Full Description
Benjamin Coates was one of the best-known white supporters of African colonization in nineteenth-century America. A Quaker businessman from Philadelphia and a sometime officer of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, he was committed to helping black Americans relocate to West Africa. This put him at the center of a discourse with abolitionists at home and abroad, including such leading thinkers as Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, George L. Stearns, and William Coppinger.
Creative and restless, cantankerous and charismatic, these men and women dominated the struggle to end slavery and to achieve respect for African Americans. Back to Africa sheds new light on these remarkable personalities and their tireless efforts at reform.
Contents
Contents
Preface
Benjamin Coates: A Chronology
Statement on Editorial Policies
Benjamin Coates and the American Colonization Movement
by Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner and Margaret Hope Bacon
The Colonizationist Correspondence of Benjamin Coates
1. The Antebellum years, 1848-1860
2. The Civil War Years, 1862-1865
3. Reconstruction America, 1866-1880
Appendix I: Benjamin Coates' Will
Appendix II: Catalogue of Letters
Bibliography
Index
