LIBERIA:
Its Origin, Rise, Progress and Results.
AN

ADDRESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE

January

20 th, 1880,

Hon. JOHN H. B. L A T R O B E .

PUBLISHED

BY

WASHINGTON
COLONIZATION BujjjJkWG, 450

1880.

REQUEST.

CITY :

PENNSYLVANIA

AVENUE.

ADDRESS.

Members of the American Colonization Society,
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—

One who has spoken as often as I have done on the subject of African Colonization can hardly hope to say anything that he has not
said before. My audiences, however, have not always been the same,
and in the belief that some of my present hearers now listen to me for
the first time, I propose to give a brief account of the origin and formation of the American Colonization Society, its condition now and the
aspect generally of the cause to which, for more than half a century, it
has been devoted. I wish for your sakes that there was more of romance in what I am about to state. Still, even in this aspect, African
Colonization and its offspring, Liberia, are not wholly without their interest.
Success is never without claimants to its paternity, and our cause
has had many supposed fathers. The existence, however, in our midst,
of a race that was to remain forever a distinct one, must, at an early
day, have suggested to many the idea of separation; and taking into
view all the circumstances, with the idea of separation, Africa naturally
presented itself. In 1773 the Reverend Doctor Hopkins of Rhode
Island proposed to educate two colored youths and send them there as
missionaries, when his friend, Dr. Stiles, suggested that some thirty or
forty suitable persons of the same color should accompany them and
make a settlement on the Gold coast under the general direction of a
society in America, The settlers were to be employed in agricultural,
mechanical and commercial pursuits. This certainly was the germ of
African colonization. Nothing came of it, however. The muttering
thunder of the coming Revolution drowned all thought save that of Independence. Neither did anything come of Dr. Thornton's idea of
taking a company of free blacks to Africa in 1787 and founding a colony; nor was anything more heard of African colonization until 1793,
when Dr. Hopkins, elaborating the plan of Dr. Stiles, published a sermon that he had preached before the Connecticut Emancipation Society,

4
with an appendix, that advocated just such a plan as has since been
adopted by the American Colonization Society. Neither did anything
come of this. The fulness of time had not arrived; nor was it until
1815, forty-two years after Doctors Hopkins and Stiles had originated
the idea, that it assumed a practical shape. In this year, Paul Cuffee,
a colored man of Massachusetts, who probably had heard of it, carried
in his own vessel, commanded by himself, at a cost of $4,000 paid by
himself, forty of his people from Boston to the English settlement of
Sierra Leone, placed them in charge of a society that he had been instrumental in forming on a previous voyage, and returning to the United States died in the following year. Born in New Bedford, in 1759, in
poverty and obscurity, he had won wealth and respectability by industry, intelligence and integrity, and ''moved," as he said, " b y a desire
to raise his brethren in the United States to civil and religious liberty
in the land of their forefathers," had thus taken the initiative in practical colonization. In the rushing currents of events, the humbler individuals who have added to the volume or influenced the direction of
the stream are often overwhelmed and lost sight of. So it has been
with Paul Cuffee. But his name should never be omitted in even the
briefest history of African colonization.
It must not be supposed, however, that Africa was the only place
thought of along with the idea of a separation of the two races. " The
Spanish and Portuguese settlements in South America," " a suitable
territory in Louisiana," and " t h e vast territory," as it was then called,
"between the Ohio river and the great lakes," were successively discussed, as places to which the Negro race in America, as it became free,
might advantageously emigrate. At a meeting at which the last named
found advocates, a person present is reported to have said, "Whether
any of us will live to see it or not, the time will come when white men
will want all that region, will have it, and our colony will be overwhelmed by them." It would seem, just now, that we are about to
test the truth of this utterance of seventy years ago. Notwithstanding
all this difference of opinion, however, the public mind chrystallized
at last upon Africa as the best location for the proposed colony.
Paul Cuffee died in 1816, and in December of the same year the
American Colonization Society was organized. Foremost among its
founders was Robert Finley of New Jersey. In season and out of season he toiled in its behalf. He declared that he knew the scheme was
from God; and with this conviction to sustain him he imbued numbers
with an equal enthusiasm. Finley, however, soon found that it was
one thing to applaud bis zeal and admit the expediency of his rlans,
and a very different thing to take active measures to promote them;
and there is no telling whether Finley himself might not ha\e become
discouraged, had not Charles Marsh, a member of Congress fiom Ver-

