in England, in May, 1787, some four hundred Negroes and sixty white persons were landed at Sierra Leone.  Some of the Negroes in England had gained their freedom in consequence of Lord Mansfield’s decision in 1772, others had been discharged from the British Army after the American Revolution, and all were leading in England a more or less precarious existence.  The sixty white persons sent along were abandoned women, and why Sierra Leone should have had this weight placed upon it at the start history has not yet told.  It is not surprising to learn that “disease and disorder were rife, and by 1791 a mere handful survived."[1] As early as in his Notes on Virginia, privately printed in 1781, Thomas Jefferson had suggested a colony for Negroes, perhaps in the new territory of Ohio.  The suggestion was not acted upon, but it is evident that by 1800 several persons had thought of the possibility of removing the Negroes in the South to some other place either within or without the country.

[Footnote 1:  McPherson, 15. (See bibliography on Liberia.)]

Gabriel’s insurrection in 1800 again forced the idea concretely forward.  Virginia was visibly disturbed by this outbreak, and in secret session, on December 21, the House of Delegates passed the following resolution:  “That the Governor[1] be requested to correspond with the President of the United States,[2] on the subject of purchasing land without the limits of this state, whither persons obnoxious to the laws, or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed.”  The real purpose of this resolution was to get rid of those Negroes who had had some part in the insurrection and had not been executed; but not in 1800, or in 1802 or 1804, was the General Assembly thus able to banish those whom it was afraid to hang.  Monroe, however, acted in accordance with his instructions, and Jefferson replied to him under date November 24, 1801.  He was not now favorable to deportation to some place within the United States, and thought that the West Indies, probably Santo Domingo, might be better.  There was little real danger that the exiles would stimulate vindictive or predatory descents on the American coasts, and in any case such a possibility was “overweighed by the humanity of the measures proposed.”  “Africa would offer a last and undoubted resort,” thought Jefferson, “if all others more desirable should fail."[3] Six months later, on July 13, 1802, the President wrote about the matter to Rufus King, then minister in London.  The course of events in the West Indies, he said, had given an impulse to the minds of Negroes in the United States; there was a disposition to insurgency, and it now seemed that if there was to be colonization, Africa was by all means the best place.  An African company might also engage in commercial operations, and if there was cooeperation with Sierra Leone, there was the possibility of “one strong, rather than two weak colonies.”  Would King accordingly