(Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series) Bronwen Everill (Auth.) - Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2013)

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ORIENTALISM AND RACE
Aryanism in the British Empire
Peter F. Bang and C. A. Bayly (editors)
TRIBUTARY EMPIRES IN GLOBAL HISTORY
James Beattie
EMPIRE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANXIETY, 1800–1920
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IMPERIALISM, DECOLONIZATION AND AFRICA
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THE MAKING OF INDIAN SECULARISM
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IMAGINED COMMONWEALTH
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ELITES AND DECOLONIZATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Bronwen Everill
ABOLITION AND EMPIRE IN SIERRA LEONE AND LIBERIA
Ulrike Hillemann
ASIAN EMPIRE AND BRITISH KNOWLEDGE
China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion
B.D. Hopkins
THE MAKING OF MODERN AFGHANISTAN
Ronald Hyam
BRITAIN’S IMPERIAL CENTURY, 1815–1914: A STUDY OF EMPIRE AND
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Iftekhar Iqbal
THE BENGAL DELTA
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Brian Ireland
THE US MILITARY IN HAWAI’I
Colonialism, Memory and Resistance
Robin Jeffrey
POLITICS, WOMEN AND WELL-BEING
How Kerala became a ‘Model’
Gerold Krozewski
MONEY AND THE END OF EMPIRE
British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–58
Sandhya L. Polu
PERCEPTION OF RISK
Policy-Making On Infectious Disease in India 1892–1940
Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre
IRISH AND INDIAN
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Ricardo Roque
HEADHUNTING AND COLONIALISM
Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire,
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Michael Silvestri
IRELAND AND INDIA
Nationalism, Empire and Memory
Aparna Vaidik
IMPERIAL ANDAMANS
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THUGGEE
Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India
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Abolition and Empire in
Sierra Leone and Liberia
Bronwen Everill
Assistant Professor of Global History, University of Warwick
© Bronwen Everill 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-02867-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
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175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-349-44001-6 ISBN 978-1-137-29181-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137291813
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
List of Abbreviations ix
Maps x
Introduction 1
Part I Foundations
1 Transatlantic Anti-Slavery Networks 17
2 An African Middle Class 33
3 Americans in Africa 55
Part II Interactions
4 The Abolitionist Propaganda War 81
5 Slave Trade Interventionism 107
6 Commercial Rivalry and Liberian Independence 128
7 Arguments for Colonial Expansion 148
Epilogue: 1861 and Beyond 173
Notes 181
Bibliography 206
Index 223
v
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Five major wage categories 44

2.2 Price index for Sierra Leonean consumption goods 45
3.1 Jane Roberts 72
3.2 Joseph Roberts 73
4.1 Revenue and expenditure in Sierra Leone, 1824–61 88
6.1 Liberia Packet 134
6.2 Liberia Packet interior 134
7.1 Immigration sponsored by the ACS 151
7.2 Sierra Leone’s per capita export growth, 1831–61 160
7.3 Sierra Leone palm oil exports to all ports, 1824–54 168
Table
4.1 Sources of slaves, 1808–63 84
vi
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to many people for helping to make this book a reality. I

would like to acknowledge the University Press of Florida for permission
to use the tables adapted from Eric Burin’s The Peculiar Solution in figure
7.1, the Indiana University Liberian Collections, Bloomington, Indiana,
for use of the Liberian Packet images, and the Library of Congress for
use of the Map of the West Coast of Africa. The map of Sierra Leone is
reprinted with permission from the Parliamentary Archives, and con-
tains parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament
Licence v1.0. I would also like to acknowledge the Journal of Transatlantic
Studies, the Journal of Global History, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History and the Journal of the Oxford University History Society, where some
of this material has appeared previously.
I am grateful for the financial support of the Economic History Society
and the Royal Historical Society, which provided the funds to con-
duct research in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Thanks as well to the King’s
College History Department and School of Humanities for additional
funds for travel to archives in the United States and the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill and King’s College London partnership
for creating a vibrant transatlantic exchange of ideas. Thanks to the
Huntington Library, whose Mayers Fellowship allowed me to access the
Macaulay papers. Finally, thanks to the Andrew Mellon Foundation and
the University of Oxford – particularly St Cross and Nuffield Colleges –
for giving me the time and inspiration to finish this project.
Many thanks to the Transatlantic Studies Association and Liberian
Studies Association for their encouragement of my research. Special
thanks also go to those who provided feedback at the Institute
for Historical Research, the African History Seminar at SOAS, the
Wilberforce Institute for Slavery and Emancipation, the McNeil Center
for Early American Studies, Columbia University History Department,
York University History Department, and the American History seminar
at Oxford. David Killingray, Suzanne Schwarz, Lisa Lindsay, Jay Sexton,
Silke Strickrodt, Sarah Stockwell, Jan-Georg Deutsch, Paul Lovejoy,
Catherine Hall, Christopher Brown, and John Oldfield provided valu-
able comments at various stages of the project. My examiners, David
Richardson and Tom McCaskie, provided valuable insights into how to
vii
viii Acknowledgements
get from the thesis to the book. Richard Drayton has helped guide this
book along, providing both intellectual and practical support.
This project was a global undertaking in more than simply the histor-
ical sense, requiring trips to archives in the United States, Britain, Sierra
Leone, and Liberia. At the Freetown Archives, I would not have been
nearly as successful without the help and company of Abu Koroma,
Edna Thomas, Damaris Grosvenor, the Newman-Samuels family,
Padraic Scanlan, and Richard Anderson. And in Monrovia, I would have
spent the entire research trip on the beach with Claire Schouten, Gama
Roberts, and Eric Hubbard were it not for the help of the archive staff
of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The helpful staff at Rhodes House
Library, Oxford, at the Library of Congress, and at the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania made my transatlantic archive trips run smoothly.
Special thanks to James Sidbury for his help with the Coker and Burgess
papers as well as the staff at Reader Services at the Huntington Library
for their help with the Macaulay papers. This project would never have
been completed without the help of Verlon Stone and Jeremy Kenyon
at the Liberian Collections Project at Indiana University, Bloomington.
I would like to thank Emily Manktelow, Lindsay Doulton, Mary Wills,
Richard Huzzey, Dalila Scruggs, John Wess Grant, Randy Brown, Nadia
Gill, Chris Ferguson, Dan de Kadt, Josiah Kaplan, and my colleagues at
Warwick for their input and encouragement. Andrew Porter has always
been a supportive supervisor, enthusiastic about my ideas, my research
trips, and my career. I would especially like to thank my parents for
instilling in me a love of history from as early as I can remember, and
Jonnie Gorrie, who must know more about West African history than
he ever anticipated.
Abbreviations
ACSP American Colonization Society Papers, Library of Congress

