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Notes -
@DradisPing brought up the founding of Liberia, but in fact that was only one of several large-scale but ultimately abortive attempts to achieve what was called, at the time, “colonization” of freed blacks. Liberia was a project primarily of the American Colonization Society, an organization about which I’ve spoken in this forum numerous times, and which included as its members and supporters an absolute all-star cast of American Founding Fathers and political heavyweights. Unfortunately, the ACS could not achieve the level of funding and logistics necessary to undertake the process on anywhere near the scale they had hoped for. They were not the only ones attempting to make it happen, though.
Abe Lincoln, a supporter of the ACS and of “colonization” since early in his political career, invited a delegation of black political/religious leaders to the White House in 1862 to try and convince them to support the mass deportation of blacks - this time, to a proposed Central American colony which he wanted to name Linconia. The black leaders were opposed, though, as were the various Central American nations who felt threatened and/or had their own territorial designs on the region. After Lincoln’s death, his particular proposal was never pursued by any of his successors.
However, in 1869 Ulysses S. Grant attempted to initiate the annexation of what is now the Dominican Republic (called “Santo Domingo” at the time) for similar purposes. Grant was actually able to secure a treaty proposal with the Dominican president; Grant also sent a committee, which included Frederick Douglass, to investigate the country and the feasibility of annexation. Sadly, this treaty was defeated in Congress.
There was also a private initiative in 1862 by Floridian entrepreneur and plantation owner Bernard Kock to purchase the Haitian island of Île-à-Vache and to invite blacks to come work there, offering Haitian citizenship (and revocation of American citizenship) to any takers. This initiative also failed after the financiers reneged on their promised investment.
Ultimately, the staggering costs and logistical realities of mass deportation of blacks were simply insurmountable at the time, to say nothing of the political difficulties and opposition from various important political constituencies.
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