5808. NEGROES, Colonization.—[further continued].
I received in the first
year of my coming into the administration of
the General Government, a letter from the Governor
of Virginia (Colonel Monroe), consulting
me, at the request of the Legislature of the
State, on the means of procuring some such
asylum, to which these people might be occasionally
sent. I proposed to him the establishment
of Sierra Leone, to which a private company
in England had already colonized a number
of negroes and particularly the fugitives
from these States during the Revolutionary
War; and at the same time suggested, if this
could not be obtained, some of the Portuguese
possessions in South America, as next most desirable.
The subsequent Legislature approving
these ideas, I wrote, the ensuing year, 1802, to
Mr. King, our Minister in London, to endeavor
to negotiate with the Sierra Leone company a
reception of such of these people as might be
colonized thither. He opened a correspondence
with Mr. Wedderburne and Mr. Thornton, secretaries
of the company, on the subject, and, in
1803, I received through Mr. King the result,
which was that the colony was going on, but in
a languishing condition; that the funds of the
company were likely to fail, as they received no
returns of profit to keep them up; that they
were, therefore, in treaty with their government
to take the establishment off their hands; but
that in no event should they be willing to receive
more of these people from the United States, as
it was exactly that portion of their settlers
which had gone from hence, which, by their
idleness and turbulence, had kept the settlement
in constant danger of dissolution, which could
not have been prevented but for the aid of the
maroon negroes from the West Indies, who were
more industrious and orderly than the others,
and supported the authority of the government
and its laws. * * * The effort which I
made with Portugal, to obtain an establishment
for them within their claims in South America,
proved also abortive.—
To John Lynch. Washington ed. v, 564.
Ford ed., ix, 303.
(M.
1811)
See Colonization.
