than those enslaved, and through an experimental community in Haiti, he hoped to prove that there would be a financial benefit to slaveholders if they embraced the idea of freeing their laborers.96
Although the Haitian emigration movement of the late 1820s may have seemed a failure to some, such as Lundy, it did succeed in derailing the American Colonization Society, leading to what historian P.J. Staudenraus identifies as “a crisis” within the Colonization Society. The issue of Haitian emigration divided whites within the American Colonization Society over how best to deal with competition from Haitian emigration. This prompted managers of the ACS to send two agents, Dr. Eli Ayres of Baltimore and Reverend George Boyd, an Episcopal rector of Philadelphia’s St. John’s Church, into the North to recruit free blacks to leave for their settlement in West Africa. Through touring New York, Philadelphia, and some New England cities, they found that Haitian emigration overshadowed African colonization, and that many free blacks were hostile to the ACS program. Nevertheless, the two agents established “Corresponding Committees” in Boston and Providence, even though they had learned that many whites in the North hesitated to donate money to the colonization cause until the ACS could garner federal support for African colonization. Also, some whites claimed that they would not support the ACS until southerners took the initiative, since, as they argued, free blacks caused more problems in the South than they did in the North. With their small African settlement in Liberia struggling to create a viable presence in West Africa, the American Colonization Society remained stymied at home as a consequence of ideological rifts and a lack of clarity over the organization’s motives.97
Regardless, Haiti remained a symbol for African Americans, much to the dismay of southern planters and some white northerners. Black Americans continued to proclaim that Haiti illustrated African potential for nation building rooted in self-reliance, individual elevation, and racial progress. These were attributes that African American leaders believed were key for African progress in the United States and the world.
Such grandiose notions of Haiti as a potential crucible for African redemption became a cornerstone of John B. Russwurm’s own racial awakening as one of the few black students in American colleges or universities in the 1820s.98 When Russwurm gave the 1826 commencement speech to his white peers and their families at Bowdoin College, his address, entitled “The Condition and Prospects of Hayti,” extolled the first black republic, acknowledging “the irresistible course of events that all men, who have been deprived of their liberty, shall recover this previous portion of their indefeasible inheritance.”99 Russwurm argued that Haiti demonstrated the capacity of black men to rise from the depths of oppression to the heights of liberty—an overt challenge to prevailing racial assumptions. Concluding his speech optimistically, Russwurm explained to the audience that “We look forward with peculiar satisfaction to the period when, like the Tyre of old, her [Haiti’s] vessels shall extend the fame of her riches and glory, to the remotest borders of the globe; to the time when Hayti, treading in the footsteps of her sister republicks, shall, like them, exhibit a picture of rapid and unprecedented advance in population, wealth and intelligence.” With these final words, the audience exploded “with hearty applause” at what one newspaper reporter claimed “was one of the most interesting performances of the day.”100
While Russwurm’s words illustrate his awareness of the historical significance of Haiti in his own time, they also show the transnational character of the black protest tradition. Since his childhood Russwurm had been on the move, developing a pan-African identity. Born in Jamaica from a liaison between a white Virginian merchant and an African slave, Russwurm moved with his father to Quebec in 1807, and then to Maine in 1812. Although his mother’s African origins most greatly limited his life opportunities, it was his father’s liberality that enabled him to live in a manner few African Americans would ever know.101 Aware that his mother’s status, rather than his father’s, determined the types of obstacles he would face in the predominantly white New England community where he lived, he never lost his sense of being an African, and he cast his lot with his fellow blacks from Boston to Port-au-Prince to Liverpool.102
Russwurm did consider joining the wave of emigrants leaving for Haiti. Winston James points out that Russwurm, having graduated from Bowdoin, planned on leaving for Haiti, yet by October 1826 he still remained in America. He travelled initially to Boston to work at the African Free School, but there was no position for him. Some tried to entice him to travel to Liberia under the ACS banner, but he turned down the offer. Soon he left Boston for New York and the opportunity to join the community of abolitionists seeking to respond to antiblack attacks in newspapers in advance of the forthcoming 1827 emancipation decree in New York State.103
In the fall of 1827, Russwurm took command of the Freedom’s Journal when Samuel Cornish resigned to direct the African Free School and work as an agent for the New York Manumission Society. When Russwurm began to publish both pro- and anticolonization views in the paper, some free blacks became alarmed. At the time, Russwurm had not made public his drift away from his anticolonizationist stance and toward joining the American Colonization Society’s Liberian colony.104 Yet free blacks in New York and other parts of the North held such negative impressions of the ACS that Russwurm’s inclusion of pro-colonization views raised the suspicion that he had become sympathetic to the Colonization Society. By February 1829, Russwurm did indeed announce his support for the ACS, explaining to his readers that his decision to leave for Liberia had come after prolonged contemplation. Regardless, Russwurm was attacked viciously by his former anticolonization peers in public meetings and in letters to the newspaper.105
One interpretation of Russwurm’s shift suggests that he came to believe that Liberia was becoming a place where African Americans could build political and social institutions that would challenge white assumptions about black inferiority. Others argue that Russwurm accepted ACS secretary Ralph Gurley’s offer to join him in his colonization mission because Russwurm believed that emancipation would never take place unless “blacks already freed could move to Liberia.” Historian Sandra Sandiford Young argues: “Russwurm’s drive to establish himself in the absence of business opportunities and his abhorrence of the violence perpetuated against free blacks were the likely catalysts for his decision.”106
Regardless of the reason, some African Americans viewed Russwurm’s shift in sentiment as treasonous.107 Before leaving the paper he did attempt to explain his change of heart through a series of editorials. In the first of these, on February 14, 1829, Russwurm announced, “As our former sentiments have always been in direct opposition to the plan of colonizing us on the coast of Africa: perhaps, so favourable an opportunity may not occur, for us to inform our readers, in an open and candid manner, that our views are materially altered.” By March, he explained that “The change in our views on colonization seems to be a ‘seven days wonder’ to many of our readers. But why, we do not perceive: like others, we are mortal like them, we are liable to change.”108 Russwurm argued that Liberia offered African Americans fertile soil, liberty, and opportunities denied them in America. As for the trials and tribulations that black colonists had endured in Liberia, Russwurm viewed them as analogous to the trials and tribulations of the first American colonists in Roanoke and Plymouth. Even so, some African Americans were unconvinced.
Although the opportunity to castigate Russwurm presented itself, Samuel Cornish, Russwurm’s former coeditor, passed on the chance. When addressing “the sudden change of the late Editor of ‘The Freedom’s Journal,’ in respect to colonisation,” Cornish wrote that he would only say a few words about it “and I am done.” In brief, he acknowledged that “to me the subject is equally strange as to others,” and he placed it “with the other novelties of the day.”109 Choosing not to attack Russwurm personally, Cornish ended his editorial by stating that
. . . my views, and the views of the intelligent of my brethren gennerally, are the same as ever in respect of colonisation; we believe it may benefit the few that emigrate, and survive, and as a missionary station, we consider it as a grand and glorious
