_Resolved_, That we as an oppressed people, feel it our duty to give our
undivided support to the press and the laborers in our cause.

* * * * *

Mr. Israel Lewis made his way to Canada, and having obtained permission to
establish a colony, he bargained with the Canada Company for one township
of land, for which he agreed to pay the money demanded, in a few days, and
then returned to Cincinnati, by way of Rochester. The poor, persecuted
colored people, had in the mean time made ready for their flight from
their homes, their native land, and from this boasted free Republic, to
seek a residence in the cold and dreary wilds of Canada; to claim that
protection from the English government which had been denied them in the
land of their birth; and like the overtasked Israelites, "they went out
with their wives and their little ones," but with smaller possessions.

During the stay of Mr. Lewis in Rochester, he reported there and
elsewhere, that eleven hundred persons were then in the dense woods of
Canada in a state of actual starvation, and called upon the humane
everywhere, to assist them in such extreme suffering.

To me he also told the story of their destitution, which affected me
deeply. I had at that time just made a public profession of my faith in
the Christian religion and my determination to be governed by its holy
precepts, I felt for the distressed and suffering everywhere; but
particularly for those who had fled, poor and destitute, from cruel
task-masters, choosing rather the sufferings of cold and hunger, with
liberty, than the meager necessities of life and Slavery. I concluded to
go to Canada and try to do some good; to be of some little service in the
great cause of humanity.