Against Wind and Tide. Ousmane K. Power-Greene
emigration with the global movement against slavery, the slave trade, and African oppression. Like Olaudah Equiano, Paul Cuffe, and Prince Hall, Prince Saunders understood that his fight for African American self-determination and improvement had a transnational context.46
Saunders returned to Haiti in August 1820, but violence erupted shortly after he arrived there. Before long, King Christophe died and Saunders fleed the country aboard a ship bound for Philadelphia. His troubles were far from over: before his ship left the port it was hijacked, and the robbers who boarded the vessel took Saunders’s clothes and other possessions, leaving him at the mercy of Christophe’s successor, President Jean-Pierre Boyer. Upon meeting Boyer, Saunders faced the task of convincing him to embrace the American emigration plan, arguing that a unified Haiti under Boyer would inspire African Americans seeking refuge from racial oppression in the northern United States. For this reason, he explained to President Boyer, thousands of African Americans would immigrate to Haiti if Boyer were to bestow his blessings on the project and back up such support with the financial means necessary to make it happen. Boyer, however, seemed indifferent, and Saunders left the island for Philadelphia believing that Boyer was “possessed of very little ability to govern” and that he was “prejudiced against blacks.”47
Despite what Saunders thought about him, Boyer actually did acknowledge the benefits to Haiti of black American immigration.48 Because Boyer sought the United States’ recognition, he thought that an African American presence in his country would boost its appeal in the eyes of American statesmen. He also recognized that Haiti would benefit from skilled African American artisans and agricultural laborers.49 As for those emigrants recently manumitted in the United States, Boyer hoped to entice them with an offer of free land in Haiti, and soon enough this became a major feature of Boyer’s recruitment efforts. Boyer also sought to undermine the American Colonization Society’s African colonization plan by demonstrating Haiti’s advantages over those of West Africa.50
Even though Saunders was frustrated with Boyer’s lack of cooperation, other black leaders continued to advocate Haitian emigration during the mid-1820s. Thomas Paul returned to his role as chief advocate of Haitian emigration just as Saunders faded from the picture.51 Paul frequently reminded audiences that “having been a resident for some months in the Island of Hayti, I am fully persuaded that it is the best and most suitable place of residence which Providence has hitherto offered to emancipated people of colour, for the enjoyment of Liberty and equality with their attendant blessings.” Furthermore, he claimed that “a country possessing an enterprising population of several hundred thousand of active and brave men, who are determined to live free, or die gloriously in the defence of freedom, must possess advantages highly inviting to men who are sighing for the enjoyment of the common rights and liberties of mankind.”52
Blacks in Philadelphia shared Paul’s interest in Haitian emigration, and in July 1824, some of them met to consider President Jean-Pierre Boyer’s invitation to resettle in the nascent black republic. To clarify their position on colonization, they began the meeting by denouncing “any measures which may be taken to transport them to the coast of Africa.” According to one account, “The free blacks of Philadelphia have unanimously protested against the execution of the plan to colonize them in Africa; and have expressed their determination to discountenance it. Their attention, it appears, is turned to Hayti.” The meeting continued with discussion about the “favorable climate, a fruitful soil and a free government [where] they may acquire all the privileges which the most favored Whites of the most favored country can enjoy. . . . blacks and mulattoes are continually leaving this country and taking advantage of the invitation of the Haytians.”53
Philadelphia blacks were not alone in their interest in the Haitian emigration plan. In fact, free blacks in Maryland came under the influence of Haitian emigration when an elected agent, George McGill, returned from Haiti excited about President Boyer’s support for African American immigration. McGill shared with the audience his opinions about Haiti as a location for resettlement, reading a letter he had from Secretary General Inginac. In this letter, Inginac explained that “His excellency has been charmed to hear that the decendants [sic] of the African, form the project of coming here and carrying their industry into a free country, which guarantees to them an honorable existence under the protection of a constitution.” This sense of shared racial identity between African Americans and Haitians reinforces the notion that a sense of African diasporic unity underpinned the Haitian emigration movement. Secretary General Inginac proclaimed, specifically, that Haitians were “interested more than any other in the fate of the descendants of the Africans, whose blood runs in their veins,” and hoped to provide blacks in America with an opportunity to help “the Haytiens form at this time a society whose end is to favour the emigration of our American brethren into the Republic.”54
Individual accounts of life in Haiti also encouraged black Americans to seek Haiti as a refuge from the American racial caste system. According to one newspaper account, John Lewis, “a respectable man of colour,” spent several years in Haiti and then returned from the nascent republic “perfectly satisfied with the stability of the government there established.” Upon returning to the United States, the article claims, Lewis made plans “to remove his family there for a permanent residence.” These accounts broadened the appeal of Haitian emigration, and enticed some blacks to seek Haiti rather than to continue “like wander[ing] Israelites, without a tabernacle and without a home.”55
As the idea of Haitian emigration gained momentum in the 1820s, the American Colonization Society acknowledged the threat that Haitian emigration posed to their own African colonization plans, even as colonization societies proliferated throughout the nation. In fact, ACS auxiliaries and “Committees of Correspondence” had sprouted in New York, Maryland, Vermont, Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.56 Virginia boasted twenty-one auxiliaries, thus establishing it as the epicenter of colonization sentiment in the South, while New York’s six auxiliaries led all northern states. State auxiliaries represented an extension of the larger national organization, which operated out of Washington, D.C.57
The ACS’s broad base of support and its distinguished membership came with benefits and drawbacks. Agents of state auxiliaries often cited the membership of esteemed statesmen such as Henry Clay as a way to gain financial support and recruit new members from the white population of towns and cities. At times, though, the national affiliation proved to be a burden for agents in the Northeast who had joined the colonization movement to support what they believed were the organization’s benevolent intentions. In their effort to unite southern and northern interests, the members of the parent organization shied away from any overt declaration that the organization supported gradual emancipation, and instead claimed only that it “encouraged” free blacks to leave America for their West African settlement. This did not bode well for those members and agents interested in colonization as a tool for the emancipation of Africans enslaved in the South, or as a means to offer free blacks an alternative to living in a society rife with rampant “Negrophobia.”
For this reason, Prince Saunders and his ally, the Reverend Thomas Paul Sr., exploited the ACS’s ambiguous stance on emancipation in order to undermine the ACS and African colonization. Some ACS agents reported meeting blacks who were openly hostile to colonization, yet supportive of Haitian emigration. When, for example, Loring Dewey, an agent of the American Colonization Society and the New York auxiliary, attempted to recruit new members, he found that black people’s unfavorable view of the ACS did not mean they were opposed to leaving the United States. From the hamlets in the Hudson Valley to the outskirts of New York City, he noted, “a preference of Hayti over Africa was frequently expressed.” Among those whites sympathetic to the plight of free blacks in the North, Dewey discovered that “there was not only an opposition to colonization in Africa manifested by many, but an assurance given of their ready aid to promote emigration to Hayti.” Taking these views into consideration, Dewey wrote to the American Colonization Society in the hope of gaining support for Haitian emigration as well.58
As he waited for a reply, Dewey shared his idea with his colleagues who, as it turned out, were not at all enthusiastic about Haitian emigration. General Robert G. Harper even chided