equaling the whole emigration to Liberia up to 1850. Haytien emigration,
however, proved a most disastrous experiment.

But the general acquiescence in the objects of the Colonization Society
did not long continue. The exports of cotton from the South were then
rapidly on the increase. Slave labor had become profitable, and slaves,
in the cotton-growing States, were no longer considered a burden. Seven
years after the first emigrants reached Liberia, the South exported
294,310,115 lbs. of cotton; and, the year following, the total cotton
crop reached 325,000,000 lbs. But a great depression in prices had
occurred,[7] and alarmed the planters for their safety. They had
decided against emancipation, and now to have their slaves rendered
valueless, was an evil they were determined to avert. The Report of the
Boston Prison Discipline Society, which appeared at this moment, was
well calculated, by the disclosures it made, to increase the alarm in
the South, and to confirm slaveholders in their belief of the dangers of
emancipation.

At this juncture, a warfare against colonization was commenced at the
South, and it was pronounced an abolition scheme in disguise. In
defending itself, the society re-asserted its principles of neutrality
in relation to slavery, and that it had only in view the colonization of
the free colored people. In the heat of the contest, the South were
reminded of their former sentiments in relation to the whole colored
population, and that colonization merely proposed removing one division
of a people they had pronounced a public burden.[8]

The emancipationists at the North had only lent their aid to
colonization in the hope that it would prove an able auxiliary to
abolition; but when the society declared its unalterable purpose to
adhere to its original position of neutrality, they withdrew their
support, and commenced hostilities against it. "The Anti-Slavery
Society," said a distinguished abolitionist, "began with a declaration
of war against the Colonization Society."[9] This feeling of hostility
was greatly increased by the action of the abolitionists of England.
The doctrine of "Immediate, not Gradual Abolition," was announced by
them as their creed; and the anti-slavery men of the United States
adopted it as the basis of their action. Its success in the English
Parliament, in procuring the passage of the Act for West India
emancipation, in 1833, gave a great impulse to the abolition cause in
t