Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society

Southern Dissent

by Eric Burin

"Every historian working on colonization will want to read and engage this provocative history of the experience of African colonization for the manumitted, the manumitters, and their proslavery critics." --American Historical Review  "One of the most insightful treatments of colonization in years." --Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography  "Balanced, accessible, and thorough. Each of Burin's chapters explores the ACS from a specific ACS members who manumitted enslaved workers specifically to go to Liberia, the enslaved themselves, northern fundraisers, white southerners, legal authorities, and finally, the freedpeople in Liberia." --Journal of African American History  "Presents a vivid portrait of the organization as a conduit through which several thousand African Americans passed from American slavery to African freedom." --Journal of American History  "Conveys the image of chattel slavery not as a monolithic structure controlling all masters and slaves everywhere but as a constantly changing entity throbbing with painful issues of personal and private rights in conflict with predominant opinions about social cohesion and custom. . . . The result is a refreshingly complex picture of American slavery." --History  "A meticulously researched biography of one of the oft-overlooked cul-de-sacs in American history." --Virginia Quarterly Review

Genres: American History, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2005

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

. Increasingly scholars such as Clegg have followed Burin’s lead and turned their attention to ACS state auxiliaries. Whatever the motives of the founders, given the minute number of people the organization actually sent to Liberia, it is a stretch to classify the organization as abolitionist. Burin argues that shifting our focus from the ACS to the state level organizations better positions us to see the organizations impact. While the national organization was poorly managed and plagued by financial problems, state level organizations had far more success in facilitating manumissions and sending free and recently manumitted blacks to Liberia. Slavery and The Peculiar Solution considers the impact of state level organizations on slavery and also calls attention to the ways African Americans used colonization to advocate for themselves. Burin demonstrates that free and enslaved African Americans actively sought out information on Liberia from a host of sources to help them decide on emigration. Perhaps the most meaningful argument for black agency in Slavery and The Peculiar Solution is that blacks routinely secured the freedom of their families as a condition of their emigration. Despite his attention to African Americans, his primary concern is the ways in which auxiliaries operated and their success and failures in recruiting black and white supporters. The failures of the ACS are more apparent when contrasted with the states who were not only able to send more migrants but establish colonies independent of the ACS.

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good overview and review of the ACS. Provide a lot of perspectives and factors from different points of entry. Wish there could have been more of an analysis of what is colonization and how the ACS was a colonization society, more about ACS ventures of choosing and buying Liberia, and how the society was viewed and dealt with by native Liberians.

[Gregory Stanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book attempts to lay out the American Colonization Society and its attempts to emigrate free and freed Black people prior to and somewhat during the Civil War in America.

The book stays within the history very well and does exactly what it claims.

Some of it can become confusing, the layout is somewhat odd but its easy to overlook.

[Jarred Goodall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-reasearched, with reliable primary sources...

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written and in-depth examination of a bizarre and disturbing part of America's past.