Editing History of Liberia (section)

==Colonization (1821–1847)==
{{main|Colony of Liberia}}
{{see also|American Colonization Society}}
From around 1800, in the United States, [[abolitionism in the United States|people opposed to slavery]] were planning ways to liberate more slaves and, ultimately, to abolish the practice. At the same time, slaveholders in the South opposed having free blacks in their states, as they believed the free people threatened the stability of their slave societies. Slaves were gradually freed in the North, although more slowly than generally realized; there were hundreds of slaves in Northern states in the 1840 census, and in New Jersey, in the 1860 census.{{citation needed|date=December 2023}} The former slaves and other free blacks suffered considerable social and legal discrimination; they were not citizens and were seen by many as unwanted foreigners who were taking jobs away from white people by working for less. Like Southern states, some Northern states and territories severely restricted or prohibited altogether entry by free blacks.<ref name="pbs._Race">{{Cite web |title=Race-based legislation |work=pbs.org |access-date=27 February 2019 |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2957.html |quote=In Illinois there were severe restrictions on free black people entering the state, and Indiana barred them altogether. Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin were no friendlier. Because of this, the black populations of the northwestern states never exceeded 1 percent. |archive-date=March 5, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190305024638/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2957.html |url-status=live }}</ref> This was, for example, the case in Illinois, and was proposed for Kansas under the [[Lecompton Constitution]].

Some abolitionists, including distinguished blacks such as ship builder [[Paul Cuffe]] (or Cuffee), believed that blacks should return to "the African homeland", as if it were one ethnicity and country, despite many having generations of ancestors living in the United States.<ref name="pbs.org">{{Cite news|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/who-led-the-1st-back-to-africa-effort/|title=Paul Cuffee and the First Back-to-Africa Effort {{!}} African American History Blog {{!}} The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross|date=2013-01-04|work=The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross|access-date=2017-07-11|language=en-US|archive-date=September 6, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170906105919/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/who-led-the-1st-back-to-africa-effort/|url-status=live}}</ref>  Cuffe's dream was that free [[African Americans]] and freed slaves "could establish a prosperous colony in Africa," one based on emigration and trade.<ref name="pbs.org"/>  In 1811, Cuffe founded the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, a cooperative black group intended to encourage “the Black Settlers of Sierra Leone, and the Natives of Africa generally, in the Cultivation of their Soil, by the Sale of their Produce.”<ref name="pbs.org"/>  As historian Donald R. Wright put it, "Cuffee hoped to send at least one vessel each year to Sierra Leone, transporting African-American settlers and goods to the colony and returning with marketable African products."<ref name="pbs.org"/> However, Cuffe died in 1817, and with him his project.

The first ship of the American Colonization Society, the ''Elizabeth'', departed New York on February 6, 1820, for West Africa carrying 86 settlers.<ref name="HodgeNolan2007">{{cite book|last1=Hodge|first1=Carl Cavanagh|last2=Nolan|first2=Cathal J.|title=US Presidents and Foreign Policy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qXeRALIwozgC&pg=PA49|access-date=February 5, 2013|year=2007|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9781851097906|page=49|archive-date=June 3, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603001013/http://books.google.com/books?id=qXeRALIwozgC&pg=PA49|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Rodriguez2007">{{cite book|last=Rodriguez|first=Junius P.|title=Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, And Historical Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4X44KbDBl9gC&pg=PA36|access-date=February 5, 2013|volume=2|date=March 30, 2007|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9781851095445|page=36|archive-date=June 3, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603001424/http://books.google.com/books?id=4X44KbDBl9gC&pg=PA36|url-status=live}}</ref> Between 1821 and 1838, the American Colonization Society developed the first settlement, which would be known as Liberia.<ref name="WDL">{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/446/ |title = Map of Liberia, West Africa |website = [[World Digital Library]] |year = 1830 |access-date = 2013-06-02 |archive-date = November 2, 2013 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131102112843/http://www.wdl.org/en/item/446/ |url-status = live }}</ref> On July 26, 1847, Liberia declared itself a (free) sovereign nation.<ref name=LoC1>{{cite web|title=Independence for Liberia|url=http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/reform/jb_reform_liberia_1.html|website=Western Expansion & Reform (1829-1859)|publisher=Library of Congress|access-date=3 June 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130517140742/http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/reform/jb_reform_liberia_1.html|archive-date=May 17, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>

