esting details that have marked his various and important endeavors in our cause. In the States of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, the Rev. Franklin Butler has prosecuted his zealous and faithful labors, and though the state of public affairs has checked the tide of most charities, with encouraging prospects for the future. In northern Ohio the agency of the Rev. B. O. Plimpton has been earnestly conducted, and with a good degree of success. It is proper to say that the Committee have not thought it expedient to multiply agencies, in consequence of the dark and troubled condition of the times. MISSIONS AND CIVILIZATION. The great cause of African missions has made rapid progress during the year, and the whole land is well nigh encircled with the schools and churches and ministers of Christ. At Sierra Leone, Liberia, and on the Gold Coast, at Corisco, the Gaboon, the Cape of Good Hope, and other districts of Southern and Eastern Africa, seminaries or schools are established, from which native converts and instructed Christians are preparing to go forth and plant churches in that great wilderness, and turn the savage and idolatrous natives to God. Already the poor Africans on the rocks begin to sing—they shout from the tops of the mountains. RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA. The recommendation of the President of the United States to Congress that the independence of Liberia should be acknowledged, and that some plan for the colonization of free persons of color should be adopted, was considered a good reason for presenting a brief memorial to the National Legislature. A copy of this memorial the committee think proper to made a part of this report. COLONIZATION OFFICE, Washington, January 1, 1862. To the Hon. Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: The EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE of the AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY observe, with deep interest, that the President of the United States has, in his late message, recommended that the Republic of Liberia should be acknowledged as independent. They also notice his recommendation of some plan of colontzation for free people of color in some climate congenial to them. It seems proper to represent that the American Colonization Society was organized in this city in December, 1816, by eminent statesmen and philanthropists from both of the two great sections of the Union, in a spirit of good will towards free people of color and the African race; that they declared it to be their purpose to act in co-operation with our General Government; that from that Government they then received, and have since continued to receive, some countenance; that as the great field for their enterprise they selected Africa as the best home for the independent free national existence of black men; that Providence has remarkably prospered their endeavors, so that a Christian Republic has risen upon the western shores of that land, extending its possessions and jurisdiction nearly six hundred miles along the coast and over numerous and populous tribes of native Africans—a Republic animated and regulated by the elements of order, education, growth, and social improvement. Civilized and religious institutions have arisen and multiplied, the slave trade has been suppressed, and a Christian State of progressive power and unspeakable beneficence attracts the eye and thoughts of uncounted barbarians. While many weighty considerations, social, political, and economical, point to Africa as the home for her exiled descendants, moral considerations show clearly that no other region of the world opens before free men of color such broad avenues to usefulness, happiness, and national renown. These views of the statesmen and philanthropists who founded this Society were expressed in a memorial to Congress during the first *NOTE.-The late General WALTER JONES was the author of this first memorial to Congress, from which we present a few sentences: "Your memorialists beg leave to suggest, that the fairest opportunities are now presented to the General Government for repairing a great evil in our social and political institutions, and at the same time for elevating, from a low and hopeless condition, a new and rapidly increasing race of men, who want nothing but a proper theatre to enter upon the pursuit of happiness and independence in the ordinary paths which a benign Providence has left open to the human race. "These great ends, it is conceived, may be accomplished by making adequate provision for planting, in some salubrious and fertile region, a colony to be composed of such of the above description of persons as may choose to emigrate; and for extending to it the authority and protection of the United States, until it shall have attained sufficient strength and consistency to be left in a state of independence. "It may be reserved for our Government-(continued these memorialists, in a spirit of prophetic sagacity)-the first to denounce an inhuman and abominable traffic, in the guilt and disgrace of which most of the civilized nations of the world were partakers-to become the honorable instrument, under Divine Providence, of conferring a still higher blessing upon the large and interesting portion of mankind benefitted by that deed of justice, by demonstrating that a race of men composing numerous tribes, spread over a continent of vast and unexplored extent, fertility and riches, known to the enlightened nations of antiquity, and who had yet made no progress in the refinements of civilization; for whom history has preserved no monuments of art or arms; that even this hitherto ill-fated race may cherish the hope of beholding at last the orient star revealing the best and highest aims and attributes of man. Out of such materials to rear the glorious edifice of well ordered and polished society, upon the foundations of equal laws and diffusive education, would give a suffi year of its existence, and have been prosecuted by it since, with inadequate means, but earnest zeal and energy. The experience of the Society has demonstrated the ennobling power of liberty-that high inducements prompt to high achievements; and thus far has Liberia risen in character and hopes, because so grand a prospect has spread out