he United States.

In 1832, William Lloyd Garrison declared hostilities against the
Colonization Society; in 1834, James G. Birney followed his example;
and, in 1836 Gerritt Smith also abandoned the cause. The North
everywhere resounded with the cry of "Immediate Abolition;" and, in
1837, the abolitionists numbered 1,015 societies; had seventy agents
under commission, and an income, for the year, of $36,000.[10] The
Colonization Society, on the other hand, was greatly embarrassed. Its
income, in 1838, was reduced to $10,000; it was deeply in debt; the
parent society did not send a single emigrant, that year, to Liberia;
and its enemies pronounced it bankrupt and dead.[11]

But did the abolitionists succeed in forcing emancipation upon the
South, when they had thus rendered colonization powerless? Did the
fetters fall from the slave at their bidding? Did fire from heaven
descend, and consume the slaveholder at their invocation? No such thing!
They had not touched the true cause of the extension of slavery. They
had not discovered the secret of its power; and, therefore, its locks
remained unshorn, its strength unabated. The institution advanced as
triumphantly as if no opposition existed. The planters were progressing
steadily, in securing to themselves the monopoly of the cotton markets
of Europe, and in extending the area of slavery at home. In the same
year that Gerritt Smith declared for abolition, the title of the Indians
to fifty-five millions of acres of land, in the slave States, was
extinguished, and the tribes removed. The year that colonization was
depressed to the lowest point, the exports of cotton, from the United
States, amounted to 595,952,297 lbs., and the consumption of the article
in England, to 477,206,108 lbs.

When Mr. Birney seceded from colonization, he encouraged his new allies
with the hope, that West India free labor would render our slave labor
less profitable, and emancipation, as a consequence, be more easily
effected. How stood this matter six years afterward? This will be best
understood by contrast. In 1800, the West Indies exported 17,000,000
lbs. of cotton, and the United States, 17,789,803 lbs. They were then
about equally productive in that article. In 1840, the West India
exports had dwindled down to 427,529 lbs., while those of the United
States had increased to 743,941,061 lbs.

And what was England doing all this while? Having lost her supplies from
the West Indies, she was qu