The American Colonization Society (ACS) and Liberia: Unforeseen Legacies of U.S. Intervention 

The American Colonization Society (ACS) was founded in 1816 with the primary intention of repatriating free African Americans and emancipated slaves to a colony in West Africa. The society believed in the concept of colonization as a solution to racial tensions and the issue of slavery in the United States and aimed to recruit volunteers from among free African Americans and emancipated slaves in the United States. Examining the continuum from the ACS’s actions to the later crisis establishes a broader trend of US interventions having enduring, unforeseen implications, positioning the Liberian case as emblematic of a larger phenomenon where ostensibly short-term actions possess far-reaching and unforeseen consequences within US foreign relations.