Samuel J. Mills, "having been providentially made acquainted"[266] with this movement, about the close of November left New York, where he was working among the poor, immediately for Washington. What he, as well as the other workers, did there, is pretty well indicated by Congressman Elijah J. Mills of Massachusetts in a letter to his wife, under date of December 25: "Among the great and important objects to which our attention is called, a project is lately started for settling, with free blacks which abound in the South and West, a colony, either on the coast of Africa, or in some remote region in our own country. It has excited great interest, and I am inclined to think that in the course of a few years it will be carried into effect. I enclose you an address which is in circulation here upon the subject. Agents are attending from different parts of the United States, soliciting Congress to take the subject up immediately, and I was this morning called upon by a Mr. Mills (a young clergyman who was at New Orleans with Smith), who is very zealously engaged in the work. He is an intelligent young man, and appears completely devoted to the great work of diffusing the blessings of Christianity to those who are ignorant of it."[267] The first general conference that the colonization workers had in Washington was in the nature of a "prayer meeting"[268] held in the home of Elias B. Caldwell, a brother-in-law of Finley, clerk of the United States Supreme Court, and afterward secretary of the American Colonization Society. This meeting, which both Mills and Finley attended, was "for the purpose of imploring the divine direction, on the evening of the following day, when the expediency of forming a Colonization Society was to be publicly discussed."[269] The enthusiasm of Finley at this time was almost boundless; he would give five hundred dollars of his own scanty means to insure its success; when some, thinking the project foolhardy, laughed at it, he declared, "I know the scheme is from God."[270] The efficacy of prayer bore the traditional fruit, for whereas persons "were brought there from curiosity, or by the solicitation of their friends, viewing the scheme as too chimerical for any national being to undertake [nevertheless] a great change"[271] was produced on them.