HOPES FOR A NEW BUXTON IN THE SOUTH AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

King was approached by leading men of Buxton and the Province of Ontario, for assistance in establishing a colony in the south that would be built on the same principles as the Elgin Settlement.  It was hoped that 20,000 acres could be procurred from the Freedman's Bureau, which had been established for the distribution of confiscated southern lands.

In 1865, King traveled to Washington, D.C. to learn if 20,000 acres could be obtained in one block, the quality of the land, terms for payment, and what protection would they have to settle there.  He learned that:

  • President Johnson was restoring land to southern rebels who petitioned for pardon and took an oath of allegiance to the United States
  • at this time one block of land could not be obtained and in the present state of public feelings black colonists would not be safe
  • blacks still had no legal standing as citizens and southern states were undergoing reconstruction to formally repeal laws that had been created during slavery

King returned to Buxton and called a public meeting explaining the "failure of his mission".
He felt the Federal government was friendly to blacks and that when blacks had their civil rights secured by law it would then be safe the blacks to return to the south, as he wrote in his autobiography:

"If they could not go as a body to colonize waste lands, they could go as individuals and make themselves useful. In the meantime, they would have to wait, and in a short time a large field of usefulness would be opened up for their talents."

Indeed, many people did return to the south.  The men and women who had received an education at the mission school found employment in the US during the Reconstruction era.  These people were a valuable labor source, as Victor Ulman writes in 'Look To The North Star',

" No single community in either the United States or Canada contributed so much to the emancipated Negroes as the sons and daughters of Buxton.  Until 1890, when the Black Codes were general in the South, approximately two thousand Negro graduates of the Buxton schools, the Chatham Collegiate Institute, Knox and Trinity Colleges (the latter becoming the University of Toronto) went South as educational, agricultural, political, and religious missionaries.

Some filled minor roles required by the Freedmen's Bureau in the new schools, hospitals, and land settlement, and remained on duty after it destruction.  Others rose to national prominence. A recapitualition made in 1871 showed that within the first five years of the first exodus to the South, Buxton sent seven hundred young men and women there..."  (page 224)