those concerned (between twenty and
thirty, I believe) fell victims to the law. So extensive an
execution could not but excite sensibility in the public mind,
and beget a regret that the laws had not provided for such cases,
some alternative, combining more mildness with equal efficiency.
The Legislature of the State ... took the subject into
consideration, and have communicated to me through the Governor
of the State, their wish that some place could be provided, out
of the limits of the United States, to which slaves guilty of
insurgency might be transported; and they have particularly
looked to Africa as offering the most desirable receptacle. We
might, for this purpose, enter into negotiations with the
natives, on some part of the coast, to obtain a settlement; and,
by establishing an African company, combine with it commercial
operations, which might not only reimburse expenses, but procure
profit also. But there being already such an establishment on
that coast by the English Sierra Leone Company, made for the
express purpose of colonizing civilized blacks to that country,
it would seem better, by incorporating our emigrants with
theirs, to make one strong, rather than two weak colonies. This
would be the more desirable because the blacks settled at Sierra
Leone, having chiefly gone from the States, would often receive
among those whom we should send, their acquaintances and
relatives. The object of this letter is to ask ... you to enter
into conference with such persons, private and public, as would
be necessary to give us permission to send thither the persons
under contemplation.... They are not felons, or common
malefactors, but persons guilty of what the safety of society,
under actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as a crime, but
which their feelings may represent in a far different shape. They
will be a valuable acquisition to the settlement, ... and well
calculated to cooperate in the plan of civilization.

... The consequences of permitting emancipation to become
extensive, unless a condition of emigration be annexed to them,
furnish matter of solicitude to the Legislature of Virginia.
Although provision for the settlement of emancipated negroes
might perhaps be obtained nearer home than Africa, yet it is
desirable th