Maryland State Colonization Society: A Very Brief History

One of my main projects will be working with the recently digitized records of the Maryland State Colonization Society. I’ll be creating case studies and writing biographies in order to inform researchers and other members of public about the rich information within the records. Here’s a very general overview of the society’s purpose and history.

The Maryland State Colonization Society (MSCS) was founded in 1817 as an auxiliary of the national American Colonization Society (ACS) with the goal of raising money for the parent organization. After ACS founded Liberia in 1822, MSCS was also tasked with recruiting free African American colonists for settlement. After Nat Turner’s 1831 Rebellion, MSCS was reorganized and funded by the Maryland General Assembly. According to the Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, Nat Turner’s actions led to increased restrictions on slaves and free blacks throughout the slave states. The Maryland General Assembly hoped that MSCS would help remove free blacks from the state and prevent the eruption of a rebellion similar to Nat Turner’s. The state also passed new laws prohibiting manumitted slaves from remaining in Maryland or for free blacks to settle in the state. In 1833, Maryland decided to found its own colony in Liberia at Cape Palmas. With funding from the Maryland General Assembly, MSCS agents canvassed the state to recruit colonists. Often, following in their footsteps were blacks and white abolitionists who dissuaded freedpeople from emigrating. Instead, they encouraged freed people to fight for equal rights in their native United States. In the end, only approximately 1,150 free blacks settled in the Maryland colony by the time that MSCS sent out its last expedition in 1861.¹

Liberia became an independent nation in 1847, and the Maryland in Liberia colony was annexed to the new nation as Maryland County in 1857. MSCS ceased operations in 1863, leaving the organization’s papers in the care of Dr. James Hall, the Society’s General Agent, business manager, and editor of the Maryland Colonization Journal. In 1877, Hall donated the records to the Maryland Historical Society. The papers were microfilmed in 1970 and digitized in 2011.

1. Hall, Richard. L. On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834-1857. (Baltimore, Md.: Maryland Historical Society, 2003), 346.