A Social History of the American Negro - Being a History of the Negro Problem in the United States. Including - A History and Study of the Republic of Liberia by Benjamin Brawley
page 159 of 545 (29%)
page 159 of 545 (29%)
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1815, expressed his interest by saying, "We should send to Africa a
population partly civilized and christianized for its benefit; and our blacks themselves would be put in a better condition." [Footnote 1: McPherson, 18.] In this same year, 1815, the country was startled by the unselfish enterprise of a Negro who had long thought of the unfortunate situation of his people in America and who himself shouldered the obligation to do something definite in their behalf. Paul Cuffe had been born in May, 1759, on one of the Elizabeth Islands near New Bedford, Mass., the son of a father who was once a slave from Africa and of an Indian mother.[1] Interested in navigation, he made voyages to Russia, England, Africa, the West Indies, and the South; and in time he commanded his own vessel, became generally respected, and by his wisdom rose to a fair degree of opulence. For twenty years he had thought especially about Africa, and in 1815 he took to Sierra Leone a total of nine families and thirty-eight persons at an expense to himself of nearly $4000. The people that he brought were well received at Sierra Leone, and Cuffe himself had greater and more far-reaching plans when he died September 7, 1817. He left an estate valued at $20,000. [Footnote 1: First Annual Report of American Colonization Society.] Dr. Finley's meeting at Princeton was not very well attended and hence not a great success. Nevertheless he felt sufficiently encouraged to go to Washington in December, 1816, to use his effort for the formation of a national colonization society. It happened that in February of this same year, 1816, General Charles Fenton Mercer, member of the House of Delegates, came upon the secret journals of the legislature for the |
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