be able to
expel "Americans by birth" pledged never to leave their native land.[49]
A State convention of colored people of New York held during three days
in the capital at Albany, 1851, unanimously expressed their pleasure at
the failure of the Colonization Society of that State to obtain an
appropriation from the Legislature.[50] At another meeting at Albany in
1852, Reverend J. W. C. Pennington and Dr. J. McCune Smith were
instrumental in inducing the meeting to adopt an able refutation of
Governor Hunt's views in favor of a similar appropriation.[51] Another
State Convention of Colored People of Ohio convened in Cincinnati,
unconditionally condemned the Society because its policy of expatriating
the free colored people was merely to render slave property more secure
and valuable.[52] John M. Langston was the chairman of this meeting.
Other such meetings held in Rochester, New York, and New Bedford,
Massachusetts, about the same time, expressed similar sentiments.[53] On
the occasion of the formation of a County Colonization Society as a
result of a visit of J.B. Pinney to Syracuse, resolutions expressing
deep regret that the influence of the Society had extended to that
section[54] were unanimously passed. At another meeting at Providence,
the same year, the Colonization Society was denounced because of the
plea that its motive in promoting emigration to Africa was to
Christianize the heathen.[55]

A series of meetings were held in Ohio to oppose the efforts of
colonization agents.[56] A Columbus meeting of 1849 considered such
workers inveterate enemies. Another meeting in the same place in 1851
referred to one of their memorials as containing the false statement that
the colored people of Ohio were prepared to go to Liberia. They considered
N. L. Rice and David Christy, promoters of the colonization scheme in that
State, avowed friends of slavery and slaveholders.[57] In a subsequent
State Convention in 1853, they urged every free black to use his influence
against any bill offered in any State, or national legislature to
appropriate money for this enterprise.[58] When "Cushing's Bill" to
facilitate colonization was offered, the free people of Cincinnati, Ohio,
held an indignation meeting in 1853 to organize their friends to prevent
its passage.[59]

The most distinguished Negroes of the country, too, were using the rostrum
and the press to impede the progress of the American Colonization Society.
Prominent amo