===First ideas of colonization===
As early as the period of the [[American Revolution]], many white members of American society thought that African Americans could not succeed in living in their society as free people. Many considered blacks physically and mentally inferior to whites, and others believed that the racism and societal polarization resulting from slavery were insurmountable obstacles for integration of the races. [[Thomas Jefferson]] was among those who proposed colonization in Africa: relocating free blacks outside the new nation.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schwarz|first=Benjamin|date=March 1997|title=What (Thomas) Jefferson Helps to Explain|journal=[[The Atlantic|The Atlantic Monthly]]|volume=279}}</ref>

===Colonies in Africa===
[[File:Paul Cuffee4.jpg|right|thumb|Paul Cuffee in 1812.]]
In 1787, [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Britain]] had started to resettle the "black poor" of [[London]] in the colony of [[Freetown]] in [[Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate|Sierra Leone]]. Many were [[Black Loyalist]]s, former American slaves who had been freed in exchange for their services during the [[American Revolutionary War]]. [[The Crown]] also offered resettlement to former slaves whom they had first resettled in [[Nova Scotia]]. The Black Loyalists there found both the discrimination by white Nova Scotians and climate hard to bear. (See [[Black Nova Scotians]].) Wealthy African-American shipowner [[Paul Cuffe]] thought that colonization was worth supporting. Aided by support from certain members of Congress and British officials, he transported 38 American blacks to Freetown in 1816 at his own expense. He died in 1817, but his private initiative helped arouse public interest in the idea of colonization.<ref>Charles Henry Huberich, ''The political and legislative history of Liberia'' (1947) p 56.</ref>

===Colonization societies===
The [[American Colonization Society]] (ACS) was founded in 1816 by Virginia politician [[Charles F. Mercer]] and Presbyterian minister [[Robert Finley]] of New Jersey. The goal of the ACS was to settle free blacks outside of the United States; its method was to help them relocate to Africa.<ref name=WDL />

Starting in January 1820, the ACS sent ships from New York to West Africa. The first had 88 free black emigrants and three white ACS agents on board. The agents were to find an appropriate area for a settlement. Additional ACS representatives arrived in the [[American Colonization Society#Second ship:the Nautilus|second ACS ship, the ''Nautilus'']]. In December 1821, they acquired [[Cape Mesurado]], a {{convert|36|mi|km|adj=mid|-long}} strip of land near present-day [[Monrovia]], from the indigenous ruler [[Zolu Duma|King Peter]] (perhaps with some threat of force).<ref>{{cite book | last=Staudenraus | first=P. J. | title=The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 | location=New York | publisher=Columbia University Press | year=1961 | pages=64–65}}</ref>

From the beginning, the colonists were attacked by indigenous peoples whose territory this was, such as the [[Mandinka people|Malinké]] tribes. In addition, they suffered from disease, the harsh climate, lack of food and medicine, and poor housing conditions.<ref>{{cite book |last=Schick |first=Tom W. |title=Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia |location=Baltimore |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |year=1980}}</ref>