DM Skipwith Family Letters, in ‘Dear Master’: Letters of a Slave
Family, ed. Randall Miller (Athens, GA, 1990).
HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania
LA Liberian Archives at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
LCP Liberian Collections Project, Indiana University
Bloomington
LOC Library of Congress
NAUS The National Archives (US)
PP Parliamentary Papers
RHO Rhodes House, Oxford
SLA Sierra Leone Archives
SNM Letters from Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia 1833–1869,
ed. Bell I. Wiley (Kentucky, 1980).
TNA The National Archives (United Kingdom)
UVA University of Virginia Special Collections, MSS 10595,
10595-a, Samson Ceasar Letters to David S. Haselden and
Henry F. Westfall. Available online from the University of
Virginia Electronic Text Center, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/
subjects/liberia/index.html
UK University of Kentucky Special Collections and Archives,
Box 39, Wickliffe-Preston Family Papers. Available online
from http://legacy.bluegrass.kctcs.edu/LCC/HIS/scraps/libe-
ria.html
WM The College of William and Mary
ix
Maps
Map 1 Map of the West Coast of Africa, 1830

Map 2 Map of Sierra Leone and vicinity, 1849
Introduction
Benjamin Coates, an American anti-slavery activist and international

businessman, declared in 1851 that he hoped to spread American influ-
ence throughout Africa through the formation of the ‘United States
of Africa’.1 This was not a new idea. It echoed the words of Liberian
governor Jehudi Ashmun in the 1820s, who called for the creation of
a new America in Africa. This theme was taken up again by American
Colonization Society (ACS) advocate Elliot Cresson in the 1830s, who
described his plans for the continent to become the ‘Empire of Liberia’.
Anti-slavery, to these men, was a universal and expansionist idea.
And if anti-slavery was a universal doctrine, and one supported by
Christian theology, then was it not the responsibility of everyone to
fight slavery throughout the world, regardless of national or imperial
boundaries?
When contemplating a similar question in Britain seventy-five years
earlier, the noted humanitarian Granville Sharp had determined to
establish a homeland for freed slaves that would also serve to suppress
the slave trade within Africa and along its western coast, and replace it
with ‘legitimate’ commerce, Christianity, representative government,
and the benefits of Western civilization. The colony, founded in 1787
in the former slave-trading region of Sierra Leone, was called ‘Freetown’.
Drawing inspiration from the British anti-slavery movement, in 1816
Americans formed their own organization – the American Colonization
Society – to set up a colony, ‘Liberia’, made up of free African Americans
and freed slaves further along the coast. Its founders, like many before
and after them, hoped that the colonization of a troubling portion of the
population would solve a myriad of social ills at home. Contradicting
the standard notions of American and British mid-century isolationism,
these settlements betray the complexities of humanitarian universalism
1
2 Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia
arising from the formation of anti-slavery movements throughout the

Atlantic World.
Although these colonies have been studied extensively, with interest in
re-emerging in the wake of the anniversary of the abolition of the slave
trade, the connections between the two colonies have not. This study
uses a comparative approach to analyse the development of society in
Sierra Leone and Liberia and to investigate how their transnational and
inter-colonial relationships affected the perception of intervention and
expansion in Africa in both America and Britain. A comparative study
casts light on the international dimensions of the anti-slavery coloniza-
tion movements and their inextricability from questions of imperialism
in Africa. Without the comparative dimension, it is also impossible to
understand how these colonies were developing as rivals – economic, ter-
ritorial, political, and, above all else, anti-slavery rivals – and how this
rivalry was shaping metropolitan impressions of British and American
attempts to support these anti-slavery societies in West Africa. While
the overall impact of these colonies on metropolitan decision mak-
ing was limited – they never achieved anything like the importance of
Texas or India in terms of government attention – this study argues that
the development of rivalries between the two emerging societies did, in
fact, have an impact on the reception of metropolitan anti-slavery col-
onization ideology and the metropoles’ interest in humanitarian inter-
vention in Africa.
Historiography
British anti-slavery historiography has long been preoccupied by the

debate between its humanitarian and its economic origins.2 Within
West African historiography, this thread is particularly tied to the argu-
ments surrounding the shift from the slave trade to ‘legitimate’ trade,
since Sierra Leone’s role was primarily to act as a base for anti-slave trade
operations.3 A.G. Hopkins led a turn toward the study of West African
economic history, focusing on the role of the shift from slave to legitim-
ate commerce in, he argued, destabilizing African economics in a ‘crisis
of adaptation’.4 Robin Law takes this argument a step further, arguing
that enforcing ‘legitimate’ trade led to an increase in political involve-
ment in order to ensure that only approved methods of labour were
endorsed by British commerce.5
The role of the Sierra Leoneans6 in pushing forward economic change
had tended to feature less in these studies than the role of British mer-
chants and traders, and their trading partners in Old Calabar, Bonny,
Introduction 3
and other areas of modern-day Nigeria. When Sierra Leonean contribu-

