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The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in 1817 to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. In 1822, the society established a colony on the west coast of Africa that became the independent nation of Liberia in 1847. By 1867, the society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants to Africa. Beginning in the 1830s, the society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a slaveholder's scheme. This article reports on some of these emigrants leaving from Baltimore, Maryland, Norfolk, Virginia, and Wilmington, North Carolina. The Gazette & Mercury was the newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts, from June 27, 1837 to July 13, 1841, when it changed its name to the Gazette & Courier.

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