emed to feel that the free Negroes
should be forced to leave.[23] Considering themselves as much entitled to
the protection of the laws of this country as any other element of its
population, they took the position that any free man of color who would
accept the offers of the colonization movement should be branded as an
enemy of his race. They not only demonstrated their unalterable opposition
but expressed a firm resolve to resist the colonizationists even down to
death.

The proceedings of these meetings will throw much light on the excitement
then prevailing among the free people of color in the border and Northern
States. In 1831 a Baltimore meeting, led by William Douglass and William
Watkins, expressed the belief that the American Colonization Society was
founded "more upon selfish policy than in the true principles of
benevolence; and, therefore, as far as it regards the life-giving spring of
its operations," that it was not entitled to their confidence, and should
be viewed by them with that caution and distrust which their happiness
demanded. They considered the land in which they had been born and bred
their only "true and appropriate home," and declared that when they desired
to remove they would apprise the public of the same, in due season.[24]
That same year a large meeting of colored people of Washington, in the
District of Columbia, convened for the purpose of expressing their opinion
on this important question. Although they knew that among the advocates of
the colonizing system, they had many true and sincere friends, they
declared that the efforts of these philanthropists, though prompted no
doubt by the purest motives, should be viewed with distress. They further
asserted that, as the soil which gave them birth was their only true and
veritable home, it would be impolitic, if they should leave their home
without the benefit of education.[25] A meeting of the very same order of
the free people of color of Wilmington, Delaware, that year, led by Peter
Spencer and Thomas Dorsey, took the position that the colonization movement
was inimical to the best interests of the colored people, and at variance
with the principles of civil and religious liberty, and wholly incompatible
with the spirit of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence of
the United States.[26]

A meeting of free colored people held in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1831,
was of the opinion that none should leave the United States,