Although he was never ordained as a minister, Gurley was also appointed to serve as Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives[3] for the 21st and 22nd Congresses (1829–1833), and again for the 30th and 31st (1847–1851), opening each day's proceedings with a prayer.
Chapters of the ACS were set up in several southern states, some of which initially funded their own relocation efforts to property they purchased in contiguous parcels along the African coast.
Such members believed that if alternative settlement for free blacks were available, with financial support by the ACS, more slaveholders might be encouraged to manumit their slaves.
He traveled widely to deliver addresses in its behalf, as it needed funds to support the ships and relocation expenses of new settlers to Monrovia.
As in the British effort, American missionaries accompanied the settlers to the major settlement, Monrovia, in order to aid in converting the indigenous Africans they encountered.
He continued to express the highest motives for the project, even after Liberia gained independence from the ACA: The British had earlier established their own colony in West Africa, at Freetown (now the capital of Sierra Leone), for resettlement of blacks from London[verification needed], Nova Scotia (Black Loyalists had been settled there from the American colonies after the Revolutionary War), and Jamaican Maroons.
He reported his Mission to England for the American Colonization Society (1841), and wrote an encomium, the Life and Eloquence of Reverend Sylvester Larned (1844).
In his biography of Ashmun (1835), Gurley wrote The friends of African Colonization have thought, that the consent of the South was indispensable for the safe abolition of slavery; that the work should be done with caution and preparation; that circumstances and consequences should be regarded; that a separation of races so distinct as the coloured and white in complexion, habits and condition is desirable for the happiness of both.