n scheme, were opposed to it. Quicker
than the white people generally did, they saw through its false
pretense, and, besides, they could not understand why they should be
taken from the land of their nativity, and sent to the country from
which their progenitors had come, any more than the descendants of
Scotch, English, and German immigrants should be deported to the lands
of their ancestors.

Equally strange was it that the Colonization Society, if really
friendly to the negro, should find its most zealous supporters among
slaveholders. Its first president, who was a nephew of George
Washington, upon learning that his slaves had got the idea that they
were to be set at liberty, sent over fifty of them to be sold from the
auction block at New Orleans. That was intended as a warning to the
rest. One of its presidents was said to be the owner of a thousand
slaves and had never manumitted one of them. The principal service
that the colonization movement was expected to do for the slave-owners
was to relieve them of the presence of free negroes. These were always
regarded as a menace by slave-masters. They disseminated ideas of
freedom and manhood among their unfortunate brethren. They were
object-lessons to those in bondage. The slave-owners were only too
glad to have them sent away. They looked to Liberia as a safety-valve.
It did not take long for intelligent people who were really
well-wishers of the black man to perceive these facts.

The severest blow that the Colonization Society received in America
was from the pen of William Lloyd Garrison, who, under the title of
_Thoughts on African Colonisation_, published a pamphlet that had
wide distribution. It completely unmasked the pretended friendship of
the Colonizationists for the negroes, free or slave. From that time
they lost all support from real Anti-Slavery people. There was,
however, to be a battle fought, in which the Colonization Society
figured as a party, that furnished one of the most interesting
episodes of the slavery conflict.

England, at the time of which we are speaking, was full of
Anti-Slavery sentiment. Slavery, at the end of a long and bitter
contest, had been abolished in all her colonies. Her philanthropists
were rejoicing in their victory. The managers of the Colonization
Society resolved, if possible, to capture that sentiment, and with it
the pecuniary aid the British Abolitionists might render. It was
always a tremendous beggar. They, ac