Chairman of the Business Committee and I was the Secretary." * * *

"There were three parties in that Emigration Convention, ranged according
to the foreign fields they preferred to emigrate too. Dr. Delaney headed
the party that desired to go to the Niger Valley in Africa, Whitfield the
party which preferred to go to Central America, and Holly the party which
preferred to go to Hayti."

"All these parties were recognized and embraced by the Convention. Dr.
Delaney was given a commission to go to Africa, in the Niger Valley,
Whitfield to go to Central America, and Holly to Hayti, to enter into
negotiations with the authorities of these various countries for Negro
emigrants and to report to future conventions. Holly was the first to
execute his mission, going down to Hayti in 1855, when he entered into
relations with the Minister of the Interior, the father of the late
President Hyppolite, and by him was presented to Emperor Faustin I. The
next Emigration Convention was held at Chatham, Canada West, in 1856, when
the report on Haiti was made. Dr. Delaney went off on his mission to the
Niger Valley, Africa, via England in 1858. There he concluded a treaty
signed by himself and eight kings, offering inducements for Negro
emigrants to their territories. Whitfield went to California, intending to
go later from thence to Central America, but died in San Francisco before
he could do so. Meanwhile [James] Redpath went to Haiti as a John Brownist
after the Harper's Ferry raid, and reaped the first fruits of Holly's
mission by being appointed Haitian Commissioner of Emigration in the
United States by the Haitian Government, but with the express injunction
that Rev. Holly should be called to co-operate with him. On Redpath's
arrival in the United States, he tendered Rev. Holly a Commission from the
Haitian Government at $1,000 per annum and traveling-expenses to engage
emigrants to go to Haiti. The first ship load of emigrants were from
Philadelphia in 1861.

"Not more than one-third of the 2000 emigrants to Haiti received through
this movement, permanently abided there. They proved to be neither
intellectually, industrially, nor financially prepared to undertake to
wring from the soil the riches that it is ready to yield up to such as
shall be thus prepared; nor are the government and influential individuals
sufficiently instructed in social, industrial and financial problems which
now govern the world, to turn to profitable u