brought them here, and we are
bound if possible to repair the injuries inflicted by our fathers.
Could they be sent to Africa, a three-fold benefit would arise. We
should be cleared of them; we should send to Africa a population
partially civilized and christianized for its benefits; our blacks
themselves would be put in better condition. Think much on this
subject, then please write me again when you have leisure."[247]

Reverend Mr. Finley participated in a colonization meeting held in
Princeton, New Jersey, November 6, 1816, which drew up a memorial
urging the legislature to use its influence in securing the adoption
of some deportation scheme by Congress. The memorialists recognized
that many slaves had been emancipated; that the same principles that
prompted past manumissions would gradually effect the freedom of all
others; that freedmen should be able "to rise to that condition to
which they are entitled by the laws of God and nature"; therefore,
they should be separated from the whites and placed in a favorable
situation, possibly Africa.[248]

A third concurrent manifestation of colonization activity is connected
with the name of Samuel J. Mills, whose indefatigable energy and
unselfish devotion to all causes missionary are scarcely paralleled in
history. Whether as an undergraduate at Williams College or as a
graduate student at Yale or Andover Theological Seminary, he was
feverishly active in projecting plans for Christian missionary work.
His mother said: "I have consecrated this child to the service of God
as a missionary,"[249] and surely he was faithful to death to this
dedication. He was the leader of the Society of Inquiry Respecting
Missions, founded in 1810, an organization which favored African
colonization.[250] As soon as his college work was over he made a
missionary tour through the Middle West and South, under the auspices
of the Society for Propagating the Gospel,[251] and in 1814-15 he made
a second tour.[252] He is credited with having originated the American
Bible Society, the United Foreign Missionary Society, and the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He took a deep interest
in the movement which about this time sent men to India, Ceylon, the
Sandwich Islands, and to the various tribes of the American Indians.
He had a hand in the formation of the Foreign Mission school at
Cornwall, Connecticut, and the establishment of the African School at
Parsippany, New Jersey, is