucial to the appeal of colonization. It reveals how colonization surfaced in several crucial debates about race, citizenship, and empire in the antebellum United States by examining discussions about African Americans’ revolutionary claims to political rights, the bounds of US territorial expansion, the removal of native populations in North America, and the racialization of national citizenship, both at home and abroad. By examining African colonization from these perspectives, this dissertation argues that the United States’ efforts to construct a liberal democracy defined by white racial identity were directly connected to the nation’s emerging identity as a defender and exporter of political liberty throughout the world. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was made possible by the support of countless individuals. First, I must thank the members of my doctoral committee for helping this project along from beginning to end. Collectively, their guidance has advanced my dissertation’s intellectual agenda in innumerable ways. In my co-advisors, Dave Roediger and Kristin Hoganson, I have benefited from the careful guidance of two brilliant scholars and nurturing mentors. From the outset, Kristin has steadfastly insisted that my work had great merit and potential. Her wise guidance and careful attention to detail has helped me produce a piece of scholarship I can be proud of. Dave has consistently confronted me with unexpected and challenging questions which have deepened my work tremendously. I am particularly indebted to his teaching and mentoring early in my graduate career when he planted many of the seeds that would reach full development in my dissertation research. Antoinette Burton’s encouragement and criticism of my work has consistently pushed me to always get out of the weeds of historiography and situate my ideas as broadly as possible. Fred Hoxie’s advice has been essential to the development of several aspects of the project and I credit his thoughtful comments on chapter drafts with helping me clarify and narratively frame many of my ideas. I would also like to thank the various organizations which have given me financial and institutional support during the course of my graduate career. This dissertation has been supported by a Travel Scholarship from the Graduate College, Pre- Doctoral Fellowship from University of Illinois, and Dissertation and Widenor Teaching Fellowships from the Department of History. A fellowship from the Gilder Lehrman iii Institute helped to fund my travel for research and the Virginia Winship Memorial Fund provided fellowship support throughout my entire PhD program at Illinois. Like all historians, I am deeply indebted to the librarians and administrative staff working at the various archives and libraries where I have conducted my research. While the individuals are too numerous to name, I’d like to thank the staff at the Boston Public Library, Cincinnati Historical Society, Connecticut Historical Society, Countway Library of Harvard Medical School, Duke University Library Special Collections, Filson Historical Society, Harvard Law School Library, Indiana Historical Society, Library of Virginia, Massachusetts Historical Society, New York Historical Society, New York Public Library, Ohio Historical Society, Ohio State Archives, Pennsylvania Historical Society, Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, University of North Carolina Library Special Collections, University of Virginia Library Special Collections, and Virginia Historical Society. I would like to extend a special thanks to Elissa Englund and Adam Weimer who housed me at different points during my research travels. I am also very thankful to my many colleagues, both graduate students and faculty, who have contributed feedback and guidance to my work over the years. I would like to thank: Jeff Ahlman, Jean Allman, Jim Barrett, Andy Bruno, Vernon Burton, Sarah Frohardt-Lane, Janine Giordano Drake, Ian Hartman, Jason Kozlowski, Anna Kurhajic, Jason Opal, and Liz Pleck. I especially thank the members of my cohort who were crucial allies during the uncertain and formative years of graduate school: Julilly Kohler- Hausmann, Anthony Sigismondi, Kwame Holmes, and Brian Yates. All of these individuals gave me thoughtful criticism at some point during the course of this project; iv however, more importantly they have formed the basis of an extended family which continues to this day. Lastly, the only reason I am here today is because of the unwavering love and support of my family. I could not ask for two more supportive parents than Diane and Bernie Mills. From an early age, they encouraged me to work hard and trust myself, two qualities that have proven essential to completing a dissertation. Jenna’s warmth, humor, and generosity have often lifted my spirits over the seemingly endless years in school. The love from my family has given me a foundation that has allowed me to achieve things I would never have thought possible. Amy deserves the most thanks of all. She has been there from the very beginning and has shaped every facet of my work in countless ways. During the lowest of lows, she was the only thing that prevented me from completely shutting down. She has copy-edited more pages than either of us care to remember. As an intellectual peer, she has been both my biggest supporter and toughest critic. Most of all, she has simply loved me. That has meant more to me than I can adequately explain here. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………...…….1 CHAPTER 2: A NATION ONCE REMOVED: THE ORIGINS OF COLONIZATION IN AN AGE OF DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION AND CONTINENTAL EMPIRE, 1776-1817……………………………………………………………………………..…15 CHAPTER 3: CONSTRUCTING RACIAL REPUBLICS: AFRICAN COLONIZATION, INDIAN REMOVAL, AND COMPETING VISIONS OF US EXPANSION, 1817 – 1832…………………………………………………………...…59 CHAPTER 4: “THEY MAY IN SOME OTHER PLACE ENJOY HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES”: AFRICAN COLONIZATION AND THE REPRODUCTION OF RACIALIZED CITIZENSHIP, 1829-1851………………………………………….…114 CHAPTER 5: “THE UNITED STATES OF AFRICA”: LIBERIAN INDEPENDENCE AND THE CONTESTED MEANING OF A BLACK REPUBLIC, 1844-1854……....167 CHAPTER 6: EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………...220 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………….…………………………...........234 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “The African Colonization scheme… is one of the best foreign projects in which we can engage because it has its basis on what men can do for themselves, and not what we can do for them. We hope to bless them only as we can instruct them to bless themselves. Their abundance is from their industry. Their progress from their arts, their welfare from the liberty they can learn to maintain.”1 – newspaper editorial, 1817 “The double bind of freedom [is]: being freed from slavery and free of resources, emancipated and subordinated, self-possessed and indebted, equal and inferior, liberated and encumbered, sovereign and dominated, citizen and subject.”2 – Saidiya Hartman W.E.B. Du Bois once tersely summarized his view of the antebellum African colonization movement: “It was inadequately conceived and not altogether sincere.”3 On the face of it, his assessment is absolutely accurate. Judged on its own terms, African colonization was nearly a complete failure. While the effort succeeded in creating an African colony, it failed to achieve the designers’ stated aims of ending the international slave trade or removing large numbers of African Americans from the United States. The resulting nation, the Republic of Liberia, was weak, ineffectual, and plagued by instability. It was decidedly not a vast African empire of civilization, commerce, and Christianity imagined by its promoters. As the abolitionist movement highlighted, the colonization movement’s official motivations offered a thin veil for the racist attitudes, and in some cases pro-slavery sympathies, that undergirded