tions to West African economic change have been studied, it has mostly
been through a lens of the failure of anti-slave trade plans, as Sierra
Leone has continued to be seen as singularly unsuccessful in establish-
ing the ‘legitimate’ agricultural commerce its founders had anticipated,
instead turning to trade.7 Recent historiography has brought Sierra
Leone into this debate to examine both the humanitarian8 and commer-
cial motives behind its founding. These arguments depict Sierra Leone
as the ‘foothold’ that led to the later use of humanitarian arguments for
the expansion of colonial possessions in Africa. By framing anti-slavery
as a national moral imperative, Britain was essentially bound to expand
into Africa, first in West Africa as a result of the Sierra Leone settlement,
but later, using the same arguments, into East Africa.9
More recently, Sierra Leone has resumed its place in anti-slavery his-
tory. Historians have reopened the book on the Sierra Leone Company
and the colony’s early life as part of the burgeoning anti-slavery move-
ment.10 What is rarely examined in Sierra Leone history after the period
of Company and African Institution control is the colony’s ongoing
connection to the British anti-slave trade movement. Between the col-
ony’s founding and the 1860s, significant changes took place in the
British anti-slavery movement, most notably as a result of the success of
the campaigns to abolish the slave trade, abolish colonial slavery, and
emancipate the slaves. After the success of the anti-slavery campaign,
anti-slavery leader Joseph Sturge and his Birmingham supporters began
to press for immediate emancipation and the abolition of apprentice-
ship. The parliamentary anti-slavery leader Thomas Fowell Buxton and
his more moderate supporters in the public and in government chose
instead to focus on the continuing slave trade. The story of this rift has
not received as much treatment as the divisions in the American anti-
slavery movement.11 Other groups also arose, including the Aborigines’
Protection Society, founded by the Quaker anti-slavery supporter, Dr.
Thomas Hodgkin, and several organizations inspired by the American
immediate abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. With each organiza-
tion focused on different goals, the movement remained fragmented
and ultimately, while retaining general popular appeal, diminished as a
cohesive political force in the 1840s and 1850s.
From that period, however, a number of historians have noted an
explosion of Sierra Leonean talent, giving rise to a ‘golden age’ variously
dated as beginning from the 1840s to the 1870s and ending in roughly
1900.12 Gustav Deveneaux gives good coverage of the impact of Sierra
Leonean opinion on imperial policy in the period from the 1870s to
1896, but the role of Sierra Leoneans in manipulating anti-slavery pol-

icy earlier in the century has been under-researched, in part because of
the lack of a popular press for much of the period.13 However, by look-
ing at the Liberian historiography, it becomes clear that Sierra Leoneans
must have been involved in shaping the anti-slavery movement’s opin-
ion well before the 1870s.
Liberian history received a revival with the end of their civil war.
The early historiography focused on telling the story of the political
development of the colony.14 The story of Liberia was – and continues
to be – inextricably linked to the changing fortunes of the American
Colonization Society.15 The ACS’s contentious role in antebellum his-
tory has meant that it rarely receives fair treatment in the mainstream
abolition historiography. When it is addressed in the historiography of
the abolition movement, it is generally dismissed as, at best, a fool-
hardy organization with no hope of providing a practical anti-slavery
strategy, and, at worst, an ‘evil’ scheme to forcibly transport all black
Americans.16 These approaches follow on almost directly from the con-
temporary abolition literature, which directed most of its ire between
1830 and 1840 toward, not slaveholders, but the ACS.
The ACS existed as a nationalizing force, presenting a unified goal of
expansion to diverse audiences to bring them together on the ‘slavery
question’. However, after the Missouri crisis of 1820, American nation-
alism gave way to increasing sectionalism and over the course of the
1820s, Southern slaveholders became more wary of federal expansion,
fearing that a strong federal government could enforce an anti-slavery
policy.17 Southerners too began to reject colonization as a ‘thinly veiled
abolition plot’.18 Meanwhile, Northerners were increasingly disturbed
by the growth of Southern slaveholders’ power and commitment to slav-
ery. The anti-slavery advocates’ endorsement of colonization rested on
the belief that slaveholders supported gradual emancipation and were
simply in need of security. As sectionalism grew, it became increasingly
clear to some Northerners that this was not the case.
The most consistent of the attacks on the ACS was from William
Lloyd Garrison. Once a member of the organization, in the late 1820s
and early 1830s, Garrison had a change of heart. Richard Newman has
attributed this change to his reading of African American activist David
Walker’s 1829 publication of his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the
World, which called on African Americans to reject colonization.19 From
then, Garrison worked tirelessly to promote immediate emancipation,
equality for free African Americans, and the destruction of the ACS. He
used his newspaper, The Liberator, as a mouthpiece of anti-colonization
Introduction 5
propaganda. In 1833, he and several other prominent anti-slavery activ-

ists including Lewis Tappan and Frederick Douglass formed the American
Anti-Slavery Society. The society promoted anti-slavery through a pol-
icy of ‘moral suasion’. Garrison advocated a non-violent, non-political
approach to anti-slavery activism, encouraging his followers to use their
persuasive moral argument to convince others to oppose slavery. As a
product of the Second Great Awakening and the rise of the Millennial
Christianity that followed, Garrison and his ardent supporters believed
that the return of Christ would occur only once the world was perfected
by man. Garrison dominated the pacifist wing of the movement, but as
time progressed, others became disillusioned with the pace of change
and Garrison’s scattershot approach to reform, which by his definition
included not only the abolition of slavery, but also the promotion of
women’s rights and temperance.
In 1840, the Anti-Slavery Society split into the Anti-Slavery Society
and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In this climate, the
ACS gained back some pragmatic anti-slavery advocates, but in general
it was weakened by the effects of the Panic of 1837, the expense of run-
ning a colony, and growing British pressure on their movement. By the
late 1840s, however, the deteriorating situation for African Americans
throughout the United States and the independence of Liberia made
the prospect of emigration more appealing to some. The radicalizing
pro-slavery forces in the South began to dominate the political debates,
driving together disparate anti-slavery voices and, in the decade before
the outbreak of the Civil War, uniting anti-slavery sentiment around
the newly formed Republican Party.
Historians of Sierra Leone and Liberia have tended to account for
their development in terms of metropolitan politics; however, com-
parison of the two colonies reveals that influence was multidirectional,
with Sierra Leone and Liberia influencing the metropolitan anti-slavery
movements even as their development was being shaped by metropol-
itan debates. But without the same type of humanitarian-economic
argument in the American anti-slavery historiography as in the British
anti-slavery literature, the historical debate tends to centre around ‘real’
and ‘cynical’ anti-slavery activists, ignoring the economic arguments
put forward by many African Americans who chose to emigrate, and
the growth of these arguments in the colonization literature between
the colony’s founding and the outbreak of the American Civil War.20
Liberian historians also recognize the role of Sierra Leone in pressur-
ing the ACS to give up Liberia. Although some evaluations of Liberia
draw on comparisons with Sierra Leone to make their point, very few
comparative works have attempted to bring together the study of these