5
mont, come to his assistance. The plan, Marsh said, was too good and
noble to be permitted to fail; and it is owing to what has been called
his ''inexhaustible adroitness and persistency" that a preliminary
meeting was held, with Henry Clay as chairman. Elias B. Caldwell,
Finley's brother-in-law, and clerk of the Supreme Court, was the chief
speaker; Robert Wright, of Maryland, submitted a constitution, which
was adopted; and at the first meeting under it, Mr. Justice Bushrod
Washington was elected President. In this way the American Colonization Society came into existence, forty-three years after Dr. Hopkins
and his friend, Dr. Stiles, bad suggested the idea. They, it is true, had
regarded it as a missionary enterprise only. There were others, however, who hoped that it would lead to a separation of the Negroes from
what the masters said was an injurious contact with their slaves. Others, like Paul Cuffee, who believed that it would tend to raise the Negroes in the United States to civil and religious liberty in the land of
their forefathers. Others again supjjorted it as likely to promote emancipation. Others, who looked forward to the commerce that would
follow the establishment of a colony on the borders of a vast continent,
which would be a virgin market for the products of manufacturing civilization ; and others again who fancied that, in some undefined way,
African colonization would afford a solution of the negro question in
this country. And it was well that all this was so. Co-operation, regardless of motive, was the necessity of the occasion. However varied
jthe views of the friends of the Society respectively, all were agreed
upon the establishment of a colony to which the free people of color
might emigrate, when they believed they would better their condition
by seeking a new home beyond the sea; and Liberia stands to the credit
of them all.
The Society having been organized, a site for the settlement was
to be selected; and for this purpose Mills and Burgess were sent to
Africa in 1818, and fixed upon Sherbro Island, not far from Sierra Leone . To this place the Reverend Samuel Bacon, an Episcopal clergyman, led the first expedition in the ship Elizahftih, in 1820. The vessel
had been chartered by the United States under the following circumstances. Congress had made it penal to import slaves after the
year 1807, and in 1818 had increased the penalty. A law as then passed,
Oct. 3, 1819, of which Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, was the author, which provided that slaves illegally imported, or taken at sea,
should bp held in the custody of the United States until removed from
the country; and the President was authorized to appoint an agent to
take care of them. Mr. Monroe, then President, saw at once, that by
co-operating with the American Colonizotion Society, the design of
the law might be carried out, both equitably and economically; and
he appointed Mr, Bacon, along with Mr. John P. Baukson, of Phila-

6
delphia, as agents of the Government, placing in the hands of Mr. Bacon sufficient funds out of monies appropriated by Congress under the
act of 1819. The Elizabeth took out eighty-six emigrants from the
United States, who in consideration of their passage and other aid, were
to prepare suitable accommodations for such Africans as might be rescued from the slave-ships by American cruisers. In this way, strange
as it seems, it was to the slave-trade, which it was to aid in extirpating,
that the American Colonization Society became indebted, through the
wise course of President Monroe, for its first feeble foothold on the
continent of Africa.
The undertaking had, notwithstanding the aid derived from the
United States, a most unfortunate beginning. Mills had died on
his way back to America, and Bacon, dying in Africa, was among
the first martyrs to the cause buried there under its palms. Of
four agents sent out in 1821, two died on the coast, and two returned
sick to the United States. Sherbro Island was found to be unhealthy
and was abandoned; and the survivors of the Elizabeth's emigrants
returned disheartened to Sierra Leone.
In November, 1830, the President dispatched the armed schooner,
Alligator, Captain R. F. Stockton, of New Jersey, on a voyage of exploration to the coast. Here, in the following year, 1821, he fell in
with Dr. Eli Ayres, an agent of the Society, and taking him on board,
proceeded southerly, and after passing Sherbro Island, selected, in conjunction with Dr. Ayres, a suitable territory 250 miles from Sierra Leone, including Cape Mesurado. This was a bold promontory on
the east side of a river of the same name. To this new site Dr.
Ayres now removed the remnant of the Elizabeth?8 emigrants, landing
them on an island separated from the main land by a narrow creek that
extended from near the mouth of the Mesurado river to the St. Paul's.
Very soon after the arrival of the emigrants, the native chiefs opened
their eyes to the probability of their interference with the slave trade
which had long prevailed in the neighborhood, and, regardless of the
treaty, determined to destroy the settlement if they could. The temporary dwellings, that had been slightly and hastily put up, were consumed by fire. On the neel of this came African fever: and so untoward
were fCii:cumstances, thatN5>r. Ayres, almost in despair, returned with
some of the colonists to Sierra Leone. Wiltberger, another of the Society's agents, remained however; battled with the natives, and abandoning the island, crossed the Mesurado river to the adjacent cape;
cleared away the forest to make room for newpiuts in a healthier location;
completed and occupied them, and in this way, in June 1822, laid the
corner-stone of the Republic of Liberia on the spot where its capital now
stands. Dr. Ayers and Wiltberger then returned home, and the settlement was left in charge of Elijah Johnson, an emigrant, who had refused

