Now followed the period of Southern expansion and of increasing
materialism, and before long came the War of 1812. By 1811 a note of
doubt had crept into Jefferson's dealing with the subject. Said he:
"Nothing is more to be wished than that the United States would
themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of
Africa ... But for this the national mind is not yet prepared. It may
perhaps be doubted whether many of these people would voluntarily
consent to such an exchange of situation, and very certain that few of
those advanced to a certain age in habits of slavery, would be capable
of self-government. This should not, however, discourage the experiment,
nor the early trial of it; and the proposition should be made with all
the prudent cautions and attentions requisite to reconcile it to the
interests, the safety, and the prejudices of all parties."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Writings_, XIII, 11.]

From an entirely different source, however, and prompted not by
expediency but the purest altruism, came an impulse that finally told in
the founding of Liberia. The heart of a young man reached out across
the sea. Samuel J. Mills, an undergraduate of Williams College, in 1808
formed among his fellow-students a missionary society whose work later
told in the formation of the American Bible Society and the Board of
Foreign Missions. Mills continued his theological studies at Andover and
then at Princeton; and while at the latter place he established a school
for Negroes at Parsippany, thirty miles away. He also interested in
his work and hopes Rev. Robert Finley, of Basking Ridge, N.J., who
"succeeded in assembling at Princeton the first meeting ever called to
consider the project of sending Negro colonists to Africa,"[1] and who
in a letter to John P. Mumford, of New York, under date February 14,