The Lure of Liberia
Would Maryland Ever See Black People as Citizens?
The abolitionists have done all they can do. And colonizationists are doing all that they can do for the poor African race. — Thomas Gross
Thomas Gross was settled in Liberia for almost two years when he finally wrote to James Hall back at the Maryland State Colonization Society offices in Baltimore. Gross and his family survived the trek across the Atlantic, and were no longer at risk of being sold and separated from one another in Maryland. Gross wrote after seeing “more of the country and experienc[ing] the climate.” He was finally ready to give an assessment of the place for the consideration of “the coloured citizens, whom are in the United States.”1
Gross surely knew that exile in Liberia never attracted a significant number of Black Marylanders — despite his rosy assessment, the recruitment efforts of Society agents, and the support of the state legislature. In Maryland, as was true across the country, Black Americans largely opposed giving up the place of their birth. Most resolved to remain because, as abolitionist and journalist Martin Delany put it: “We are Americans, having a birthright citizenship—natural claims upon the country—claims common to all others of our fellow citizens—natural rights, which may, by virtue of unjust laws be obstructed, but never can be annulled.”2
It was evident what Black migrants gave up — a birthright claim to full citizenship in the US. Gross, for his part, emphasized what they gained in Liberia, including the political rights that white Maryland lawmakers refused them: “In regard to our freedom, we are all free men here, and have the privilege of making our laws, and our children will be free citizens…wherever they may go.” It was time to give up on Maryland, Gross urged, the “abolitionists have done all they can do. And colonizationists are doing all that they can do for the poor African race.” In light of their disappointments, it was time for “the coloured people in America” to make their way to Africa “where they can enjoy their freedom and become an independent people.”3
As Black men in Maryland, Thomas Gross and William Watkins saw their plight in much the same way, even as they differed on how to remedy it: The state’s lawmakers resolutely denied Black Americans membership in the body politic. Watkins and his partners Hezekiah Grice and James Deaver responded by founded Baltimore’s Legal Rights Association back in the 1820s. The Association opposed colonization while organizing and agitating for full citizenship at home. Watkins and Deaver resolutely remained in Baltimore. Grice, not unlike Thomas Gross, gave up on Maryland and migrated to Haiti, the first independent Black republic in the Americas, and raised his family there.4
Those who stayed on in Baltimore never relented. They challenged Colonization Society leaders, state lawmakers, local judges, and those everyday white city residents who, denying their citizenship, encouraged the exile of Black Marylanders to Liberia. All along the way, William Watkins, the “Colored Baltimorean,” continued to ask hard questions:
Why, I emphatically ask, should we not enjoy those rights which all must confess have been wrested from us without the shadow of a crime? What evil could possibly accrue from the adoption, by the white people of this nation, of a liberal, just, and humane policy towards three hundred thousand of the home-born citizens of the United States?5
Questions for his time, that resonate in our own.
— MSJ.
Thomas Gross to James Hall, March 30, 1851, Correspondence Received, Letter Books, 1850-1851-1852, Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, Maryland Center for History and Culture. Historian Penelope Campbell explains the allure and the disappointments of Maryland in Liberia in Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831–1857 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.)
Martin Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (Philadelphia: The Author, 1852): 48.
Thomas Gross to James Hall, March 30, 1851, Correspondence Received, Letter Books, 1850-1851-1852, Papers of the Maryland State Dolonization Society, Maryland Center for History and Culture. For a primer on Maryland in Liberia and its constitution, see Jennifer Davis, “The Constitution of the Colony of Maryland in Liberia” over at the Library of Congress blog.
On the Watkins, Grice, Deaver, and the Legal Rights Association, see Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.)
A Colored Baltimorean, “Mr. Editor,” Genius of Universal Emancipation (July 1831): 2-3. Martha S. Jones, “Before Frederick Douglass: William Watkins Speaks for Black Americans on Independence Day. July 4, 1831,” Medium. https://medium.com/@marthajones/before-frederick-douglass-william-watkins-speaks-for-black-americans-on-independence-day-598582f4f7d9