7
to follow Dr. Ayres to the British colony. 4c No," he said; u I have been
two years searching for a home, and I have found it, and I shall stay here:"
and when he was afterwards surrounded by hostile and threatening
bodies of natives, and was offered the protection of a guard of marines
from a passing British vessel of war if he would cede a few feet of
ground on which to plant a flagstaff for a British flag, he refused the
proffered aid, saying, " W e want no flagstaff put up here that will cost
more to get it down than it will cost to whip the natives." Johnson
was another man of the Paul Cuffee stamp, whose name cannot be omitted from a notice of Liberia, however brief. Slender was the hold
which colonization and religion had upon this portion of the Dark Continent ; and save for the construction that Mr. Monroe had given to the
law of 1819, even this hold might never have been obtained, or have
been indefinitely delayed.
The first arrival at Cape Mesurado after the departure of Wiltberger
was a vessel from Baltimore with fifty-one emigrants, a part of whom
were recaptured Africans, in August, 1822. It was in charge of Jehudi
Ashmun, Priest, Soldier and Statesman. He had intended to return to
the United States by the same vessel; but Africa needed him more than
America, and he remained. Ashmun's mission was one of peace, and
he exhausted every effort in striving to preserve it; but in vain. Boatswain, a powerful native chief from the interior, and a friend of the
colonists from the beginning, had left the coast, where his presence had
restrained their enemies, and hostilities commenced at once. All supplies of provisions were cut off, and theft and depredation were the
order of the day. The native chiefs, the very ones who had sold the
land, would listen to no terms of accommodation. With Ashmun it
was now battle or famine unto death, with the greatest doubts as to the
result. Then, the Christian minister became a military leader. He
planned fortifications; he mounted cannon; he distributed ammunition;
he posted picket guards; and, above all, he inspired his twenty-seven
Americans and thirteen African youths with his own intrepid spirit.
On the 2ith of August twelve of his men were stricken down by fever,
at a time when it was necessary to have twenty sentinels on guard, day
and night. At the end of three weeks of constant watchfulness, Ashmun himself was prostrated by disease. His wife, too, who had accompanied him from America, was dangerously ill. On the 10th of September, only two of the late arrivals were fit for duty. And yet, there
could be no relaxation of vigilance, the alternative of which was death.
After a night of fever and delirium, morning would find the agent superintending the stockades, or clearing away the forest in front of his
few pieces of artillery. In this way, sometimes better, sometimes worse
in health, Ashmun lived until the 11th of November, when eight hundred natives made a concentrated attack on his most outlying stock-

