Provision was made for a more stringent suppression of the slave trade: new cruisers were ordered and bounties awarded for captures; but the clause which proved so important to the embryo colony was that dealing with the captured cargoes: "The President of the United States is hereby authorized to make such regulations and arrangements as he may deem expedient for the safe-keeping, support, and removal beyond the limits of the United States, of all such negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color as may be so delivered and brought within their jurisdiction; and to appoint a proper person or persons residing upon the coast of Africa as agent or agents for receiving the negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color, delivered from on board vessels seized in the prosecution of the slave trade by commanders of the United States armed vessels." The sum of $100,000 was appropriated for carrying out the provisions of the Act. President Monroe determined to construe it as broadly as possible in aid of the project of colonization. After giving Congress, in his message, December 20, 1818, fair notice of his intention, no objection being made, he proceeded to appoint two agents, the Rev. Samuel Bacon, already in the service of the Colonization Society, and John P. Bankson as assistant, and to charter the ship Elizabeth. The agents were instructed to settle on the coast of Africa, with a tacit understanding that the place should be that selected by the Colonization Society; they were to provide accommodations sufficient for three hundred, supplying provisions, clothing, tools, and implements. It is important to note the essential part taken by the Government in the establishment of the colony, for this is often said to be purely the result of private enterprise; the inference tending to free the United States from any responsibility for the protection of its feeble offspring. It is true according to the letter, that the Government agency was separate from the colony: the agents were instructed "to exercise no power founded on the principle of colonization, or other principle than that of performing benevolent offices;" and again, "you are not to connect your agency with the views or plans of the Colonization Society, with which, under the law, the Government of the United States has no concern," Yet as a matter of fact the agency and colony were practically identical; and for years the resources of the Government were employed "to colonize recaptured Africans, to build homes for them, to furnish them with farming utensils, to pay instructors to teach them, to purchase ships for their convenience, to build forts for their protection, to supply them with arms and munitions of war, to enlist troops to guard them, and to employ the army and navy in their defence,"[7] These words of one unfriendly to the colony forcibly show the extent to which our national government was responsible for the experiment.