again supported it as likely to promote emancipation. Others looked forward to the commerce that would follow the establishment of a colony on the borders ofa vast continent. . . and others again fancied that, in some undefined way, African colonization. would afford a solution of the negro question in this country.”
That is to say, those who “sincerely desired to afford the free black an asylum from the oppression they suffered here, and by their means to extend to Africa the blessings of Christianity and civilization”; those who wished to accelerate emancipation; those who expected to enhance the value of slaves by getting rid of the meddlesome free blacks; those who wanted to promote trade in ivory and palm-oil, and the half-hearted philanthropists who sought “relief from a bad population "without the trouble and expense of improving it,” all these were united in an organization for colonizing our free negroes in Africa. At their meetings "the devoted missionary, ready to pour out his life on the sands of Africa," was "jostled by the trafficker in human flesh," and the "humble, self-denying Christian listened to the praises of the society from the unblushing profligate." Mr. Latrobe, speaking to and for the society, says “it was well that all this was so. Co-operation, regardless of motive, was the necessity of the occasion.”
Congress by the act of March 3, 1819, authorized the President to employ naval ships "to cruise on any of the coasts of the United States or territories thereof, or of the coasts of Africa or elsewhere," to capture slave-ships; and, further, "to appoint a proper person or persons, residing upon the coast of
