Nominal equality was forced on the South at
the point of the sword and the North reluctantly removed most of its
barriers against the blacks. Some, still thinking, however, that the two
races could not live together as equals, advocated ceding the blacks the
region on the Gulf of Mexico.[1] This was branded as chimerical on the
ground that, deprived of the guidance of the whites, these States would
soon sink to African level and the end of the experiment would be a
reconquest and a military regime fatal to the true development of American
institutions.[2] Another plan proposed was the revival of the old
colonization idea of sending Negroes to Africa, but this exhibited still
less wisdom than the first in that it was based on the hypothesis of
deporting a nation, an expense which no government would be willing to
incur. There were then no physical means of transporting six or seven
millions of people, moreover, as there would be a new born for every one
the agents of colonization could deport.[3]
With the deportation scheme still kept before the people by the American
Colonization Society, the idea of emigration to Africa did not easily die.
Some Negroes continued to emigrate to Liberia from year to year. This
policy was also favored by radicals like Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who,
after movements like the Ku Klux Klan had done their work of intimidating
Negroes into submission to the domination of the whites, concluded that
most of the race believed that there was no future for the blacks in the
United States and that they were willing to emigrate.
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