to
retire to the country whence its ancestors came, and to abandon to the
negroes the possession of a territory, which Providence seems to have
more peculiarly destined for them, since they can subsist and labor in
it more easily that the whites.

The danger of a conflict between the white and the black inhabitants of
the Southern States of the Union--a danger which, however remote it may
be, is inevitable--perpetually haunts the imagination of the Americans.
The inhabitants of the North make it a common topic of conversation,
although they have no direct injury to fear from the struggle; but they
vainly endeavor to devise some means of obviating the misfortunes which
they foresee. In the Southern States the subject is not discussed: the
planter does not allude to the future in conversing with strangers; the
citizen does not communicate his apprehensions to his friends; he seeks
to conceal them from himself; but there is something more alarming in
the tacit forebodings of the South, than in the clamorous fears of the
Northern States.

This all-pervading disquietude has given birth to an undertaking which
is but little known, but which may have the effect of changing the fate
of a portion of the human race. From apprehension of the dangers which
I have just been describing, a certain number of American citizens have
formed a society for the purpose of exporting to the coast of Guinea,
at their own expense, such free negroes as may be willing to escape from
the oppression to which they are subject. *t In 1820, the society to
which I allude formed a settlement in Africa, upon the seventh degree
of north latitude, which bears the name of Liberia. The most recent
intelligence informs us that 2,500 negroes are collected there; they
have introduced the democratic institutions of America into the country
of their forefathers; and Liberia has a representative system of
government, negro jurymen, negro magistrates, and negro priests;
churches have been built, newspapers established, and, by a singular
change in the vicissitudes of the world, white men are prohibited from
sojourning within the settlement. *u

[Footnote t: This society assumed the name of "The Society for
the Colonization of the Blacks." See its annual reports; and more
particularly the fifteenth. See also the pamphlet, to which allusion has
already been made, entitled "Letters on the Colonization Society, and on
its probable Results," by Mr. Carey, Philadelphi