8
ade, carried it, and had they not stopped to plunder some adjacent
huts, could have swept the settlement by one determined rush into the
sea. Danger so imminent was a tonic that not even African fever could
withstand. Ashmun rallied the men retreating from the stockade,
brought a canon to bear upon the plunderers, headed a charge as they
hesitated, panic stricken by the fire—re-took the stockade—drove the
natives to the cover of the forest, and the colony was saved.
On the 30th of November there was another attack, thrice renewed
and as often repulsed, during which Ashmun had three bullets through
his clothes, but escaped unhurt. This terminated the war. It was the
first and last that ever threatened the existence of Liberia. An English
schooner, passing Cape Mesurado, had been attracted by the firing.
Laing, the African traveler, happened to be on board; and through his
intervention a treaty of peace was made with the native chiefs,
which, in the main, has not been disturbed.
Each succeeding
year, however, strengthened the colony with emigrants from
the United States. The first arrival was accompanied by Dr. Ayres,
who, displacing Ashmun, had the town of Monrovia laid out, and the
land adjacent surveyed and distributed among the colonists. He was
then, again, seized with African fever, and returned to the United
States. His departure left the colony in confusion; when Ashman,
overcoming his mortification at having been superseded by Dr. Ayres,
assumed the charge of affairs, restored order by his firm and decided
measures, and remained until prostrated by disease, when, with but the
faintest hope of saving his life he sailed for the Cape de Verde, leaving
the colony in the charge of Elijah Johnson, who has been already mentioned. At the Cape de Verde Ashmun found the Kev. R. R. Gar ley on
his way to Monrovia, with full power from the United States Government and the Society to examine into the condition of affairs, and to
establish some form of government. As soon as Ashmun's health permitted, he returned with Mr. Gurley to the colony; when the two prepared a constitution, republican in form, which was submitted to the
people in the first rude house of worship erected in Liberia. Here it
was adopted; and all present pledged themselves solemnly before God
to support it: and this was the beginning of law and order in the colony. Mr. Gurley now returned to the United States, in August, 1824,
leaving the government in the hands of Mr. Ashmun.
At this time the slave trade was active within sight of Monrovia.
Fifteen vessels were engaged in it under the guns almost of the colony,
and there was a contract between a slave-trader and a native chief by
which 800 slaves were to be famished within four months at a place
only eight miles from the Cape. Mr. Ashmun, in 1822, had been on the
defensive. He now assumed the offensive in the cause of humanity.
A Spanish slaver had committed a flagrant act of piracy on an English

9
brig lying off Monrovia; and the agent determined to punish it. The
brig was placed at his disposal, and embarking with fifty-four men,
then his entire military force, he landed at the slave factory, released
the slaves he found there, and, with the prestige thus obtained, succeeded in making a treaty with the native chief, which broke up the
slave trade at that place forever. The destruction of the slave factories at Tradetown followed.
Here he was assisted by two Colombian
vessels of war which happened to be on the coast. These exploits
of the agent of the American Colonization Society did more towards
the suppression of the slave trade north of the Bight of Benin, than the
presence of English and American cruisers for years had been able to
accomplish. A fast sailing vessel filled with slaves might run with
safety a blockading fleet; but when the barracoons that supplied the
cargo were destroyed, the trade at that factory was at an end.
For five years Mr. Ashmun continued to be the agent of the Society
in Liberia, ever battling with disease, and until the 25th of March,
1828; when, accompanied to the beach by the inhabitants of Monrovia,
in tears, he left Africa never to return. On the 10th of August, after a
brief delay in the West Indies, he landed in New Haven, and died
there on the 25th, a victim to his labors in the cause of African colonization,—its Hero and its Martyr.
Since 1828, the Society has been so prominent, and the press has
kept the public so well informed of events in Liberia, that it is enough
to say now, that the expectations of the founders have been realized in
the establishment of a Republic, where the slave trade once reigned supreme ; with institutions modelled after our own; with a government
well administered and recognized by the civilized nations of the world;
with a commerce steadily increasing; with a coast line extending
from the English colony of Sierra Leone to the Cavalla river east of
Cape Palm as, and offering to intelligence and industry a home, where,
in the land of their forefathers, the colored men of America may strive
for and obtain all the rewards of honorable ambition. That Liberia
will, one day, count its p :pulation by millions instead, as now, by thousands, we believe to be as certain as Destiny.
The eyes of the world may be said to be fixed upon Africa to-day.
England, at the south, is extending her many arms northward from the
Cape of Good Hope. England and France take charge of the Khedive
on the north. The King of Belgium sends exploring expeditions from
Zanzibar on the east, and English, Portuguese and Dutch traders, on the
west, cluster around the mouth of the Livingstone at Embomma. All
are striving for the trade of Africa, and value its civilization only as a
means of improving the markets that this continent affords for the surplus products of the forge and loom. Far nobler than all that has been
effected by king or trader is the work of this Society, which, apart

