them over sea,[235] and of Mary Matthews of King
George's County, Virginia, who by will emancipated her slaves and
provided for their removal to a place where they could enjoy their
liberty,[236] there is but one significant example of actual
colonization under individual auspices. This occurred in 1815 when
Paul Cuffe took thirty-eight Negroes to the western coast of
Africa.[237] This dramatic event in Negro deportation, owing to the
wide publicity given to it, stimulated activity anew in colonization
ventures.

We shall now review these new schemes and show how representatives of
the transportation movement assembled in Washington city, and having
enlisted in their cause men most distinguished in the councils of the
nation, formed the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of
Color of the United States, an organization still in existence but now
known as the American Colonization Society and having as a monument to
its checkered career, the free Negro republic, Liberia, on the western
coast of Africa.

To begin with, it is well to point out that Thomas Jefferson, whose
advocacy of Negro colonization dates from 1773, replied in 1811, to a
request for his opinion on Ann Mifflin's proposition to make a
settlement of colored people on the west coast of Africa under the
auspices of the different States, that he considered it "the most
desirable measure which could be adopted for gradually drawing off"
the black population; and he added: "nothing is more to be wished than
that the United States should themselves undertake to make such an
establishment on the coast of Africa."[238] It requires little effort
to appreciate the weight of this Ex-President's opinion, and
colonizationists later gave wide publicity to it in order to
strengthen their cause.[239]

Additional deportation sentiment is found in the recommendations of
the Union Humane Society, an anti-slavery organization founded in
1815, in Ohio, by Benjamin Lundy. Two planks in the program of the
Society are noteworthy: first, it emphasized the necessity of common
action by all forces interested in the amelioration of the Negro race;
and, second, it recommended as a basis for common action the removal
of the Negroes beyond the pale of the white man.[240]

While the Union Humane Society was silent on national aid, the
Kentucky Colonization Society came out in strong terms for it. Taking
advantage of the close of the War of 1812 and of the existence of vas