Autograph letter signed : Cavalla, near Cape Palmas [Liberia], to Rev. J[ohn] H. Hopkins, 1864 Sept. 12.

Responding to Hopkins's pamphlet "A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery"; asking for his assistance in finding sources about the introduction of Christianity to Africa for a series of articles he is writing; posing specific questions about the history of Christianity in Africa; discussing "Mahomedanism" [Islam] in Africa; asking for information about the western and eastern coasts of Africa, particularly the history of Portuguese colonial activity there; mentioning Dr. [David] Livingstone; referring to an article he had written in the past titled "Africa: her guilt, her punishment, her visitation" for the Protestant Episcopal Review, which an editor there kept for a long time, "approving of it but afraid to publish," before returning it; giving his views at length about African complicity in slavery and the practice of selling oneself into slavery to settle debts; making racist claims about the absence of the concepts of freedom and civil liberty in African thought; outlining an elaborate justification for the forced expatriation and enslavement of Africans, who, after "imbib[ing] ideas of personal & civil liberty with the gospel from another race," would "return with these blessings to the Father-land."