some time in Africa, at the foot of the Sierra Leone mountains. He had been delighted with the place, and to him seems first to have occurred, in conversing with many of the rescued slaves of African blood, the idea of obtaining a settlement for them at Sierra Leone. This was communicated by several of his poor "orphan exiles" to Granville Sharp; and Sharp seems to have revolved it much in his mind, and to have been carefully engaged in maturing the requisite measure, from 1783 to 1787. Mr. Smeatham was to have conducted the infant establishment. Government had engaged to allow him £12 for each person, whatever the number, that might accompany him. Navy transports were to be provided for the service, and all the necessary arrangements were on the point of completion, when Mr. Smeatham, probably from over exertion, was seized with a sudden fever, and in three days was no more.
Sharp in a letter to his brother in January, 1788, thus speaks of the establishment: "The settlers consisted chiefly of blacks and of people of color, who had served in the army and navy,[1] during the late war, and having imprudently spent all their earnings, they fell into extreme poverty and were starving about the streets, till they were relieved, for some time, by a voluntary subscription of charitable people.
"In the mean time, a proposal was made to them by the late Mr. Smeatham, to form a free settlement at Sierra Leone. Many of them came to consult me about the proposal. Sometimes they came in large bodies together. Upon inquiring among themselves, I found that several of them had been on the spot; and they assured me, that there was much fine wood land unoccupied on that part of the coast. This account was confirmed to me by several other channels, and more particularly by a young negro man, a native of Sierra Leone, whom I happily saved, just at that time from slavery."
In another place, in a letter to the Archbishop of
- ↑ Most of these were refugee slaves from the United States.
