Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

Between 1820 and 1865, some 3,700 African Americans left Virginia for Liberia, the West African settlement founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS). About one-quarter of these emigrants were free blacks, the rest newly manumitted slaves, most freed upon the condition of their voluntary resettlement in the ACS-governed colony (1820-1847) and independent black republic (1847-present) across the Atlantic. More than two hundred white Virginians emancipated slaves for emigration.