similar colonization projects, from the perspective of either the soci-
eties who founded them or the colonists who settled in them.21
The comparative dimension is important because the anti-slavery
movement, despite existing in a transnational context, is generally
studied as a national movement after the break between Britain and
America during the Revolution.22 Since much of the anti-slavery work
took place as part of a transnational network, and, as this study shows,
was significantly influenced by changes in the imperial context, the
national frame seems to distort the true historical picture. Even those
histories of anti-slavery that take into account movements on both sides
of the Atlantic tend to ignore the contributions of the anti-slavery col-
onies to the formation of opinion in the metropole. For example, Betty
Fladeland’s work on transatlantic anti-slavery cooperation includes an
entire chapter on the colonization movement, but fails to explore how
the interaction between Sierra Leone and Liberia and between these col-
onies and the anti-slavery movements in Britain and America caused
the British anti-slavery activists to move away from the American colo-
nizationists.23 The continual historic judgement that Liberia was ‘unsuc-
cessful’ because it was not supported by African Americans at home,
who were unified against it, has rarely been subject to scrutiny, even
though it is clear that inter-colonial rivalries and English pressure con-
tributed both to the poor international image of Liberia (which in turn
affected African Americans’ reactions to it) and to the colony’s ‘failure’
and eventual independence.24 The very fact that Liberia’s independence
is judged a failure of the ACS indicates that the American situation needs
to be examined through the lens of imperial historiography. In fact,
Fladeland, perhaps unwittingly, suggests a clear alternative to that argu-
ment, pointing out that ACS Secretary Ralph Gurley’s approach to British
colonizationists ‘succeeded only in arousing commercial jealousy’.25
What has often been ignored, however, are the connections between
these two colonies. The main reason for this omission seems to be
twofold: first, the two colonies have not been studied in comparison
thoroughly since the 1970s, meaning that many of the post-colonial
historiographical developments such as networks, colonial impact
on the metropole, Atlantic history, and identification have not been
applied to these colonies to the same extent as other parts of the British
Empire or United States; and second, the two colonies have been stud-
ied in very different historiographical contexts because of the national
focus of much anti-slavery writing and the contexts of imperial history
in the United States and Britain.
Introduction 7
Recent work has moved away from the idea that empire was a cohe-
sive government plan. 26 This study follows this newer understanding
of imperialisms of cultural, moral, economic, and military domin-
ance, led by the settlers, missionaries, naval squadrons, and gover-
nors, but contributing to the dominance of metropolitan ideologies
and commerce in previously sovereign territories. Sierra Leone began
this way, but, as a Crown Colony, was one of only a few true ‘imper-
ial colonies’ before the 1850s in the standard vision described above.
Jamaica was ruled by its own assembly; India was ruled by the East
India Company; Sierra Leone itself had been run by the Sierra Leone
Company and then its policy had been guided in the first years of
Crown Colony rule predominantly by the benevolent organization,
the African Institution.
Regardless of Sierra Leone’s position in the empire, it has frequently
been treated as an anomaly in the imperial literature. This is par-
tially because the period of Sierra Leone’s importance happens to be
during what is traditionally assumed to be a lull in British imperial-
ism. West, for instance, notes that ‘until, roughly, the 1880s, Britain
was anti-imperialist in her thinking’ with no policies of expansion
in West Africa. 27 Lamin Sanneh, while acknowledging that expan-
sion did occur, still qualifies it, writing that the British government
was ‘alarmed’ at Sierra Leoneans’ expansion into what is presently
Nigeria.28 John Gallagher’s response to the idea that Britain was not
expansionist during this period points out that ‘there can be no
doubt that the main line of policy in the mid-nineteenth century was
opposed to colonial expansion in all but special cases; but it is inter-
esting to speculate how many qualifications would be injected into
that generalization by the study of the temporary aberrations of policy
forced on governments by humanitarians, business men and politi-
cians in opposition’.29
However, despite reluctance in the historiography to treat Sierra
Leone as an expansionist colony, it is generally accepted as embodying
a form of imperial rule. Liberia, on the other hand, is generally rejected
outright as a ‘true’ example of imperialism or even colonialism because
it was founded by a benevolent society, rather than by the state itself.
Despite strong evidence presented by Lawrence Howard that shows the
extent to which the US government and Navy were involved as state
actors, and despite the existence of state-level, government organized
colonization through the Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Mississippi,
and New York colonization societies (to mention a few), Liberia is gener-
ally dismissed as an example of American imperialism because, in the
period before the Civil War, historians generally have not recognized
any activity on the part of Americans, American organizations or com-
panies, or the state itself as ‘imperialist’.
It is true that the scale of operations in Sierra Leone and Liberia was
different, in part due to the differences between the ACS and the British
government in terms of their abilities to direct resources. However, the
neglect of Liberia generally seems to stem from a larger trend. Taken
as inevitable, the US domination of Native American, Mexican, and
British territory stretching to the Pacific is rarely treated as an imperial
conquest despite its adherence to these standard definitions of imperi-
alism. Even those scholars who do look for the origins of later imperial
behaviour in the antebellum period of continental expansion tend to
overlook early extraterritorial involvement in Africa. Zevin attempts to
outline the historical pattern of imperial involvement, going back to
the country’s founding, but writes of the period of Liberia’s founding
that ‘the early 1820s marked the beginning of a prolonged period dur-
ing which there was little activity which falls within our definition of
imperialism’.30 Despite the clear participation of the United States in the
mid-nineteenth century’s colonial and imperial projects through the
establishment of Liberia, the westward expansion of American settlers,
and a variety of ‘informal’ imperial interventions in Asia, Africa, and
the Americas, the study of America’s global history has only begun in
earnest over the past twenty years.31 Samuel Watson’s work on manifest
destiny, for instance, reveals that even within the North American con-
tinent, ‘the central government and its agents were constantly forced
to reckon with the expansive ... demands and actions of a mushroom-
ing frontier population which remained essentially unregulable and
therefore capable of withholding its sanction from national policies or
reshaping them in pursuit of local objectives’.32 This ‘special interest’
driven expansion not only occurred within the territory that would
become the United States, and it did not take place only at the end of
the nineteenth century.
It is clear that the time has come to re-examine this situation by
involving all of the relevant powers and a new set of questions. This book
seeks to understand the relationship between the anti-slavery societies
and their anti-slavery settlements in West Africa. To what extent did
events ‘on the spot’ influence the development of anti-slavery ideology
in Britain and America? How did the development of the societies of
Sierra Leone and Liberia shape the image of anti-slavery intervention?
What role did territorial, anti-slavery, and commercial rivalries between
the colonies play in fracturing the transatlantic anti-slavery consensus?
Introduction 9
What can the situation in Sierra Leone and Liberia reveal about the
contradictions inherent in universalist anti-slavery ideology?
This investigation specifically looks at the relationship between
‘imperialism’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’, which took a variety
of forms including treaty-making, commercial intervention, Christian
proselytism, military intervention, education, and territorial expansion
through settlement. Commercial and territorial expansion occurred as
part of this humanitarian intervention, as did the establishment of col-
onies. Alan Lester has argued that in settler societies – particularly in
his example of the Eastern Cape – humanitarian influence had to con-
tend with settler expansionism, and governmentality.33 The traditional
division of imperial actors into ‘government’, ‘settler’, and ‘humanitar-
ian’ needs complication, particularly when understanding these West
African colonies, where a persistent belief in the moral and social role of
anti-slavery doctrine pervaded the colonies’ actions and interactions.
At the anti-slavery society level, political and commercial consider-
ations may have been influenced by territorial or economic activities
that were occurring at the colonial level, in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as
part of this attempt at humanitarian intervention into the slave trade.
For Sierra Leoneans, Liberians, and anti-slavery colonizationists a set of
tools – referred to here as ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ –
could be employed to press for the humanitarian goal of the end of the
slave trade. For the settlers, their participation in this civilizing mis-
sion, and their embrace of the values of liberty and property gave them
a claim to modernity, which they hoped and expected would bring
them equality of opportunity within the imperial context.34 This book
argues that the settlers’ belief in their anti-slavery mission, and their
adherence to the ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ model of
anti-slavery intervention, brought the settlements into conflict with
one another and led to tension and disagreement between the British
and American colonization and civilization societies. It is not setting
out to argue that both Britain and America were using humanitarian
aims cynically to develop empires – at least, not all the time – but that
the desire for humanitarian intervention on the part of settlers as well
as their metropolitan anti-slavery allies promoted an ‘imperialistic’
expansion of colonial and metropolitan resources in West Africa.
Approach
The comparative approach reveals significant differences in the