Until 1835, five more colonies were created by the colonization societies of five different states in the U.S. ([[Republic of Maryland]], [[Kentucky-in-Africa]], [[Mississippi in Africa]], [[Louisiana, Liberia]], and that set up by the Pennsylvania state colonization society and one planned by the New Jersey colonization society), and one{{which|date=December 2019}} by the U.S. government in the vicinity of the ACS settlement. The first colony on Cape Mesurado was extended along the coast as well as inland, sometimes by use of force against the native tribes. In 1838 these settlements{{which|date=December 2019}} came together to create the Commonwealth of Liberia. [[Monrovia]] was named the capital.<ref name=WDL /> By 1842, four of the other American settlements{{which|date=December 2019}} were incorporated into Liberia, and the fifth{{clarify|date=December 2019}} was destroyed by indigenous people. The colonists of African-American descent became known as [[Americo-Liberian]]s. Many were of mixed race, including European ancestry. They remained African Americans in their education, religion, and culture, and they treated the natives as White Americans had treated them: as savages from the jungle, unwanted as citizens and not deserving the vote.<ref>Teah Wulah, ''Back to Africa: A Liberian Tragedy'' (2009) p 432.</ref>

===Rejection of colonization in the United States===
Free people of color in the United States, with a few notable exceptions, overwhelmingly rejected the idea of moving to Liberia, or anywhere else in Africa, from the very beginning of the movement. Most of them had lived in the United States for generations, and while they wanted better treatment, they did not want to leave.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Averting a Crisis: The Proslavery Critique of the American Colonization Society|first=Douglas R.|last=Egerton|journal=[[Civil War History]]|volume=43|number=2|date=June 1997|pages=142–156|doi=10.1353/cwh.1997.0099|s2cid=143549872 |via=[[Project MUSE]]|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/421411/pdf|access-date=August 19, 2020|archive-date=July 24, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190724144305/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/421411/pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|143}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wesley |first=Dorothy Porter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gaUFeuToWhwC&pg=PA250 |title=Early Negro Writing, 1760–1837 |date=1995 |publisher=Black Classic Press |isbn=978-0-933121-59-1 |pages=250 |language=en |access-date=August 19, 2020 |archive-date=August 19, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819151300/https://books.google.com/books?id=gaUFeuToWhwC&pg=PA250 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{efn|As soon as they heard about it, 3,000 blacks packed a church in Philadelphia, "the [[bellwether]] city for free blacks", and "bitterly and unanimously" denounced it.<ref name=Irvine>{{cite journal|title=The Noyes Academy, 1834–35: The Road to the Oberlin Collegiate Institute and the Higher Education of African-Americans in the Nineteenth Century|last1=Irvine|first1=Russell W.|last2=Dunkerton|first2=Donna Zani|journal=Western Journal of Black Studies|date=Winter 1998|volume=22|issue=4|pages=260–273}}</ref>{{rp|261}}}} In response to the proposal for blacks to move to Africa, [[Frederick Douglass]] said "Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here—have lived here—have a right to live here, and mean to live here."<ref name=Courant>{{cite news|title=Re-Creating 1834 Debates on Abolition|first=Jesse|last=Leavenworth|newspaper=[[Hartford Courant]]|url=https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2003-05-22-0305221555-story.html|date=May 22, 2003|access-date=August 19, 2020|archive-date=January 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200127202141/https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2003-05-22-0305221555-story.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Starting in 1831 with [[William Lloyd Garrison]]'s new newspaper, ''[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]]'', and followed by his [https://archive.org/details/thoughtsonafric02garrgoog/page/n9 ''Thoughts on African Colonization''] in 1832, support for colonization dropped, particularly in Northern free states. Garrison and his followers supported the idea of "immediatism," calling for immediate emancipation of all slaves and the legal prohibition of slavery throughout the United States. The ACS, Garrison declared, was "a creature without heart, without brains, eyeless, unnatural, hypocritical, relentless and unjust."<ref name=Wile/>{{rp|15}} It was not, in his view, a plan to eliminate slavery; rather, it was a way to protect it.<ref name=Wile>{{cite book
|last=Wiggins
|first=John H.
|title=A review of anti-abolition sermon, preached at Pleasant Valley, N. Y., by Rev. Benjamin F. Wile, August, 1838
|date=1838
|location=[[Whitesboro, New York]]
|url=https://archive.org/details/reviewofantiabol00wigg/page/n3
|publisher=Press of the [[Oneida Institute]]}}</ref>{{rp|13, 15}}

