Not without reason, these persons became objects of distrust to slaveholders. Devices were therefore sought to get rid of their disturbing influence, and to prevent the increase of the number of such persons. In 1816 the grand scheme was proposed, and readily adopted in most of the slaveholding States, for colonizing on the coast of Africa the free colored people of the United States, and prohibiting the emancipation of any more of the enslaved, excepting upon the condition of their removal to Liberia. To carry this great undertaking into complete effect it was necessary to secure the patronage of the Federal Government. This obviously could not be done, without first conciliating to the project the approval and co-operation of the people of the non-slaveholding States. Accordingly, agents, eloquent and cunning, were sent north, east, and west, to summon the benevolent and patriotic everywhere to aid in an enterprise which, it was claimed, would result in the safe but entire abolition of American slavery. The dreadful wrongs and cruelties inflicted upon our bondmen were not kept out of sight by these agents, but sometimes glowingly depicted. The participation of the Northern States in the original sin of the enslavement of Africans was pertinently urged. The utter impracticability and danger of setting free such hordes of ignorant, degraded people were insisted on with particular emphasis. The immense good that would be done to benighted Africa was eloquently portrayed,--how the slave-trade might be stopped, and the knowledge of the arts of civilized America, and the blessings of our Christian religion, might be spread throughout that dark region of the earth, from the basis of colonies planted at Liberia and elsewhere along those coasts, hitherto visited only by mercenary and cruel white men. All these considerations were so pressed upon the churches and ministers and kind-hearted people of the Northern States, that erelong an enthusiasm was awakened everywhere in favor of colonizing the colored people of our country “in their native land,” and thus, at the same time, evangelizing Africa and wiping out the shame of the American Republic. Without stopping to consider the glaring inconsistencies of the scheme, it was taken for granted to be the only feasible way of doing what we all longed to have done,--abolishing slavery. So the colonization of our colored population became the favorite enterprise at the North, even more than at the South. Thousands who were so prejudiced against them that they would never consent to admit them to the enjoyment of the rights, and the exercise of the prerogatives, of men in our country were ready to give liberally to have them transported across the Atlantic, and were deluded into the belief that it was a benevolent, yes, a Christian enterprise. The very elect were deceived. The men who have since been most distinguished among the Abolitionists--Mr. Garrison, Arthur Tappan, Gerrit Smith, James G.