nned to transfer three thousand parcels of land of forty to
sixty acres each during the following three years. To whom among the
poor he should make these deeds, was a question he could not hastily
solve. He was sure, however, that, inasmuch as his home and the land
were both in the State of New York, it would be very suitable to
select his beneficiaries from among the people of that State. But for
a long time, he was at a loss to decide, whether to take his
beneficiaries generally from the meritorious poor or only from the
deserving Negroes. He said, "I could not put a bounty on color. I
shrank from the least appearance of doing so, and if I know my heart,
it was equally compassionate toward such white and black men as are
equal sufferers."[501] In the end, however, he concluded to confine
his gifts to Negroes.

He would not have come to this conclusion he said, if the land he had
to give away had been several times as much as it was, nor if the
Negroes, the poorest of the poor, had not been the most deeply wronged
class of the citizens. "That they are so," said he, "is evident, if
only from the fact, that the cruel, killing, Heaven-defying prejudice
of which they are victims, has closed against them the avenues to
riches and respectability--to happiness and usefulness. That they are
so, is also evident from the fact, that, whilst white men in this
State, however destitute of property, are allowed to vote for Civil
Rulers, every colored man in it who does not own landed estate to the
value of two-hundred and fifty dollars, is excluded from the exercise
of this natural and indispensably protective right."[502] He confessed
that he was influenced by the consideration that there was great
encouragement to improve the condition of the Negroes, because every
amelioration in it contributed to loosen the bands of the enslaved
portion of their outraged and afflicted race.

He, therefore, requested Reverend Theodore S. Wright, Reverend Charles
B. Ray, and Dr. J. McCune Smith, three representative Negroes of New
York City, to make out a list of the Negroes who should receive from
him parcels of land. His only restrictions upon them in making this
selection were that they should choose no person younger than
twenty-one and no person older than sixty; that they accept no person
who was in easy circumstances as to property; and no one who was
already the owner of land, and no drunkards.[503] He further promised
to pay all taxes a