informed.  Congress should be memorialized in every town, city, and village in the United States, to set apart territory for the colonization of free blacks.  It should be done speedily.  It matters not what it might cost this government, it should be done.  Talk not of dollars and cents.  Mountains of gold are lighter than a feather, if thrown into the balance against a cause which disturbs the peace, and endangers the perpetuity of this Union.  Territory should be secured and set apart, near the Southern border of the United States.  I repeat that it should be done speedily.  Humanity and justice demand it at our hands.  What can the free blacks do?  Where can they go?  They will soon be legislated out of the free states, and their condition in the slave states, must necessarily be one of wretchedness and degradation.  Reader, what say you to the above proposition?  It is offered for your sober and prayerful consideration.  Does it commend itself to your judgment?  Is it safe?  Is it practicable?  Is it suitable, proper and right?  Consult that inward monitor conscience.  Ask him if all is right; if all is well within you?  Ask him if something should not be done for the African.

Thousands of slaveholders at this time would cheerfully liberate their slaves, if they could be removed beyond the limits of the United States, and provision made for them, that would conduce to their peace, happiness, and well being.  Knowing, as I do, the feelings and views of Southern men; I here confidently assert, that if our national legislature will colonize the free blacks somewhere on this continent, contiguous to the Southern border of the United States, and make suitable provision for them; in less than twenty years from this time, at least one fourth of the slaves, now in bondage in the United States, will be manumitted and colonized.  Don’t talk to us about colonizing the free blacks in Africa; it can’t be done; it never will be done; the majority of them are unwilling to go to Africa.  They prefer bondage in the United States, to transportation to Africa, During my residence in the States of Virginia and Tennessee, I had knowledge of several instances, in which masters proposed to liberate slaves, provided they were willing to be removed to the colony in Africa, and in most cases they refused, declaring that they preferred bondage in the United States to a removal to Africa.  I interrogated at different times hundreds of slaves, old and young, male and female, as to whether they would consent to a removal to Africa; provided their masters would liberate them, and in at least, nine cases out of ten, they would promptly and emphatically answer, No; they would not go to Africa—­they would rather continue slaves—­they would rather die, &c.