Colonization Correspondence 1824

Rev Leonard Bacon Andover Massachusetts

Agent &e March 30, 1824

Geogetown April 18, 1824 My Dear Sir, We wish immediately to secure the exertions of one or two able agents in New England. I pray you, if possible to take a mission through the northern states for our benefit or should you find find this inconsistent with your plans, to persuade one or two other individuals of talents & energy to devote a few months to our object. Now is the season for vigorous action, and an appeal to the publick will not be made in vain, The memorial which our board are about to present

to Congress will probably occasion no discussion there, before next session & we have therefore an opportunity of preparing the publick for the event & of obtaining an expression of popular sentiment inour favour. May the table of Congress be loaded with petitions for and to the African cause! You will receive our Seventh Report in two or three days. The African Repository will appear, I hope, in June. Dr Ayres will probably contribute some valuable article to this work. He has suffered, severely, by the African climate but I rejoice to say has a prospect of tolerable health. What think you of an attempt to induce the churches to take up collections for us on the fourth of July or on the Sabbath meeting or succeeding in the eoffering if little money was obtained, might, it appears tom e be useful. We have not yet heard of the arrival of the of the Cyrus. The emigrants who sailed in her, will I think exact a benign moral influence on the other colonists. will the American Board be disposed to send a missionary to the Colony? With true {illegible} Your friend R R Gurley

Andover Theol. Sem. March 1824 Rev. Dear Sir, Your kind letter of Jan 21was truly recd & would have been answered before this, if I had had anything to communicate besides the ex= pression of my gratitude. Your views reflecting the importance of an African school, + the gener= al mode in which it must be supported, are such as coincide entirely with feelings, + I think I may say, with the feeling; of every Christian friend to Africa. It had appeared to me that the state of the school in Parsipanny for some time past has in= dicated a very radical deficiency somewhere. From an account published not long since in the NYork Observer, it appears- if I remember rightly- that the school had educated six or seven pupils in as many years. Mr Ford seems to be in himself the whole body politic, + according to the best of our information he is at the same time the regular minister of that Parish. Now in this day of mag= nificent undertaking & great performance Christ= ians generally must see an institution of wider dimensions + more rapid operation before their feel= ing, can be deeply or extensively engaged in its behalf. That school was commenced on a small scale, + it has been too closely confined to the small scale on which it began to operate. There certainly are in the United States promising young Africans now who might be educated of there was anybody to take them in hand. And if there could be once estab= lished a local seminary for the education of blacks on a wide plan, Negroes of property- for some such there were- would speedily send their sons at their own expense to enjoy its advanta= ges. But such an institution can never properly be conducted in a single man, even though we should devote to it all his time, + the greater talents. Hence