The American Colonization Society
Before there became no choice, there were many attempts at a different solution for the problem that slavery posed. For the people and representatives that opposed slavery (of which there were many), there was no easy solution for ending slavery in the United States. Very few people thought that there was a solution that would end the institution of slavery overnight.
This is why for decades the US Legislature had organized hard-fought compromises not over the end of slavery in the United States, but over its spread to new territories and states. Only the most extreme abolitionists argued for an immediate freedom of all slaves in the US.
To go along with the arguments of how to end slavery is the problem of what to do with the newly freed slaves after they were granted their freedom. There was of course the argument that after freedom the freedmen would be able to be integrated and assimilated into society as equal members. And while this seems like the most equitable solution, it was seen as almost impossible by most everyone. It is one of the reasons why even moderate abolitionists looked askance at Senator Charles Sumner who gave an inflammatory speech in 1856 (He was later beaten with a cane by a southern congressman).
One of the paragraphs of his speech read thus: “The senator from South Carolina [one of the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act] has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight — I mean the harlot, slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator.”
Another possible solution was posited in the early 1800s. Basically, the premise was that slaves would be freed, and then they would be sent to Liberia, Africa. There were many who agreed with this solution, so much so that a society was founded in 1816 called the American Colonization Society or ACS.
The ACS was founded by Robert Finley (The President of the University of Georgia), and was meant to support the establishment of a colony in LIberia, where freed African-American slave could be sent after their emancipation. The colony was actually started in 1821 years after Finley’s death.
The society was filled with members from several abolitionist groups that were each opposed to each other on how to go about abolishing slavery. It was made up of evangelicals and Quakers, mostly, who believed that once freed, former slaves would have a better life in Africa than they would if they were freed and left to fend for themselves in the United States.