in the regular convention issued a call for a National Emigration
Convention of Colored Men to take place in Cleveland, Ohio, August
24-26, 1854. The preliminary announcement said: "No person will be
admitted to a seat in the Convention who would introduce the subject
of emigration to the Eastern Hemisphere--either to Asia, Africa, or
Europe--as our object and determination are to consider our claims
to the West Indies, Central and South America, and the Canadas. This
restriction has no reference to personal preference, or individual
enterprise, but to the great question of national claims to come before
the Convention."[1] Douglass pronounced the call "uncalled for, unwise,
unfortunate and premature," and his position led him into a wordy
discussion in the press with James M. Whitfield, of Buffalo, prominent
at the time as a writer. Delany explained the call as follows: "It was
a mere policy on the part of the authors of these documents, to confine
their scheme to America (including the West Indies), whilst they
were the leading advocates of the regeneration of Africa, lest they
compromised themselves and their people to the avowed enemies of their
race."[2] At the secret sessions, he informs us, Africa was the topic of
greatest interest. In order to account for this position it is important
to take note of the changes that had taken place between 1817 and 1854.
When James Forten and others in Philadelphia in 1817 protested
against the American Colonization Society as the plan of a "gang of
slaveholders" to drive free people from their homes, they had abundant
ground for the feeling. By 1839, however, not only had the personnel
of the organization changed, but, largely through the influence of
Garrison, the purpose and aim had also changed, and not Virginia and
Maryland, but New York and Pennsylvania were now dominant in influence.
Colonization had at first been regarded as a possible solution of the
race problem; money was now given, however, "rather as an aid to the
establishment of a model Negro republic in Africa, whose effort would