development of the colonies. The colonies’ development differed in
their approaches to various institutions – educational, religious, and

military – not because one society ‘actually’ supported the colonists and
the other was ‘abandoning’ them in West Africa. The main reason for
the differences were to do with the forms of cultural, social, political,
and economic connections with the metropole and the metropolitan
anti-slavery societies. This book argues that the development of these
institutions in Sierra Leone gave Sierra Leoneans the ability to draw on
a common ‘British’ background and both seek support from, and offer
their own support of a kind to their anti-slavery allies in Britain. For
example, by adopting and adapting the anti-slavery emphasis on ‘legit-
imate’ commerce as the key to the end of the slave trade, Sierra Leoneans
were able to promote their own territorial and commercial expansion,
and their increasing importance in the development of British West
Africa. The development of these institutions in Liberia, on the other
hand, served to alienate African Americans from Liberian settlers, who
were establishing their own independent institutions. Only through
the rhetoric of frontier experience and commercial successes could the
Liberians convey a sense of parallel experience.
Explicit moments of economic or anti-slavery rivalry were rare and
only represented the tip of the iceberg of connections that developed
between the two colonies. Just as potent a force in their development
was their awareness of one another; their conscientious use of each
other as examples; the almost explicit ‘othering’ of their colonial expe-
riences. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia hoped to promote anti-slavery,
‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’, and their own prosperity.
The anti-slavery societies that founded these colonies had different sets
of relationships to both the metropolitan state and the colonial settlers
that shaped their own interpretations of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in the
colonial setting. This is a history of connection, comparison, and inter-
action on both a colonial and metropolitan level and on both a prac-
tical and ideological level.
The sources used for this study are drawn from a wide selection of
archives and formats. This study uses a wide sample of official gov-
ernment documents, formal and informal correspondence, settler peti-
tions, colonial newspapers, humanitarian organizations’ publications
and official records. Government documents include correspondence
both within the colony and with the metropole, census data, import
and export lists, naval squadron communications, treaties, and inter-
colonial exchanges. The documents from humanitarian organizations
(including the major anti-slavery organizations, missionary societies,
and auxiliary societies with specific aims such as education) include
Introduction 11
internal communications, official subscription publications and books,

records of meetings, petitions, and reports. The aim of this wide sam-
ple is to get a sense of how communication between the colonies and
the metropolitan anti-slavery organizations and governments created
a language and culture of anti-slavery intervention. For this reason,
this is primarily a study of those settlers and recaptives who do engage
with the imperial government. Throughout, it focuses on the settlers
who adapted British and American culture to their situations in West
Africa and who promoted the message of ‘Civilization, Commerce,
and Christianity’. There were large numbers of recaptives, particularly
in Sierra Leone, who ‘dropped out’ of settler society: some returned
home; some began new lives beyond the borders of the colony; others
remained in the colonial parishes, but chose not to engage with the
imperial project.
For those who did engage with the transatlantic networks of anti-
slavery and empire, the different modes of communicating with the
metropole tend to centre on three major media: in Liberia, settlers
wrote letters and published their own newspapers which were trans-
mitted back to America. A few families, in particular, kept in close
contact with the families they once served in America. The Skipwith
family, for instance, corresponded regularly with John Hartwell
Cocke, who had emancipated Peyton Skipwith, his wife Lydia, and
his six children – Diana, Matilda, Napoleon, Felicia, Martha, and
Nash – in 1833 as part of his belief in the mission of the ACS. Their
letters survived and reveal a good deal about the lives of middling,
Virginia emigrants throughout the period. Other important fam-
ilies from Virginia who left a strong epistolary record included the
Minors and Blackfords, who emigrated in the late 1820s, after their
owners, Lucy Minor and her daughter, Mary Blackford, took up the
cause of the ACS. In Sierra Leone, drawing on their British education
and Victorian cultural milieu, settlers used petitions to praise, com-
plain, and effect change. These petitions were always mediated by the
governor, and most of the records emerging from Freetown are from
official sources, while there is more variety in the contact between
Liberia and America. The difference in these types of available sources
reflects, but also influences, the nature of the colonies’ relationships
with the metropoles. In order to work to mitigate this imbalance in
the sources, this research also looks at descriptions from visitors to
the colony and missionaries, reports from the colonial administrators,
published books and reports from the metropolitan societies, and an
analysis of material culture.
The study examines issues of identification in view of the role Sierra

