pro-slavery feeling which this stirred up in the South caused the
Colonization Society to be regarded with distrust and even active
hostility. It was accused of secretly undermining slavery and exciting
false hopes among the slaves. It was even said to foment discontent and
raise dangerous questions for sinister purposes, and was subjected to
bitter attack as "disguised Abolitionism."

From the opposite extreme of opinion the Society suffered assault still
more violent. William Lloyd Garrison, in his intemperate zeal for
"immediate emancipation without expatriation," could see nothing but
duplicity and treachery in the motives of its adherents. His "Thoughts
on Colonization" hold up the movement to public odium as the sum of all
villainies, and in the columns of the _Liberator_ no insult or reproach
is spared. His wonderful energy and eloquence brought over to his camp a
number of the Society's friends, and enabled him in his English campaign
to exhibit it in a light so odious that he actually brought back a
protest signed by the most eminent anti-slavery men of that country.

Assailed on one side and on the other the Society, as we have seen,
serenely pursued its course. Apparently it did not suffer. But it can
scarcely be doubted that its growth and expansion were seriously checked
by the cross-fire to which it was subjected. Among the negroes
themselves prejudices were industriously disseminated, and everything
was done to make them believe themselves duped and cheated.

From these reasons colonization never reached the proportions hoped for
by those who looked to it for the gradual extinction of slavery. But we
should not fail to recognize in the movement an earnest and noble, if
too ambitious, effort to solve, without violence or bloodshed, a problem
only half disposed of by Lincoln's edict and the Fifteenth Amendment.