The American Colonization Society’s Not-So-Private Colonization Project

Ericson traces the efforts of the American Colonization Society to gain the financial support of the U.S. government and the public-private partnership that ensued. He maintains that this partnership was not only one of the first of its kind on the federal level, but that it was also the most enduring prior to the Civil War. He concludes that without federal support, the society probably would never have founded Liberia and that the support was crucial to the colony’s survival.