Leone and Liberia played in the development of anti-slavery ideology
in the metropolitan contexts. This raises the inevitable discussion of
‘identity’ in the imperial context. Frederick Cooper’s essay on the place
of identity in colonial studies highlights the dangers of both strong and
weak conceptions of the term.35 Catherine Hall has called the creation
of imperial identities discursive and archaeologist Gil Stein has high-
lighted that it is crucial to the understanding of colonial relationships
that what occurs in colonial encounters ‘is a bidirectional or multidir-
ectional process in which diasporic cultures can form entirely new,
composite identities through what has been termed transculturation,
ethnogenesis, creolization, or hybridization’.36 This, Cooper argues, is
one of just many functions ‘identity’ fills, particularly with relation to
ethnicity studies, and to which it is not necessarily well-suited because
of the baggage of the term. He suggests, instead, an approach that looks
at identification, or the active process of identifying oneself or being
identified by others.37 This book attempts to work with this processual
idea, describing the activity of Sierra Leonean and Liberian settlers as
they shaped their societies and developed ideologies and institutions,
and the activities of the metropolitan allies and enemies of coloniza-
tion, whose changing attitudes toward the settlements helped to shape
the settlers’ views of their purposes.
Two main themes emerge in this study. First, that the anti-slavery
divisions in the metropoles were influenced by the colonial situations
in a way that has been under-examined to date. Developments in soci-
ety such as institution building – churches, schools, militias, civil
society associations – commerce, and politics influenced the way that
these colonies dealt with indigenous groups, with each other, and with
the metropolitan anti-slavery societies that supported them. Different
expectations of what anti-slavery intervention should encompass, who
should participate, and where they should take place led to dynamic
shifts as, for example, the success of Liberian self-governance was
praised by Buxton, leading to a shift in the governance of Sierra Leone
that recognized and rewarded the already expansionist Sierra Leonean
‘native’ missionaries, traders, and settlers. Changing relationships with
the metropolitan anti-slavery organizations influenced the ways that
the settlers and governors of Sierra Leone and Liberia interacted with
their African surroundings.
The second theme is that colonization was a developing anti-slavery
ideology, and in particular, the constantly shifting idea of ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’ changed over time and was interpreted
Introduction 13
differently by different anti-slavery actors over the course of the mid-

nineteenth century. Rather than highlighting the commercial or the
humanitarian motives for the colonies, or explaining their founding
motives as ‘truly’ or ‘cynically’ anti-slavery, this study emphasizes that
the founding societies and the settlers themselves seemed to be inspired
by a developing idea of their role in Africa as defined by this loose coali-
tion of ideas: the ‘civilization’ of Africa via an end to the slave trade,
adoption of standards of western life, material culture, and institutions;
Africa’s conversion to Christianity; and the introduction of ‘legitimate’
commerce to simultaneously replace the slave trade, enrich the colonies
and the metropoles, and inspire ‘civilized’ consumption. These ideas
were all connected by the abolition of the slave trade and by the belief
that slavery was a universal, not a national problem, that required root-
ing out at its source (Africa) which had been corrupted by the slave
trade. But these were not just policies and ideologies emanating from
the metropoles. By focusing on the colonies themselves and their con-
tributions to the anti-slavery movements in Britain and America, this
study redirects the historiography of the anti-slavery movements in both
countries to take into account the transatlantic influences that con-
tributed to the perception of colonization’s viability as an anti-slavery
intervention.
Part I
Foundations
1
Transatlantic
Anti-Slavery Networks
The early history of the anti-slavery colonization movement reveals

both the extent and the limitations of the transatlantic networks
involved in their founding. Although Freetown was founded thirty-five
years before Monrovia, they faced similar problems in their early years:
high rates of endemic disease and mortality; hostile relationships with
indigenous groups; frequent clashes with slave traders in the region;
and fraught relationships between the settlers, their leaders, and the
metropolitan anti-slavery colonizationists. These similarities suggest
that there was little communication between the anti-slavery organ-
izers in Britain and in America, or between the settlers in Sierra Leone
and those planning to settle in Liberia.
However, there were, in fact, numerous connections and networks
of communication established throughout this period. Information
about Sierra Leone was not easy to obtain, but it was available. African
Americans travelled to the colony to report on its progress and potential
as a site for emigration, and to conduct reconnaissance on the surround-
ing area. British emigrants to America became involved in colonization
schemes and sought help from their humanitarian networks back in
Britain. Not least, Britain turned to the loyalist African Americans who
had resettled in Canada in order to repopulate the colony after the ini-
tial demographic disasters, thereby infusing the early colony with elem-
ents of American ideology and religious pluralism.
These colonies were part of a transatlantic exchange of ideas, people,
and goods. But in an era of newly formed mass political movements,
with a new relationship between Britain and its former colonies in
America yet to be fully defined, individual connections and move-
ments around the Atlantic World helped to secure relationships, spread
ideas, and forge new leadership. The use of personal networks helped
17
to shape the development of the transatlantic colonization movements

of both Britain and America. The connections influenced the type of
scheme that developed in the United States, the choice of location in
West Africa, and the model for the American Colonization Society.
This chapter explores the ways that the founding of Sierra Leone
and the colony’s early years did and did not influence the founding of
Liberia and its early settlement, primarily through an exploration of the
metropolitan plans and personal information exchanges in this period.
The close association of key British humanitarians, colonizationists,
missionaries, naval officers, and parliamentarians throughout the early
years of Sierra Leone’s founding helps to illustrate the close connec-
tions and tight networks that controlled the colony’s establishment and
economic prospects, as well as directed the type of civilizing mission
that would later develop. Many of the Americans involved in the early
colonization plans, in contrast, were no longer keenly involved by the
time that Liberia was finally founded, contributing to a different type
of network of influence in the metropolitan movements. The early years
also provided hints that there would be less cooperation between the
British and American anti-slavery movements than they continued to
hope there would be. Sierra Leone and Liberia emerged from a competi-
tive strategy that underlines their interconnection, their contributions
towards anti-slavery, and their inherent rivalry.
Province of freedom
In 1787, three ships bearing a total of 459 passengers arrived on the

