Liberia
![[First President of Liberia]](images/joseph0.jpg) ![[First Lady of Liberia]](images/jane0.jpg)
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Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809-1876), a wealthy Monrovia
merchant who had emigrated in 1829 from Petersburg, Virginia, became
the first black ACS governor of Liberia in 1841. In 1848, he was
elected the first president of an independent Liberia. He achieved
international recognition for the new country before leaving the
presidency in 1856. After many years as president of Liberia College,
Roberts again served as Liberian president from 1872-1876. Jane
Waring Roberts, (b. 1818), the daughter of a Baptist minister who
came to Liberia in 1824, became Roberts's second wife in 1836.
Joseph Jenkins Roberts, ca. 1855 Rufus Anson Daguerreotype Prints
and Photographs Division (10a)
Jane Roberts, ca. 1855 Rufus Anson Daguerreotype Prints
and Photographs Division (10b)
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In this 1849 letter, President Joseph Jenkins Roberts
of Liberia appeals to the government and people of the United States
for aid in purchasing the territory of Gallinas, enabling Liberia
to control the West-African coast from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas.
As incentive, Roberts boasts of the eradication of the slave trade
in territories recently acquired by Liberia and points out that
adding Gallinas would enable the republic to keep the whole coast "free
from the demoralizing and wilting influence of the Slave trade."
[Letter from President Joseph Jenkins Roberts of Liberia], May 19,
1849 Holograph American Colonization Society Papers Manuscript
Division (11)
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In many respects, emigrants to Liberia re-created
an American society there. The colonists spoke English and retained
American manners, dress, and housing styles. Affluent citizens
constructed two-story houses composed of a stone basement and a
wood-framed body with a portico on both the front and rear, a style
copied from buildings in the southern American states from which
most of the emigrants came. Liberia's president lived in a handsome
stone mansion that resembled a southern plantation house.
"President Roberts's House, Monrovia" Philadelphia: Wagner & McGuigan's,
ca. 1850 Lithograph Prints
and Photographs Division (12)
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Like the United States, Liberia used dollars and cents
as its units of currency. Reflecting the many inhabitants engaged
in agriculture, early Liberian currency pictured farmers and farm
animals. Later currency included a ship and palm trees like those
on the national seal. During the 1830s, the Maryland Colonization
Society, which had broken away from the ACS, ran its own colony
call "Maryland in Liberia" and issued its own currency. The colony
joined the Republic of Liberia in 1857.
[Liberian currency from the 1830s to the 1880s] Currency American Colonization
Society Papers Manuscript Division (13)
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Cape Palmas, founded in 1834, was the original settlement
of the Maryland Colonization Society, which purchased the peninsula
with muskets, powder, cloth, pots, beads, and other items of trade.
The peninsula became the site of three missions, established to
Christianize and civilize the native Africans. Known as "Mount
Vaughan," the Episcopal mission educated many members of Liberia's
indigenous tribes.
"Protestant Episcopal Mission, Cape Palmas, West Africa," ca. 1850s
Woodcut Prints and Photographs
Division (14)
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![Grand Bass[u]a Settlements](images/bassua0.jpg)
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Fishtown was a settlement in the Grand Bass[u]a area
of Liberia, south of Monrovia, near the St. John's River. In June
1835, one of the bloodiest episodes in early Liberian history occurred
at the nearby Grand Bass[u]a settlement, where unarmed African-American
settlers were massacred by native Africans upset by disruption
of the local slave trade. A month later, militiamen from Monrovia
attacked the area's African villages. A treaty in November 1835
bound African King Joe Harris to submit future disputes to the
colonial authorities at Monrovia and to pay for property destroyed
in the massacre.
"Fish Town at Bassua, Liberia" Watercolor Prints
and Photographs Division (15)
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Congress made the importation of slaves into the United
States illegal in 1808. In 1819, Congress passed an "Act in addition
to the acts prohibiting the Slave Trade." This act authorized the
president to send a naval squadron to African waters to apprehend
illegal slave traders and appropriated $100,000 to resettle recaptured
slaves in Africa. At various times, the ACS entered into agreements
with the U.S. government to settle these rescued victims of the
slave trade in Liberia. By 1867, more than 5,700 people had come
to Liberia under this program.
[Agreement to take recaptured slaves to Liberia], 1860 American Colonization
Society Papers Manuscript Division (16) |
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