intended not to go to the first table but the mate came and urged me to
take a seat. I accordingly did and was called upon to carve a large saddle
of beef which was before me. This I performed accordingly to the best of
my ability. No one of the company manifested any objection or seemed
anyways disturbed by my presence."--Extract of a letter from a colored
gentleman traveling to the West, Cleveland, Ohio, August 11, 1836.--See
_The Philanthropist_, Oct. 21, 1836.]



CHAPTER IV

COLONIZATION AS A REMEDY FOR MIGRATION


Because of these untoward circumstances consequent to the immigration of
free Negroes and fugitives into the North, their enemies, and in some
cases their well-intentioned friends, advocated the diversion of these
elements to foreign soil. Benezet and Brannagan had the idea of settling
the Negroes on the public lands in the West largely to relieve the
situation in the North.[1] Certain anti-slavery men of Kentucky, as we
have observed, recommended the same. But this was hardly advocated at all
by the farseeing white men after the close of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. It was by that time very clear that white men would
want to occupy all lands within the present limits of the United States.
Few statesmen dared to encourage migration to Canada because the large
number of fugitives who had already escaped there had attached to that
region the stigma of being an asylum for fugitives from the slave States.

The most influential people who gave thought to this question finally