An appropriation for urgent deficiencies which was passed on February 26, 1896, contained the following interesting item: "For the payment of the cost of transportation furnished by certain railway companies in connection with the failure of the scheme for the colonization of negroes in Mexico, necessitating their return to their homes in Alabama, ... five thousand and eighty-seven dollars and nine cents." 29 _U. S. Statutes at Large_, p. 18. DOCUMENTS JAMES MADISON'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE NEGRO Like most of the Revolutionary leaders, James Madison, moved by the social and political upheaval of that time thought seriously of the liberation of the slaves, largely for economic reasons. He believed that the country should depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves, knowing that their labor was not sufficiently skillful to furnish the basis for diversified industry. He considered slavery "the great evil under which the nation labors."[1] On another occasion he referred to it as a "portentous evil,"[2] and on still another "an evil, moral, political, and economic, a sad blot on our free country."[3] When, therefore, petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to the legislature of Virginia, he did not frown upon the proposal as a mischievous agitation as did so many others. Madison looked forward to the eventual extermination of slavery through gradual methods of preparation for emancipation. Feeling that the thorough incorporation of the blacks into the community of whites would be prejudicial to the interests of the country, he had no other thought than that of deportation as a correlative of emancipation. Along with a number of others he discussed the proposal to set apart certain western public lands for the transplantation of the blacks from the slave holding States to free soil, but as the white man by his pioneering efforts so rapidly pushed the frontier to the west as to convince the country of the need of that territory for expansion, Madison soon receded from this position and advocated along with most of the leading men of his time the colonization of the Negroes in Africa.