The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade

Deport U.S. Negroes to Brazil?

Deport U.S. Negroes to Brazil? The Civil War delivered a forceful blow to the solar plexus of the illicit slave trade and transnational slavery itself. Yet the continuation of slavery in Brazil and the unresolved status of U.S. Negroes seemed to lead some to conclude that deporting the latter to the Valley of the Amazon would make for a serendipitous confluence. Brazil, which was quite friendly to the so-called Confederate States of America, was less welcoming to the prospect of opening its doors to a stream of dark-skinned people. James Watson Webb, who served as U.S. Minister to Brazil during the Civil War, was no abolitionist,1 a point recognized by his comrades.2 “One fourth” of abolitionists were “fanatics,” thought Webb, and “three fourths” were “knaves” [emphasis-original].3 The influential politician from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin, had to remind Webb during his tenure as Brazilian Minister, that it was “supreme nonsense to contend that property in slaves, whether in the person or the service has any special immunity, over any other property.”4 A man of action as well as words, on the evening of 1 October 1833, a group of active colonizationists and their sympathizers—who thought that free Negroes would be better off in Africa—met in Webb’s office. Then he was the 31-year-old feisty editor of New York City’s influential, pro-Whig Party “ ‘Courier and Enquirer.’ There they planned to pose as ‘friends of immediate abolition in the United States’ and invade the initial meeting of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society.” That evening 1500 showed up “yelling for the blood of Arthur Tappan and [William Lloyd] Garrison.” Webb, “an ardent Episcopalian” and “former Army officer,” was also a “key figure in the October mob and the North’s most vehement anti-abolitionist spokesman to support African colonization.”5 Webb was also an ardent “racist,” who “denounced the abolitionists” with full-throated fervor. “In common with many 9 172 other northerners, Webb believed that abolition was more dangerous than slavery” and also thought that “colonization of slaves in Africa was the only practical remedy to slavery.” A full spectrum bigot, “antiSemitism ” also “crept into Webb’s crusade.” Webb also concurred with Deep South leaders approving “anything that Congress could do to stop the antislavery agitation.”6 It was Webb who, on July 4, 1834, “published a list of the activities scheduled for the holiday that included an announcement that ‘at eleven, the fanatics meet at Chatham-Street Chapel, to have their zeal inflamed by the doctrines of abolition and amalgamation . . . ’ Webb felt he could light a match to an already smoldering hostility toward the abolitionists. He was right. A mob broke into the chapel just as abolitionist Lewis Tappan finished reading the American Anti-Slavery Society ’s Declaration of Sentiments to a racially mixed audience. . . . one of the worst riots of the decade followed, lasting a total of eleven days. Mobs proceeded to break up other integrated abolitionist meetings with their menacing haunts.”7 With such a background, it should not be deemed surprising that Webb would promote enthusiastically the notion of deporting U.S. Negroes to Brazil, even as this group was sacrificing tremendously to ensure the survival of the government—Webb’s government—that was seeking to dispatch them southward. The contemporary historian, Lerone Bennett, has stirred controversy by ascribing this plan to Webb’s superior—the President, Abraham Lincoln. After all, Bennett suggests, “in five major policy declarations, including two State of the Union addresses and the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the sixteenth President of the United States publicly and officially called for the deportation of Blacks. On countless other occasions, in conferences with cronies, Democratic and Republican leaders and high government officials, he called for colonization of Blacks or aggressively promoted colonization, by private and official acts.” In 1862, says Bennett, “largely at President Lincoln’s urging, Congress appropriated $600,000 a sum desperately needed . . . to prosecute the war” in order to “begin the colonization process.” According to Navy Secretary, Gideon Welles, “‘almost from the commencement of this administration . . . the subject of deporting the colored race has been discussed.’ ” Lincoln asserted that “‘room in South America for colonization can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance; and when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be Deport U.S. Negroes to Brazil? | 173...