But Northerner supporters of Abdul Rahman were not exactly believers in the beloved community, either. They, too, were thoroughly racist in their attitudes toward black people—they just happened to be opposed to slavery because they saw it as a sinful stain on the American soul. Their answer to the problem of freed slaves was to transport them—that is, English-speaking, American-born blacks—to Africa. The freeing of Abdul Rahman and his family did not challenge the views of northern whites; it confirmed the notion that blacks were a foreign element in a white republic.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 371