he problem of the Negro, saying,
"While this process is going on the colored classes are gradually
diffusing themselves throughout the country and are making steady
advances in intelligence and refinement, and if half the zeal were
displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in the vain
and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual and
moral improvement would be steady and rapid." William Lloyd Garrison was
untiring and merciless in flaying the inconsistencies and selfishness of
the colonization organization. In an editorial in the _Liberator_, July
9, 1831, he charged the Society, first, with persecution in compelling
free people to emigrate against their will and in discouraging their
education at home; second, with falsehood in saying that the Negroes
were natives of Africa when they were no more so than white Americans
were natives of Great Britain; third, with cowardice in asserting that
the continuance of the Negro population in the country involved dangers;
and finally, with infidelity in denying that the Gospel has full power
to reach the hatred in the hearts of men. In _Thoughts on African
Colonisation_ (1832) he developed exhaustively ten points as follows:
That the American Colonization Society was pledged not to oppose the
system of slavery, that it apologized for slavery and slaveholders, that
it recognized slaves as property, that by deporting Negroes it increased
the value of slaves, that it was the enemy of immediate abolition, that
it was nourished by fear and selfishness, that it aimed at the utter
expulsion of the blacks, that it was the disparager of free Negroes,
that it denied the possibility of elevating the black people of the
country, and that it deceived and misled the nation. Other criticisms
were numerous. A broadside, "The Shields of American Slavery" ("Broad
enough to hide the wrongs of two millions of stolen men") placed side by
side conflicting utterances of members of the Society; and in August,
1830, Kendall, fourth auditor, in his report to the Secretary of the
Navy, wondered why the resources of the government should be used "to
colonize recaptured Africans, to build homes for them, to furnish them
with farming utensils, to pay instructors to teach them, to purchase
ships for their convenience, to build forts for their protection, to
supply them with arms and munitions of war, to enlist troops to guard
them, and to employ the army and navy in their defens