A concurrent expression on Negro deportation, but apparently an independent one, is connected with the name of Robert Finley, of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. A graduate of Princeton, a teacher, a Presbyterian pastor, Finley was in 1816 made president of the University of Georgia, at Athens, where he died the following year at the age of forty-five. As early as 1814 he wrote "a very particular friend in Philadelphia" his ideas on Negro colonization.[246] On February 15, 1815, he wrote a letter to John O. Mumford, of New York City, in which he argued for the removal of the free blacks. He said in part: "Everything connected with their condition, including their color, is against them; nor is there much prospect that their state can ever be greatly ameliorated, while they shall continue among us. Could not the rich and benevolent devise means to form a colony on some part of the Coast of Africa, similar to the one at Sierra Leone, which might gradually induce many free blacks to go there and settle, devising for them the means of getting there, and of protection and support till they were established? Ought not Congress to be petitioned to grant them a district in a good climate, say on the shores of the Pacific Ocean? Our fathers brought them here, and we are bound if possible to repair the injuries inflicted by our fathers. Could they be sent to Africa, a three-fold benefit would arise. We should be cleared of them; we should send to Africa a population partially civilized and christianized for its benefits; our blacks themselves would be put in better condition. Think much on this subject, then please write me again when you have leisure."[247] Reverend Mr. Finley participated in a colonization meeting held in Princeton, New Jersey, November 6, 1816, which drew up a memorial urging the legislature to use its influence in securing the adoption of some deportation scheme by Congress. The memorialists recognized that many slaves had been emancipated; that the same principles that prompted past manumissions would gradually effect the freedom of all others; that freedmen should be able "to rise to that condition to which they are entitled by the laws of God and nature"; therefore, they should be separated from the whites and placed in a favorable situation, possibly Africa.[248]