Writing from Hartford in 1851, Augustus Washington stated that he was well aware that there could be nothing more startling than that a Northern colored man, considered intelligent and sound in faith, should declare his opinion and use his influence in favor of African colonization. He maintained, however, that the novelty of the thing did not prove it false any more than it would be to say that because one breaks away from a long-established custom he may not have the least reason for doing so. He urged the free colored people to emigrate from the crowded cities to less populous parts of the United States, to the Great West or to Africa, or to any place where they might secure an equality of rights and liberties with a mind unfettered and space in which to rise. Moreover, from the time he was a lad of fifteen years of age, and especially since the Mexican War, he had advocated the plan of a separate State for the colored people.[70] In a letter addressed to the editor of the _African Repository_, in 1853, Nathaniel Bowen undertook to express similar views. Although they possessed only partial freedom in this country, the free colored people of his city, Rome, New York, were generally against colonization. Moreover, he found many colored people who talked of and favored going to Canada, but he believed if those persons would take their interests into consideration, they would not hesitate to go to Africa.[71] The efforts toward emigration too took organized form during the forties and fifties. In 1848 the free colored people of Dayton, Ohio, held a meeting to express their sentiments in favor of emigration to Africa, and to ask the white citizens to aid them in going there.[72] The movement also reached the colored people of Cincinnati, Ohio.[73] At a meeting held in that city on the 14th of July, 1850, they adopted a preamble and resolutions expressing similar sentiments. Going a step further, in 1850 a number of free Negroes of New York formed an organization called the New York and Liberian Agricultural and Emigration Society to coöperate with the Colonization Society. Considerable money was collected by the organization to aid emigrants whom they sent to Liberia.[74]