Sierra Leone Company was then incorporated; some 1,200 colonists from
the Bahamas and Nova Scotia were taken over, and the settlement in spite
of discouraging results was kept up by frequent reinforcements until
1807, when it was made a Government colony and naval station. Its growth
in population and commerce has since steadily increased, and it now
numbers some 60,000 persons chiefly concentrated in the city of
Freetown, and all blacks save one or two hundred.

It may be as well to mention here two other sporadic attempts to lead
colored colonists to Africa. In 1787 the gifted and erratic Dr. Wm.
Thornton proposed himself to become the leader of a body of Rhode Island
and Massachusetts colonists to Western Africa; he appears to have been
in communication with Hopkins on the subject a year later, but the
effort fell through for want of funds. The other is much later. Paul
Cuffee, the son of a well-to-do Massachusetts freedman, had become by
his talents and industry a prosperous merchant and ship-owner.
Stimulated by the colony at Sierra Leone, and longing to secure liberty
to his oppressed race, he determined to transport in his own vessels,
and at his own expense, as many as he could of his colored brethren.
Accordingly, in 1815, he sailed from Boston with about forty, whom he
landed safely at Sierra Leone. He was about to take over on a second
voyage a much larger number, when his benevolent designs were
interrupted by death.

It will be observed that the colonization plans hitherto unfolded had
all been proposed for some missionary or similar benevolent object, and
were to be carried out on a small scale and by private means. It is now
time to consider one proposed from a widely different standpoint. As a
political measure, as a possible remedy for the serious evils arising
from slavery and the contact of races, it is not surprising to find