ltation with the Rev. Ezra Styles, afterward President of
Yale, it developed into a definite plan for a colony. The scheme proved
popular; it was widely advertised by sermons and circulars both in this
and the mother country; and by 1776 funds had been collected, Negro
students placed under suitable instruction at Princeton, and success
seemed almost assured. The outbreak of the Revolution, however, swept
away all the thought of carrying Hopkins' cherished enterprise into
execution, and after peace was restored his most strenuous efforts
failed to arouse the old interest. Later thinkers, however, found
suggestion and encouragement in his labors.

The colony founded at Sierra Leone by English philanthropists drew in
part its inspiration from Hopkins' idea, and in turn suggested later
American plans. After the celebrated decision of Lord Mansfield in the
Somerset case (1772), many slaves escaped to England, where they
congregated in the dens of London in helpless poverty and misery. James
Ramsay's essay on Slavery soon turned public attention to the Negro, and
Dr. Smeathman's letters suggested quite a scheme of colonization. A
movement in behalf of the oppressed race asserted itself at the
University of Cambridge, in which Clarkson, Wilberforce, Granville Sharp
and others took part. As a result of these efforts some four hundred
Negroes and sixty whites were landed at Sierra Leone in May, 1787.
Disease and disorder were rife, and by 1791 a mere handful survived. The
Sierra Leone Company was then incorporated; some 1,200 colonists from
the Bahamas and Nova Scotia were taken over, and the settlement in spite
of discouraging results was kept up by frequent reinforcements until
1807, when it was made a Government colony and naval station. Its growth
in population and commerce has since steadily increased, and it now
numbers some 60,000 persons chiefly concentrated in the city of
Freetown, and all blacks save one or two hundred.

It may be as well to mention here two other sporadic attempts to lead
colored colonists to Africa. In 1787 the gifted and erratic Dr. Wm.
Thornton proposed himself to become the leader of a body of Rhode Island
and Massachusetts colonists to Western Africa; he appears to have been
in communication with Hopkins on the subject a year later, but the
effort fell through for want of funds. The other is much later. Paul
Cuffee, the son of a well-to-do Massachusetts freedman, had become by
his talents and i