The African colonizationists proceeded on the basis that the Negroes had no chance for racial development in this country.

They could secure no kind of honorable employment, could not associate with congenial white friends whose minds and pursuits might operate as a stimulus upon their industry and could not rise to the level of the successful professional or business men found around them.

In short, they must ever be hewers of wood and drawers of water.[2] To emphasize further the necessity of emigration to Africa the advocates of deportation to foreign soil generally referred to the condition of the migrating Negroes as a case in evidence.

"So long," said one, "as you must sit, stand, walk, ride, dwell, eat and sleep _here_ and the Negro _there_, he cannot be free in any part of the country."[3] This idea working through the minds of northern men, who had for years thought merely of the injustice of slavery, began to change their attitude toward the abolitionists who had never undertaken to solve the problem of the blacks who were seeking refuge in the North.

Many thinkers controlling public opinion then gave audience to the colonizationists and circles once closed to them were thereafter opened.[4] There was, therefore, a tendency toward a more systematic effort than had hitherto characterized the endeavors of the colonizationists.