onization Society. This meeting was attended by some of
the most prominent men in the United States, among whom were Henry Clay,
Francis S. Key, Bishop William Meade, John Randolph and Judge Bushrod
Washington.

The American Colonization Society, however, failed to facilitate the
movement of the free Negro from the South and did not promote the general
welfare of the race. The reasons for these failures are many. In the first
place, the society was all things to all men. To the anti-slavery man
whose ardor had been dampened by the meagre results obtained by his
agitation, the scheme was the next best thing to remove the objections of
slaveholders who had said they would emancipate their bondsmen, if they
could be assured of their being deported to foreign soil. To the radical
proslavery man and to the northerner hating the Negro it was well adapted
to rid the country of the free persons of color whom they regarded as the
pariahs of society.[6] Furthermore, although the Colonization Society
became seemingly popular and the various States organized branches of it
and raised money to promote the movement, the slaveholders as a majority
never reached the position of parting with their slaves and the country
would not take such radical action as to compel free Negroes to undergo
expatriation when militant abolitionists were fearlessly denouncing the
scheme.[7]

The free people of color themselves were not only not anxious to go but
bore it grievously that any one should even suggest that they should be
driven from the country in which they were born and for the independence
of which their fathers had died. They held indignation meetings throughout
the North to denounce the scheme as a selfish policy inimical to the
interests of the people of color.[8] Branded thus as the inveterate foe of
the blacks both slave and free, the American Colonization Society effected
the deportation of only such Negroes as southern masters felt disposed to
emancipate from time to time and a few others induced to go. As the
industrial revolution early changed the aspect of the economic situation
in the South so as to make slavery seemingly profitable, few masters ever
thought of liberating their slaves.

Scarcely any intelligent Negroes except those who, for economic or
religious reasons were interested, availed themselves of this opportunity
to go to the land of their ancestors. From the reports of the Colonization
Society we learn that from 18