 Certain co-founders, particularly Henry Clay, advocated relocating freed Negroes as a way of ridding the South of "potentially troublesome agitators" who might disrupt their slave societies.Other Americans preferred the emigration to Haiti.The Haitian government of President Jean-Pierre Boyer encouraged American immigrants, believing they could help the country develop and gain recognition by the United States government (which did not happen until 1861, when the Southern politicians who controlled the government withdrew "en masse" to form the Confederacy).