The visit to Philadelphia of the negro President of the Liberian Republic, recalls the important part which a small group of local philanthropists played a century ago in promoting the foundation of the only free country in Africa under republican rule. The Liberian enterprise owed its origin, not solely to pity for the condition of the enslaved blacks of the South but also to the desire of many northern friends of the negroes to ameliorate the hardships of the freed blacks of the north. Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in common with several other northern States, witnessed at close range the evils of slavery. During the Revolutionary War steps had been taken to liberate the blacks in Pennsylvania and the famous Act of March 1st, 1780, decreed the abolition of slavery throughout the colony. In this, as in other and later efforts to liberate the negroes the Philadelphia Quakers had an important part and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded under the presidency of Benjamin Franklin, antedated the Revolutionary War by two years. The plan for establishing an African Negro Republic, populated by emigrants from the United States, is credited to Dr. Robert Finley, one of the trustees of Princeton, who was well acquainted with the extent of slavery in New Jersey, where the census of 1810 revealed the presence of more than ten thousand slaves, and who also had knowledge of the miserable condition of the freed negroes in Pennsylvania. Late in 1816 he went to Washington, where his brother-in-law, Elias Boudinot Caldwell was a member of Congress, and endeavored to obtain national support for his project. A sympathetic response was not wanting, although Congress was not yet prepared for immediate action. Accordingly, Finley turned in another direction, secured the backing of Justice Bushrod Washington of the Supreme Court, aroused the interest of Henry Clay and other notables and, toward the end of 1816, succeeded in forming, at a public meeting in Washington presided over by Henry Clay, the American Colonization Society which immediately selected Justice Washington as its president.