According to this arrangement "citizens of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, and many others" met in the Hall of the House of Representatives of the United States and adopted a Constitution.[286] By provision of the Constitution the Association was "The American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States" and its exclusive object "to promote and execute a plan for colonizing (with their consent) the Free People of Color residing in our Country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most expedient." Every citizen of the United States was eligible to membership upon the payment of one dollar, the annual dues, or as amended a few days later, thirty dollars for life membership. Provision was made for the usual officers and for the formation of auxiliary societies to this parent organization.[287] The first annual meeting was fixed for Wednesday, January 1, 1817.
On this date the colonizationists met in Davis's Hotel, Henry Clay again presiding. Bushrod Washington was elected President of the Society, equally noted men were chosen for the other officers,[288] and on motion of the Honorable John C. Herbert of Maryland, Reverend Robert Finley was "requested to close the meeting with an address to the Throne of Grace"[289] which he did, it being "his last public act in the last public meeting"[290] for the organization and success of the American Colonization Society.
Henry Noble Sherwood, Ph.D.
State Normal School,
La Crosse, Wis.
Footnotes:
[234] For an extended account of the plans proposed before 1816, for removing the colored population, see H. N. Sherwood, "Early Negro Deportation Projects," in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, II, 485 ff.
[235] Niles' Register, XVII, 30. Some of the slaves of James Smith, a Methodist preacher of Virginia, had accompanied their quondam master to Ohio in 1798. Ohio Archæological and Historical Society, Publications, XVI, 348-352.
[236] Documentary History of American Industrial Society, II, 161, 162.
[237] This story has been told by the writer, "Paul Cuffe and his Contribution to the American Colonization Society," in Mississippi Valley Historical Society, Proceedings, VI, 370-402.
[238] Thomas Jefferson, Writings (Ford ed., New York, 1892-1899).