Cooley and others of Maryland, and representatives from other States
which cannot now be recollected, the data not being at hand, assembled
in the city of Philadelphia, in the capacity of a National Convention,
to "devise ways and means for the bettering of our condition." These
Conventions determined to assemble annually, much talent, ability, and
energy of character being displayed; when in 1831 at a sitting of the
Convention in September, from their previous pamphlet reports, much
interest having been created throughout the country, they were favored
by the presence of a number of whites, some of whom were able and
distinguished men, such as Rev. R.R. Gurley, Arthur Tappan, Elliot
Cresson, John Rankin, Simeon Jocelyn and others, among them William
Lloyd Garrison, then quite a young man, all of whom were staunch and
ardent Colonizationists, young Garrison at that time, doing his
mightiest in his favorite work.

Among other great projects of interest brought before the convention at
a previous sitting, was that of the expediency of a general emigration,
as far as it was practicable, of the colored people to the British
Provinces of North America. Another was that of raising sufficient means
for the establishment and erection of a College for the proper education
of the colored youth. These gentlemen long accustomed to observation and
reflection on the condition of their people saw at once, that there must
necessarily be means used adequate to the end to be attained--that end
being an unqualified equality with the ruling class of their fellow
citizens. He saw that as a class, the colored people of the country were
ignorant, degraded and oppressed, by far the greater portion of them
being abject slaves in the South, the very condition of whom was almost
enough, under the circumstances, to blast the remotest hope of success,
and those who were freemen, whether in the South or North, occupied a
subservient, servile, and menial position, considering it a favor to get