The American Colonization Society (ACS) was founded in December 1816 as a national organization promoting the relocation of free African Americans to West Africa. A rising wave of individual manumissions and state abolition laws after the American Revolution saw the free Black population in the United States grow considerably. Some white people worried that the growing free population posed a threat to slaveholders’ control of the enslaved population, and some Blacks and whites believed that free Black people would never enjoy full equality in the United States and would fare better outside the country. For these reasons, initial support for the ACS came from many sources, including slaveholders, advocates of abolition, state governments, and even the federal government. By 1852, few immediate abolitionists supported the organization. Although other colonization societies emerged, the ACS was the largest and longest-lived, lasting from 1816 to 1913. In 1819 the U.S. Congress appropriated $100,000 to the ACS, and it provided a ship the following year.