West African Missions, Colonies, and Imperial Anxieties in the United States, 1834–1865

Abstract

Daniel P. Kilbride explains how for three decades before the Civil War colonizationists espoused the return of African Americans to “benighted Africa” on several grounds, although often disagreeing on particulars. In the 1830s and 1840s some proponents of colonization openly criticized the alleged benefits of repatriation for the Africans themselves. By the 1850s, however, most agreed that colonization would civilize and Christianize the Africans, halt the African slave trade, benefit American commerce, and reduce racial tensions at home. Kilbride investigates two southern-born white missionaries who interpreted the fruits of repatriation differently—J. Leighton Wilson who served in Liberia from 1834-52, and Thomas Jefferson Bowen who served in present-day Nigeria from 1850-56.