Petition #11682502

Abstract

Members of the "Richmond & Manchester Auxiliary Society for Colonizing in Africa" seek support from the legislature for their "enterprize, which if it fail of effecting all that it proposes to accomplish, must, nevertheless, be regarded as praiseworthy: and if successfull, as your memorialists humbly trust, & believe, it will ultimately prove, must yield the greatest blessings, social, political and moral, both to Africa and America." They surmise, "in a few words borrowed from one of the Annual reports of the parent Society," that free people of color, being "placed midway between freedom and slavery, they know neither the incentives of the one, nor the restraints of the other; but are alike injurious by their conduct, & example, to all other classes of Society." Asserting that "the voyage to Liberia is not as long as to Brazil," they point out that "its cost to the emigrant passenger does not exceed twenty dollars," noting that "this sum to the free negro is the price of political liberty, of social happiness, of moral and religious improvement." Stating that "any aid the legislature may please to grant, in any mode its wisdom may prescribe, will be gratefully received & faithfully applied," they therefore suggest "that to furnish the emigrants with a few articles of coarse clothing, with farming utensils, and with such other articles manufactured in the State Penitentiary, as may be adapted to an infant Colony, will be of great & immediate utility to the Colonists, without imposing a burthen on the treasury."

Result: Referred to select committee.

1 people are documented within petition 11682502

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Citation information

Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia

Subjects