for 50 years an administrator (secretary, then vice president, and finally director for life) and spokesman of the American Colonization Society, a group established to transfer freeborn blacks and emancipated slaves in the United States to overseas colonies or client states. In 1824 he visited what is now Liberia, drew up a plan of government for the society's settlement there, and coined the names of the new country and its capital, Monrovia. For 25 years he edited the society's periodical, African Repository.