The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in December 1816, organized to found the colony of Liberia in West Africa for a similar purpose. It offered to help blacks to go there voluntarily, with provisions of aid for supplies, housing and other materials. Made up of abolitionists, slaveholders, and missionaries, its members supported voluntary relocation of free blacks and newly freed slaves to Africa, to solve the "problem" of blacks in American society. In the first two decades after the Revolution, the number of free blacks rose significantly, due both to wholesale abolition of slavery in the North, as well as an increase in manumissions in the South by men moved by revolutionary ideals. In some areas, the new competition for social resources resulted in a rise in racial discrimination against free blacks. Southerners wanted to remove free blacks from their region, as they believed the free people destabilized slavery. Northerners thought a new colony might give the blacks more independence and a chance to create their own society. The proposal was also supported by clergy who expected the black Americans to evangelize Christianity to Africans. News about the organization, especially racist remarks by such leaders as Henry Clay of Kentucky, a national politician, raised fears among many free blacks that the ACS proposed to deport them wholesale to Africa.