History of Liberia | Page 4

his own expense, as many as he could of his colored brethren. Accordingly, in 1815, he sailed from Boston with about forty, whom he landed safely at Sierra Leone. He was about to take over on a second voyage a much larger number, when his benevolent designs were interrupted by death.
It will be observed that the colonization plans hitherto unfolded had all been proposed for some missionary or similar benevolent object, and were to be carried out on a small scale and by private means. It is now time to consider one proposed from a widely different standpoint. As a political measure, as a possible remedy for the serious evils arising from slavery and the contact of races, it is not surprising to find Thomas Jefferson suggesting a plan of colonization. The evils of slavery none ever saw more clearly. "The whole commerce between master and slave," he quaintly says, "is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it." And again, "With what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms these into despots and those into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other.... I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."[3] Yet his equally clear perception of the evils sure to result from emancipation immediate and unqualified, makes him look to colonization as the only remedy. "Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state?" he asks, "Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race." After the lapse of a century how prophetic these words sound! Jefferson believed then that by colonization slavery was to be abolished. All slaves born after a certain date were to be free; these should remain with their parents till a given age, after which they should be taught at public expense agriculture and the useful arts. When full-grown they were to be "colonized to such a place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of the household and handicraft arts, pairs of the useful domestic animals, etc.; to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection till they have acquired strength."
Such in outline was Jefferson's contribution to the colonization idea. Its influence was unquestionably great: the "Notes on Virginia," privately circulated after 1781, and at length published in 1787, went through eight editions before 1800, and must have been familiar to nearly all of those concerned in the formation of the Colonization Society.
Clearer still must the details of Jefferson's project have been in the minds of the members of the Virginia Legislature in 1800, when, after the outbreak of a dangerous slave conspiracy in Richmond, they met in secret session to consult the common security. The resolution which they reached shows unmistakably Jefferson's influence. With the delicate if somewhat obscure periphrasis in which legislation concerning the Negro was traditionally couched, they enacted: "That the Governor be requested to correspond with the President of the United States on the subject of purchasing lands without the limits of this State whither persons obnoxious to the laws or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed."[4] An interesting correspondence ensued between Monroe, who was then Governor, and Jefferson. Both regarded the idea as something far more important than a mere penal colony. Monroe, too, saw in it a possible remedy for the evils of slavery, and refers to the matter as "one of great delicacy and importance, involving in a peculiar degree the future peace, tranquillity, and happiness" of the country. After much discussion Africa was selected as the only appropriate site, and approved by another Act of the Legislature. Jefferson lost no time in attempting to secure land for the colony, but his efforts met with no success. After a discouraging repulse from Sierra Leone, and the failure of several half-hearted attempts to obtain a footing elsewhere, the whole matter was allowed to sink into abeyance. For years a pall of secrecy concealed the scheme from public knowledge.
In the meantime a new private movement toward colonization was started at the North. Samuel J. Mills organized at Williams College, in 1808, for missionary work, an undergraduate society, which was soon transferred to Andover, and resulted in the establishment of the American Bible