There is striking proof of the high estimate which the more enlightened people of the country put upon the Negro’s character and capabilities in the enterprises for African colonization which were made so much of in the first half of the last century. An interesting feature of this movement was the union of benevolent people in the South with those of like mind in the North, and the harmony of spirit which long prevailed. With the teachings of the Declaration of Independence dominant everywhere, thinking people felt that slavery could not be countenanced forever in a free country; and the practical way to deal with the Negroes seemed to be to set them off in colonies by themselves. Jefferson suggested that there might be such a colony in some part of the region northwest of the Ohio or that a retreat be found for them in the West Indies; and, later, in 1811, after the colony of Sierra Leone had been planted by the British Government, he wrote that nothing was more to be wished than that the United States should undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa. In 1816, the Legislature of Virginia took action to the same end, and a year later, the American Colonization Society was organized at the Capital of the Nation, with Justice Bushrod Washington as president and distinguished men from all parts of the land in the list of vice presidents. During the following 15 years, until 1832, vigorous efforts were made for the support of this society in all the different States. State societies, county societies, church societies and local bands, auxiliary to the national organization, were started; in 1832, a list was printed of 231 such auxiliaries, of which 127 were in the slave States and 104 elsewhere. In the lists of their presidents, secretaries, and treasurers are found the names of John Marshall and James Madison, of Virginia; Charles Carroll, of Maryland; Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina; Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; Gerrit Smith and Arthur Tappan, of New York; Jeremiah Day and Leonard Bacon, of Connecticut, with others of similar standing in the North and South alike, governors, judges, ministers of the gospel, and prominent business men. The purpose on which the country was thus united was the building up of Liberia, the establishment in Africa of a Republic upon the pattern of the United States, to be made up of freed slaves from America. That shows what was thought of the Negroes at that time; how the ablest men believed in them as equal to grave civil responsibilities. However wild the project looks today, the very launching of it was a significant tribute to these people.