The ACS was made up of a combination of [[abolitionism in the United States|abolitionists]] who wanted to end slavery—it was easier to get slaves freed if they agreed to go to Liberia—and slaveholders who wanted to get rid of free people of color.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Eaton |first1=Clement |title=Henry Clay and the art of American politics |date=1957 |publisher=Boston, Little, Brown |page=133 |url=https://archive.org/details/henryclayartof00eato |access-date=26 August 2020}}</ref> [[Henry Clay]], one of the founders of the group, had inherited slaves as a young child, but adopted antislavery views in the 1790s under the influence of his mentor, [[George Wythe]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Heidler |first1=David Stephen |title=Henry Clay |date=2010 |publisher=Random House |pages=19–21 |isbn=9781400067268 |url=https://archive.org/details/henryclayessenti00heid_0 |access-date=26 August 2020}}</ref> Garrison pointed out that the number of free people of color who actually resettled in Liberia was minute in comparison to the number of slaves in the United States. As put by one of his supporters: "As a remedy for slavery, it must be placed amongst the grossest of all delusions. In fifteen years it has transported less than three thousand persons to the African coast; while the ''increase'' on their numbers, in the same period, is about seven hundred thousand!"<ref name=Wile/>

===High mortality===
Emigrants to Liberia suffered the highest mortality rate of any country since modern record-keeping began.<ref name="McDaniel 1992" /><ref name="McDaniel 1995" /> Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia from 1820 to 1842, only 1,819 survived until 1843.<ref name="Shick 1971" /><ref name="Shick 1980" /> The ACS knew of the high death rate, but continued to send more people to the colony. Professor Shick writes:<ref name="Shick 1971" />

{{Blockquote|text=[T]he organization continued to send people to Liberia while very much aware of the chances for survival. The organizers of the A.C.S. considered themselves to be humanitarians performing the work of God. This attitude prevented them from accepting certain realities of their crusade. Any problems, including those of disease and deaths, were viewed as the trials and tribulations that God provides as a means of testing the fortitude of man. After every report of disaster in Liberia the managers simply renewed their efforts. Once the organization was formed and the auxiliaries established, a new force developed which also prevented the Society from admitting the seriousness of the mortality problem. The desire to perpetuate the existence of the corporate body became a factor. To have admitted that the mortality rate made the price of emigration far too high to be continued would have meant the end of the organization. The managers were seemingly unprepared to advise the termination of their project and by extension, their own jobs.}}

===Handing over command to Americo-Liberians===
[[File:West Africa 1839.jpg|thumb|Liberia on a 1839 map of West Africa]]
The ACS administrators gradually gave the maturing colony more self-governance. In 1839, it was reorganized into the Commonwealth of Liberia. In 1841, the Commonwealth's first non-white governor, [[Joseph Jenkins Roberts]], was appointed by ACS's governing board. In early 1847, the ACS directed Liberian leadership to declare independence. On July 26, 1847, eleven signatories to the [[Liberian Declaration of Independence]] established the free and independent Republic of Liberia. It took several years for other nations to recognize Liberia's independence, most notably [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|Britain]] in 1848 and [[Second French Empire|France]] in 1852. In the United States, the Southern bloc in Congress refused to recognize Liberian sovereignty.<ref>Wesley, Charles “The Journal of Negro History”, Vol. 2, No. 4, page 378, (Oct., 1917)</ref> In 1862, however, following the departure of most Southern congressmen due to the [[American Civil War]] and the [[Confederate States of America|secession]] of the Southern states, the United States finally established diplomatic relations and welcomed a Liberian delegation to Washington.<ref>''Id''</ref>