When Cuffe returned from Africa in the early summer of 1816 the cause for which he had given so much time and made so many sacrifices was more prominent than it had ever been in its history. The Union Humane Society, founded in Ohio in 1815 by Benjamin Lundy as an anti-slavery organization, had declared for the removal of the Negro beyond the white man's pale. The Kentucky Colonization Society had petitioned Congress to settle, at public expense, on some unappropriated tract of public land, the Negroes already free and those who might subsequently obtain their freedom. The Virginia Assembly, also, had presented a memorial to Congress praying that the National Government find a place on the North Pacific or African coast for colonizing the free blacks of the State. Finally, the inhabitants of New Jersey petitioned their Legislature to instruct their representatives in Congress to lay before that body at its next meeting as a subject for discussion "the expediency of forming a colony on the coast of Africa, or elsewhere, where such of the people of color as are now free, or may hereafter be set free, may, with their own consent, be removed."[53] Cuffe returned from Africa about June 1, 1816. The New Jersey meeting was on the sixth of the following November. Final action by the Virginia Assembly was taken on the twenty-first of December of that year. A graduate of Princeton, Robert Finley, then engaged in the Presbyterian ministry and later president of the University of Georgia, participated in the New Jersey meeting. He now took a leading part in the deliberation of a body of men in Washington, D.C., where a national organization was launched for the purpose of deporting to Africa or elsewhere the free blacks of the United States. A preliminary meeting was held on December 21, 1816; the constitution was adopted on December 28, 1816, and on New Year's Day 1817, the officers were elected. This was the beginning of the American Colonization Society. At this meeting the enthusiasm of Reverend Mr. Finley was boundless. He offered five hundred dollars from his savings to insure the success of the movement, and when some, thinking the plan foolhardy, laughed, he declared, "I know the scheme is from God." The one practical colonizationist, at this time, was Paul Cuffe, and to him Rev. Mr. Finley went for advice and help.