Autograph letter signed : Playford, to James Cropper, 1832 October 19.

Summarizing the debates over a plan proposed by Elliott Cresson and the American Colonization Society to resettle enslaved people from the United States in Liberia; describing his doubts and the questions he posed to Cresson, as well as Cresson's responses; writing that, according to Cresson, "by means of the exertions of pious ministers of the Gospel and other good men there slavery had become odious even in the slave-holding states themselves. There were hundreds of masters, who then felt the sin of holding their fellow-men in bondage, and were willing to make them free for conscience sake"; taking from this that "God himself has now visibly come forward in behalf of his oppressed creatures"; recounting that, when he proposed settling formerly enslaved individuals in unoccupied territories of the United States, Cresson replied that "[t]he prejudices against these people and against the colour of their skin as a badge of slavery, were so great and so deep rooted among the whites, that, if they were to be settled within the Union, they would always be looked upon as a separate, a distinct, and a degraded People"; expressing doubts about whether "slaves suddenly made free would be proper Persons to be sent off immediately to Africa to civilize the natives there, when they knew nothing of Civilization themselves," to which Cresson responded that they would be sent "under civilized Leaders"; saying that, after his correspondence with Cresson, he was completely convinced by the plan and, in this spirit, he introduced Cresson to William Wilberforce; writing that he soon discovered that many of the members of the Anti-Slavery Society were opposed to Cresson's plan, and their views had been summarized in a report by Captain Charles Stuart; explaining that he decided, as the vice-president of the Society, that he could not be in conflict with the views of the majority of the members, and so he declined to support Cresson's plan publicly or to accept the vice-presidentship of the American Colonization Society, which Cresson had offered him; writing that he discussed the plan with another friend who told him that "[s]ome people in the Union looked upon it as a deep laid scheme for getting rid of all the black People altogether from the Soil of their Birth"; urging Cropper to come forward if he knows that the American Colonization Society has any devious or suspect aims; adding that this may be the last letter he ever writes to him in his own hand, because of serious problems with his eyesight.