A public meeting of colored citizens of New York, with Samuel Ennals and Philip Bell as promoters, referred to the Colonizationists as men of “mistaken views” with respect to the welfare and wishes of the colored people.  The meeting solemnly protested against the bold effort to colonize the oppressed free people of color on the ground that it was “unjust, illiberal and unfounded; tending to excite prejudice of the community."[29] At a meeting of the free colored people of Brooklyn, promoted by Henry C. Thompson and George Hogarth, it was resolved that they knew of no other country in which they could justly claim or demand their rights as citizens, whether civil or political, but in the United States of America, their native soil; and that they would be active in their endeavors to convince the members of the Colonization Society, and the public generally, that being men, brethren, and fellow citizens, they were like other citizens entitled to an equal share of protection from the Federal Government.[30]

The sentiment of a meeting at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1831, was that the American Colonization Society was actuated by the same motives which influenced the mind of Pharaoh, when he ordered the male children of the Israelites to be destroyed.  They believed that the Society was the greatest of all foes to the free colored people and slave population; and that the man of color who would emigrate to Liberia was an enemy to the cause and a traitor to his brethren.  As they had committed no crime worthy of banishment, they would resist all attempts of the Colonization Society to banish them from their native land.[31] A New Haven meeting of the Peace and Benevolent Society of Afric-Americans, led by Henry Berrian and Henry N. Merriman, expressed interest in seeing Africa become civilized and religiously instructed, but not by the absurd and invidious plan of the colonization society to send a “nation of ignorant men to teach a nation of ignorant men.”  They would, therefore, resist all attempts for their removal to the torrid shores of Africa, and would sooner suffer every drop of their blood to be taken from their veins than submit to such unrighteous treatment.  From the colored people of Lyme, Connecticut, came the sincere opinion that the Colonization Society was one of the wildest projects ever patronized by enlightened men.  The colored citizens of Middletown, chief among whom were Joseph Gilbert and Amos G. Beman, inquired “Why should we leave this land, so dearly bought by the blood, groans and tears of our fathers?  Truly this is our home,” said they, “here let us live and here let us die."[32]