sion was to
the effect that no man, white or black, could set foot on British soil
and remain a slave. The case was brought at the instance of Mr.
Granville Sharp. The decision created universal comment. Many Negroes
in New England, who had found shelter under the British flag on
account of the proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton, went to England.
Free Negroes from other parts--Jamaica, St. Thomas, and San
Domingo--hastened to breathe the free air of the British metropolis.
Many came to want, and wandered about the streets of London, strangers
in a strange land. Granville Sharp, a man of great humanity, was
deeply affected by the sad condition of these people. He consulted
with Dr. Smeathman, who had spent considerable time in Africa; and
they conceived the plan of transporting them to the west coast of
Africa, to form a colony.[102] The matter was agitated in London by
the friends of the blacks, and finally the government began to be
interested. A district of about twenty square miles was purchased by
the government of Naimbanna, king of Sierra Leone, on which to locate
the proposed colony. About four hundred Negroes and sixty white
persons, the greater portion of the latter being "women of the
town,"[103] were embarked on "The Nautilus," Capt. Thompson, and
landed at Sierra Leone on the 9th of May, 1787. The climate was
severe, the sanitary condition of the place vile, and the habits of
the people immoral. The African fever, with its black death-stroke,
reaped a harvest; while the irregularities and indolence of the
majority of the colonists, added to the deeds of plunder perpetrated
by predatory bands of savages, reduced the number of the colonists to
about sixty-four souls in 1791.

The dreadful news of the fate of the colony was borne to the
philanthropists in England. But their faith in colonization stood as
unblanched before the revelation as the Iron Duke at Waterloo. An
association was formed under the name of "St. George's Bay," but
afterwards took the name of the "Sierra Leone Company," with a capital
stock of one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with such
humanitarians as Granville Sharp, Thornton, Wilberforce, and Clarkson
among its directors. The object of the company was to push forward the
work of colonization. One hundred Europeans landed at Sierra Leone in
the month of February, 1792, and were followed in March by eleven
hundred and thirty-one Negroes. A large number of them had served in