Sierra Leone peninsula from London. The settlers had arrived as part of
a new utopian plan put forward by Granville Sharp, a noted friend of
London’s ‘Black Poor’, Henry Smeathman, a naturalist and adventurer,
and with the support of anti-slavery campaigners Olaudah Equiano,
Ottabah Coguano, and the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers. It
was a diverse group of supporters, and an equally diverse group of set-
tlers, which included 344 black Londoners, as well as 115 white wives
and artisans who joined the expedition.1
Sharp’s plan for the Province of Freedom did not last long. The col-
ony’s early governance was supposed to follow a model of idealized
Anglo-Saxon democracy laid out by Sharp in the colony’s charter, with
rotating representatives (hundredors) elected by tithingmen, who rep-
resented a group of ten households. The arcane system collapsed almost
immediately as a result of the challenges facing the colonists: mortality
was high; there were conflicts with Spanish, French, and African slave
Transatlantic Anti-Slavery Networks 19
traders based in the vicinity; there was conflict with the Temne; there
was dissention and debate amongst the settlers and those in charge of
the colony. By 1791, only 46 of the original settlers remained. Many
had died, and others moved to other parts of the peninsula or to Bunce
Island, where they felt they had a better chance of making a living.2
Although the first settlement faced obstacles including disease and
violent disputes with indigenous populations, the experiment was
not abandoned. Instead, the Sierra Leone Company took over admin-
istration of Sierra Leone in 1791. The Company was run by a group
of humanitarians including members of the Clapham Sect – William
Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Henry Thornton – but it combined
humanitarian aims with the attempt to make the colony economically
self-sufficient through the introduction of ‘legitimate commerce’. The
hope was that the colony would demonstrate that tropical plantation
crops of the sort grown in the West Indies could be grown without
recourse to enslaved labour.3 The Company Directors declared ‘that all
the most valuable productions of the tropical climates seem to grow
spontaneously at Sierra Leone; and that nothing but attention and cul-
tivation appear wanting, in order to produce them of every kind, and
in sufficient quantities to become articles of trade’.4 During this period,
the colony expanded with the settlement of the roughly 1200 Black
Loyalists who fought with the British in the American Revolution, had
been transported to Nova Scotia, and were brought to Sierra Leone by
John Clarkson. In 1800, 500 Maroons, a group of free black Jamaicans,
joined them.
Meanwhile, the anti-slave trade movement that had founded the col-
ony continued to adapt and change throughout the 1790s and early
1800s, giving rise to new interpretations of what was taking place on
the ground in Freetown and a new mix of pragmatism and utopianism
that influenced the way American colonizationists later came to view
the colony. In 1808, after the Sierra Leone Company proved unprofit-
able, the British government took over the running of the colony. The
Sierra Leone Company’s successor, the African Institution, which dom-
inated moderate anti-slave trade activism through the 1820s, main-
tained a similar governing body and membership. This organization
provided the government with suitable candidates for the governorship
of the colony (Thomas Perronet Thompson in 1808, replaced by Edward
Columbine in 1810) and information suggesting how the colony should
be governed.5
When the British government took control of the operation of the
newly designated Crown Colony of Sierra Leone, Thomas Perronet
Thompson was hand selected by William Wilberforce to be its first gov-

ernor. Thompson was a fierce abolitionist and was disturbed when he
found that the apprenticeship system of training new labourers in the
colony was not as it seemed. He wrote home to his fiancée ‘that these
apprenticeships have ... introduced actual slavery’.6 Slaves freed in the
area or from slave traders trying to trade within the colony were sold
to Sierra Leonean settlers as apprentices for twenty dollars or kept by
the government to do improvement works. In response to Thompson’s
repeated protests Macaulay, secretary of the Institution, replied that ‘I
have always been of the opinion that the slave trade being abolished,
the most likely means of promoting civilization in that country [Sierra
Leone] would be by indenting the natives for a time not exceeding
seven years, or till they attained the age of 21’.7 Because the anti-slavery
activists in Britain saw apprenticeship as benefiting a long-term edu-
cating and civilizing mission, Thompson was recalled by the African
Institution, who replaced him with a governor more amenable to the
complex labour relations of the colony.
This was in part because, in the period after the abolition of the slave
trade, William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect of reforming evan-
gelicals continued to pursue an anti-slave trade policy. In order to com-
bat the slave trade, the African Institution and others involved in the
British anti-slave trade movement felt that legitimate commerce had to
be introduced to compete with, and ultimately replace, the slave trade.
The perception of the company’s failure to encourage legitimate trade
encouraged the African Institution and later experimenters to pursue a
more holistic course that would combine elements of Sharp’s plan with
the commercial plan. At the time of the British government’s takeover
of the colony, the African Institution declared that Sierra Leone would
be the new British centre for growing cotton in case ‘circumstances arise
to interrupt our commercial relations with America’.8 However, some
moderate metropolitan anti-slavery activists had begun to believe that
labour was needed, as were assimilated Africans, in order to ensure that
the transition away from the slave trade took place smoothly. Those
metropolitan anti-slavery activists who continued to shape the policies
of Britain towards its new colony ensured that labour and the popula-
tion was controlled and governed effectively by accepting the practice
of apprenticeship.
But in addition to introducing legitimate commerce, the colony
also had to deal with a growing settler population as slave ships were
impounded by the Navy and the slaves on board – referred to as ‘recap-
tives’ or ‘Liberated Africans’ – were integrated into Sierra Leone society.
Until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, humanitarian networks