before her, and she has stood unchecked and unembarrassed by the competition of powerful civilized nations. She occupies a country exhaustless in resources, and there is nothing to impede her growth. To say nothing of her gold and other mineral productions, the soil of Africa is well adapted to the culture of coffee, cotton, the palm tree, and the sugar-cane, and all the rich and varied productions of tropical climates. But the most precious fruits of the enterprise of this Society are to be seen in the moral and intellectual power of the men of Liberia. There is little prospect of securing a permanent home for a large number of our people of color on this continent, or the adjacent islands; nor in any other country than Africa does their future for happiness, security and political independence appear inviting. Liberia will naturally secure the sympathy of the more powerful civilized nations-from her remoteness she will have little cause to fear oppression—and deriving high advantages from their friendly intercourse, she will be disposed to reciprocate them. The Executive Committee are, then, confirmed in the views of the Fathers of the American Colonization Society, and see with pleasure the attention of Congress invited by the President of the United States to the interests they involve. These interests are to freedom, humanity, commerce, civilization, and religion, immense. The commerce of Africa already attracts the attention of many nations, and when her people shall be taught her resources, and be trained to habits of civilization, she will become one of the richest marts of the world. Thus all our benevolence towards her children will be rewarded their afflictions converted into blessings, and Africa and America rejoice in mutual benefits under the benign Ruler of Nations. The Committee are well persuaded that the multiplication of Christian settlements of free colored people on the coast of Africa, cient title to be enrolled among the illustrious benefactors of mankind; whilst it afforded a precious and consolatory evidence of the all-prevailing power of liberty, enlightened by knowledge, and corrected by religion. If the experiment, in its more remote consequences, should ultimately tend to the diffusion of similar blessings through those vast regions and unnumbered tribes, yet obscured in primeval darkness, reclaim the rude wanderer from a life of wretchedness to civilization and humanity, and convert the blind idolater from gross and abject superstitions to the holy charities, the sublime morality and humanizing discipline of the Gospel, the nation or the individual that shall have taken the most conspicuous lead in achieving the benignant enterprize, will have raised a monument of that true and imperishable glory founded in the moral approbation and gratitude of the human race, unapproachable to all but the elected instruments of Divine beneficence-a glory with which the most splendid achievements of human force or power must sink in competition, and appear insignificant and vulgar in the comparison." and especially that an annual appropriation to aid the removal and support of such persons in Liberia, will result in great benefits to those people and to the United States. And for these great ends the Executive Committee of the American Colonization Society will ever pray. R. R. GURLEY, Cor. Sec. A. C. S., S. H. HUNTINGTON, of the Ex. Committee. Since 1776, a year memorable for the Declaration of American Independence, and in the British House of Commons for the first motion for the abolition of the African slave trade, Divine Providence has been moving in various ways and by various agencies to improve and elevate the destiny of the African race. From that day to the present, this great idea has occupied the thoughts, moved the purposes, inflamed the eloquence of the good and the wise, the orators, statesmen, and philanthropists of England, France, America, and other civilized nations of Europe. No subject, perhaps, ever wrought more generally or profoundly in the reason, conscience and hearts of men. This idea of vast benevolence, operating in all directions, and for the sublimest ends, animated the minds and stimulated the endeavors of the founders of this Society. In the first memorial addressed to Congress, (from the pen of the late General Walter Jones,) and in the able letter of General Robert Goodloe Harper, published in the first Report of the Society, the scheme of African Colonization is exhibited in no mean proportions, but as comprehending nations and ages and their endless improvements. Constitutionally and wisely limited, in action, to free persons of color, emigrating with their own consent, the soul and sympathy of this Society embraces two continents and two races of men, nor has it failed to hope and believe that this nation, so great, so free, will yet deliver and bless and exalt African nations most barbarous, depressed and enslaved. From such purposes and hopes, penetrating the soul of this Society, has gone forth a mighty and increasing power to move those who have largely shared in the government of this country, and disposed them to co-operate in the consummation of the grandeur of the enterprise. For what has our great Creator given us existence and cast his smile upon us, revealed to us his will and his Gospel, made us acquainted as a nation with one quarter of the world and its many millions, torn and plundered and buried in darkness, but that we should consider their miseries, and stretch forth our hands for their deliver ance. Well may it be for us as a nation to consider that the present time may prove a key to open the divine purposes of wisdom and grace in the experience of America and Africa for the last three hundred years. The gradual and voluntary separation of the races inhabiting these two countries is clearly beneficial, and it is equally clear that in Africa herself her children can find the most congenial and inviting home. Liberia rises a star of promise to the race. There, says the last report of the Massachusetts Society, "they have a republican government, with all our provisions for the security of freedom. There we cannot doubt they will find the most acceptable and advantageous field of labor for themselves, for their posterity, for their race, and for mankind." |