10
from its effect upon our colored population, and regarding it only in
its missionary aspect, has furnished a nation for the task that no other
human agency is competent to accomplish—the task of civilizing as
well as Christianizing a mighty continent,—a nation, which, increasing
in numbers by immigration, just as Plymouth and Jamestown increased
of old, will do for Africa what the Pilgrims north and south have done
for us, and until the Dark Continent shall be dark no longer.
So much for the past history of the Society and Liberia; a few
words now in regard to their relations to the future.
Colonizationists, as a rule, have believed that two distinct races,
that cannot or will not amalgamate by intermarriage, can live in the
same land in but one of two relations—master and slave, or oppressor
and oppressed. The first is out of the question, for slavery is at an end,
here, forever. How stands it then with the latter alternative ? Can
there be any oppression now when the two races occupy the same level,
before the law ? There could be none, if Constitutional amendments
and Acts of Congress sufficed to overcome the prejudices and the influences of Caste. To this extent they are absolutely powerless. The oppression of law which made the Negro a slave no longer exists. He may be,
as he has been, a Senator or a Representative; but the oppression of
circumstances is as potent to-day as it was an hundred years ago. The
slave question has been settled, but the Negro question is still an open
one.
During the late war, few emigrants went to Liberia; and when it
closed many supposed that the American Colonization Society must die;
and there were those, among its friends even, who stood ready to inter
it, with a laudatory epitaph upon its tomb. And yet the emigration that
followed the war was greater than had ever taken place in the same
number of years before: and now there are applications representing
200,000 begging the Society for transportation to Africa; and this, too,
where for years the Society has had no agent in the field whence the
applications come. Circumstances are doing their work. To understand them in detail, it is only necessary to read the publications explaining the motives of those who led in the late exodus movement in
South Carolina, or in the later exodus from the southern States to Kansas.
All are connected more or less directly with the distinctions of Caste
that operate oppression. Colonizationists believe that the more education refines the Negro and increases his sensibilities, the more irksome
will become his position where the distinctions of race exclude him
socially from what cannot but be the aim of his ambition. When it is
found, as the generations pass, that neither wealth nor scholarship nor
accomplishments, however varied, overcome the prejudices that cause
social exclusion, these very incidents may prompt the emigration of the
educated and ambitious to seek a land where the white man will be to

11
them what they are to the white man here. This is looking forward
through a vista of many a generation, perhaps,—but that it will come
to pass, became, as we fully believe, assured when Wiltberger transferred the Elizabeth emigrants from Bushrod Island to the main, and
when Ashmun with a handful of sick and toil-worn men, made a host
by a blessing from on High, repulsed the barbarians who would have
extinguished the feeble light which has gone on increasing in brightness ever since, and which will one day pervade the land now in the
shadow of death.
If these views are looked upon as visionary, it should be remembered how small were our own beginnings: and although it may be admitted that the Pilgrims by the Mayflower were socially and intellectually superior to those who landed from the Elizabeth, yet the capacity
for improvement and self-government that has been developed in Liberia and illustrated in America in a thousand instances of learning, intelligence and refinement, fully justify the anticipations of colonizationists. And when a prosperous and happy people shall have made Liberia
as attractive to the colored man as America is to the European emigrant ; when commerce shall have bridged the Atlantic for an eastward,
as it has for a westward march of thousands and tens of thousands;
when gold, already within reach from Monrovia, will do for Liberia
what gold did for California in attracting emigration; when ambition
shall find across the sea, away from the influences of caste, the widest
field for its exercise,—then will the Kegro question be settled; not as
was the question of slavery, by war and its attendant misery, but by the
peaceful operation of causes that are inevitable; and then it will be
seen that even so great a wrong as slavery may have had, in the order
of God's providence, its accompanying good in the education of a missionary nation, with a continent for the field of its operation. And
when that time comes, the historian of then regenerated Africa will find
among the sources of her light and liberty the labors of the American
Colonization Society.
On the return of Dr. Ayres to the United States, a map of the territory acquired by
Commander Stockton and himself was made from his description, and Gen. Robert
Goodloe Harper, one of the warmest and ablest among the friends of colonization,
with the co-operation of the map maker,wrote on the engraver's proof-sheet the names
that have since been adopted. The Latin word Liber, a free man. suggested the name
of the territory; Mr. Monroe's invaluable aid was recognized in that of the then very
humble capital. Bushrod Island, where the first settlers landed, was called after the
President of the Society, and Stockton creek and Ayres creek completed a nomenclature that has since become familiar. The rivers St. Paul's and Mesurado, and the c a p e
of that name on which Monrovia stands, were permitted to retain the names by which
they were already designated on the maps of Africa. The map maker of Liberia, here
referred to, is the present President of the Society.