However, the Afro-American community was not very enthusiastic about the project. In 1817 three thousand blacks crowded into the Bethel Church in Philadelphia and, led by Richard Allen, vehemently criticized colonization. They charged that the Society's propaganda only served to increase racial discrimination since it stressed the poverty and ignorance of the freedman and claimed he was doomed to continue in his filth and degradation because of his natural inferiority. It also argued that whites would only take advantage of the Afro-American, and that the separation of the two races was the only solution. The participants at the Bethel meeting contended that this propaganda tended to justify racial discrimination. The claim was also made that the removal of freedmen from America would only serve to make the slave system more secure, and they pledged themselves never to abandon their slave brothers. Besides, while they were African by heritage, they had been born in America, and it was now their home. Most of the fifteen thousand who did return to Africa were slaves who had been freed for this purpose, and the project was acknowledged to be a failure. The Society's own propaganda contributed to the alienation of many freedmen. One of its own leaders admitted that lacks could read and hear and, when they were spoken of as a nuisance to be banished, they reacted negatively like men. Widespread racial prejudice, besides creating racial discrimination, resulted in oppressive legislation. In 1810 Congress excluded Afro-Americans from carrying the mail. In 1820 it authorized the District of Columbia to elect white city officials, and it consistently admitted new states to the Union whose constitutions severely limited the rights of freedmen. The office of the Attorney General usually took the position that the Constitution did not grant citizenship to Negroes, and Congress itself had limited naturalization to white aliens in 1790. This point of view was later justified by the Dred Scott decision. With only a few exceptions, the Secretary of State refused to grant passports to those wishing to travel abroad, although it did provide a letter of identification stating that the carrier was a resident of the United States. Finally, Massachusetts granted its own passports to its colored citizens, complaining that they had been virtually denationalized.