Another letter signed by a number of Cuffe's passengers is directed to the American Negroes in general. It says:
Be not fearful to come to Africa, which is your country by right. If any of you think it not proper to come, and say it is well with you, you must remember your brethren who are yet in slavery. They must be set free as yourselves. How shall they be set free, if not by your good behavior, and by coming to get a place ready to receive them? Though you are free that is not your country. Africa, not America, is your country and your home. Africa is a good country. You will have no trouble to raise your children when all things are plenty: you will have no want of warm clothing: you will have no need of firewood, for we have it in abundance; and here you will be looked upon like the blessed creatures of the Almighty God, and that bad opinion and contempt which our white brethren harbor, will be quite done away, and the whole of us will become a large and wonderful nation. We will forget all our former troubles when we turn to the land from which our forefathers came. The whole of you will have your own lands and houses; when you cultivate the land, (in which a few horses would be an assistance) you will be supplied with yams, cassada, plantains, fowls, wild hogs, deer, ducks, goats, sheep, cattle, fish in abundance, and many other articles, good running water, large oysters.[62]
Another clever device of the advocates of deportation to make use of the Captain was a dialogue between Absalom Jones on one side and William Penn and Paul Cuffe on the other. The dialogue was printed in The Union for June 18, 1818.[63] The scene of the dialogue is in Heaven and the subject is the colonization of the free Negroes in Africa. Cuffe narrates his connections with the movement and sets forth purposes he had in view. He had hoped by establishing a colony in Africa to draw there gradually all the Negroes in America. In this way slavery would be abolished, Africa would be explored, civilized, and Christianized.
Absalom Jones, opposed to the movement in general, raises objections to it. Why not colonize them on the banks of the Mississippi or the Missouri, he asks. William Penn, a Quaker too, answers the objection by pointing out that the whites are migrating to that section and that were the Negroes to settle there trouble would arise between the two races. The Indians, moreover, would make trouble with the Negroes.
Jones next asks why should the colored people leave America at all? They are happy in America, and more and more is done for their uplift all the time. To this objection Penn replied that prejudice will always keep them down. "Can one imagine," asks he, "that the period will ever arrive in which they will bear any sway in our country, guide our legislative councils, preside in our courts of judicature, or take the lead in the affairs of the republic? Is it possible that the time will ever come in which intermarriages will be sought between their families and those of the most respectable whites? It would be the height of folly to indulge in such an expectation; and until such is the case, they will never occupy the rank or enjoy the privileges of white men; until this is the case, they will ever hold an inferior and subordinate place in society, and be in some degree aliens in their own land." Paul Cuffe had the sensibility and discernment to perceive this state of things, the penetration to discover the early practicable means by which his race could be relieved from their painful sense of inferiority, and the activity to commence the execution of a project to remedy the evil.
Would not deportation stop the manumission of slaves, asks Jones. Penn replies that many southerners are now ready to emancipate their slaves, and that their only handicap is a just provision for them. A colony in Africa would gradually attract to its sphere every slave in America.
At the end of the dialogue Penn and Cuffe convince Jones that the deportation of the free Negroes in America to Africa is a meritorious plan. What the dialogue did for one opponent of the scheme it was hoped that it would do for others.
The experiences of Cuffe were a great asset in the ventures of the colonizationists. In testimony to his services the Board of Managers of the American Colonization Society incorporated the following paragraph in its first annual report:
The managers cannot omit the testimony of Captain Paul Cuffe so well known in Africa, Europe, and America, for his active and large benevolence, and for his zeal and devotedness to the cause of the people of color. The opportunities of Captain Cuffe of forming a correct opinion were superior perhaps to those of any man in America. His judgment was clear and strong, and the warm interest he took in whatever related to the happiness of that class of people is well known. The testimony of such a man is sufficient to out weigh all the unfounded predictions and idle surmises of those opposed to the plan of this society. He had visited twice the coast of Africa, and became well acquainted with the country and its inhabitants. He states that, upon his opinion alone he could have taken to Africa at least two thousand people of color from Boston and its neighborhood. In the death of Paul Cuffe the society has lost a most useful advocate, the people of color a warm and disinterested friend, and society a valuable member. His character alone ought to be sufficient to rescue the people to which he belonged from the unmerited aspersions which have been cast upon them. The plan of the society met with his entire approbation, its success was the subject of his ardent wishes, and the prospect of its usefulness to the native Africans and their descendants in this country was the solace of his declining years, and cheered the last moments of his existence.[64]