ave it to the entire discretion of Congress to provide a
suitable place for carrying out this plan, they passed a resolution to
submit to the wisdom of that body whether it would not be an act of charity
to grant them a small portion of their territory, either on the Missouri
River or any place that might seem to them most conducive to the public
good and their future welfare, subject, however, to such rules and
regulations as the government of the United States might think proper.[3]
Many Negroes, however, emigrated from this State during later years.
Subsequent accounts indicate, too, that this increasing interest in
colonization among the colored people of that Commonwealth extended even
into North Carolina.[4]

Farther north we observe more frequent and frank expressions of the
attitude of the colored people toward this enterprise. When the people of
Richmond, Virginia, registered their mild protest against it, about 3,000
free blacks of Philadelphia took higher ground.[5] Because their ancestors
not of their own accord were the first successful cultivators of the wilds
of America, they felt themselves entitled to participate in the blessings
of its "luxuriant soil," which their blood and sweat had moistened. They
viewed with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon
the reputation of the free people of color, "that they are a dangerous and
useless part of the community," when in the state of disfranchisement in
which they lived, in the hour of danger, they "ceased to remember their
wrongs and rallied around the standard of their country." They were
determined never to separate themselves from the slave population of this
country as they were brethren by the "ties of consanguinity, of suffering,
and of wrong."[6] They, therefore, appointed a committee of eleven persons
to open correspondence with Joseph Hopkinson, member of Congress from that
city, to inform him of the sentiments of the meeting, and issued an address
to the "Humane and Benevolent Inhabitants of Philadelphia,"[7] disclaiming
all connection with the society, questioning the professed philanthropy of
its promoters, and pointing out how disastrous it would be to the free
colored people, should it be carried out.[8]

Although a few persecuted Negroes of Maryland from the very beginning
believed it advisable to emigrate, the first action of importance observed
among the colored people of Baltimore, favoring colonization in Africa, was