in British corridors of power lobbied for a strong naval presence off the
coast of Sierra Leone, the designation of Sierra Leone as a Crown Colony
and the home of the Courts of Mixed Commission for adjudicating slave
ship captures. With the expansion of the anti-slave trade squadron and
the establishment of the Courts of Mixed Commission for adjudicating
slave ship captures, the Sierra Leone government had to respond to the
increase in African subjects from outside the British Empire. Between
1808 and 1833, 55,533 slaves were disembarked in Sierra Leone.9 Of
these, roughly 65 per cent were male and 35 per cent children.10
In order to accommodate the assimilation of these new arrivals,
Governor Charles MacCarthy (1816–24) brought two strains of humani-
tarianism together in his parish plan for administering the colony in
districts run by Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries. The
CMS was founded in 1804 with the goal of promoting the spread of
the Gospel in Britain’s colonial territories. The board of the CMS fre-
quently overlapped with the African Institution and other anti-slavery
organizations and MacCarthy saw this metropolitan cooperation as
an opportunity to shape the colony. In MacCarthy’s plan, new recap-
tives were settled into a village, encouraged to marry local women, and
expected to attend church on Sundays and mission schools throughout
the week with their families, thereby promoting the development of
‘civilization’. MacCarthy expanded the colony into the interior, estab-
lishing a number of ‘parishes’ run by CMS superintendents respon-
sible for administrative, educational, and religious duties. Each of these
parishes would house a manager (provided by the CMS) who would
oversee the apprenticeship of Liberated Africans in various necessary
trades, while also providing for their religious and civil instruction
through the establishment of government schools. MacCarthy wrote of
the experiment that he conceived ‘that the first effectual step towards
the establishment of Christianity will be found in the Division of this
peninsula into Parishes, appointing to each a Clergyman to instruct
their flock in Christianity, enlightening their minds to the various
duties and advantages inherent to civilization’. He envisioned that this
would make ‘Sierra Leone the base from whence future exertions may
be extended, step by step to the very interior of Africa’.11
MacCarthy’s tenure as governor was unusually long for the col-
ony, allowing him to expand educational and commercial oppor-
tunities into the interior, court favour with the demanding settlers,
and establish Freetown as a regional hub and the capital of the new
British West African Territories, founded in 1821, combining the Gold
Coast settlements and the Gambia under the Freetown government.

Throughout this period, the colony’s anti-slavery activity was primarily
aimed at ‘redeeming’ recaptive slaves and acting as a base for naval anti-
slavery activity. As the Prince de Joinville summarized the European
attitude in passing through the colony in the 1840s, ‘to have turned
out these human cattle, swept up in distant raids, now far from home
and country, would have been to cast them infallibly into the clutches
of cruel and pitiless native masters, who would keep back what they
could not sell for human sacrifices or cannibal banquets’.12 The well-
run CMS establishments in the Sierra Leone districts ensured that new
waves of Liberated Africans received identical schooling in the habits
and knowledge that Britons found important. The educations received
at the parish schools allowed Liberated Africans to become socially
mobile ministers, teachers, petty bureaucrats, and tradesmen, which
would have a much stronger influence on the colony’s development
than metropolitan planning in the 1830s and 1840s.
American initiatives
Americans were also growing interested in the potential for African col-
onization. Even before humanitarians like Granville Sharp were plan-
ning the settlement of the ‘black poor’ in Freetown, Anthony Benezet and
other influential Quakers promoted resettlement of African Americans
in areas less hostile to their freedom – for Benezet, the western parts of
North America.
Exemplifying the connections between the burgeoning American
and British plans for colonization, the Reverend Samuel Hopkins of
Connecticut, a Congregationalist minister, was trying to gather support
for a similar programme in the American colonies. Hopkins had a plan
to train black missionaries to be sent to Africa, for which he appealed to
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, based in Edinburgh.13
Although the plan was disrupted by the American Revolution, with
the renewal of friendly contact between Britain and America after the
American Revolution, several attempts were made at bringing free black
American settlers to Africa. Hopkins befriended William Thornton, a
recently arrived Quaker and humanitarian from England. Thornton
used his connections to influential friends in London, hoping to estab-
lish a new independent ‘black commonwealth’ with his own freed
slaves under the protection of both the French and British, and with
the financial support of Massachusetts. He was rejected by the French
and the Massachusetts Congress. Most surprisingly, he was also rejected
by his British friends, who were working simultaneously to establish the

colony at Sierra Leone, and Thornton’s offer to act as governor of the
Sierra Leone colony was refused by Granville Sharp.14
This tension hinted at the underlying problem in establishing two
colonies in western Africa. The simultaneous development of African
colonization plans on both sides of the Atlantic led to a sharing of plans
and methods, but it did not lead to a natural cooperation. In fact, Sharp’s
ability to set up his colony first seemed to reassure British humanitar-
ians that their plan was superior to any American plan, while American
humanitarians were well aware of their need to call on British wealth
as a source of potential funding and therefore continually put in a pos-
ition of subordination to British humanitarians. This would be a con-
tinuing theme as the American humanitarians continued to search for
somewhere to establish a colony.
One of the most influential American humanitarians to become
involved in this project was Paul Cuffe. He was part of a number of
overlapping transatlantic networks. A free African and Native American
merchant from Massachusetts, he was a member of the Society of
Friends. Through his Quaker networks, he developed important trans-
atlantic business contacts through the Rotchs (William and Joseph).
As an active Quaker he was also involved in anti-slavery work. This
brought him to the attention of the African Institution in Britain, with
whom he established a working relationship that endured the trials of
the War of 1812. Finally, he was a prominent merchant operating out
of Massachusetts with several ships and an extensive trading network
along the east coast. This allowed him to charter his own reconnais-
sance voyages to Sierra Leone and Britain.
Cuffe was an important figure in the anti-slavery colonization move-
ment because of the strength of his connections on all sides of the
Atlantic basin. Like many others in the first decade of the nineteenth
century, he felt that Sierra Leone might offer a viable alternative for free
African Americans who wanted to live without the prejudice of daily
life in the United States. Particularly after 1807, when it abolished the
slave trade, Britain was seen as a friend of the enslaved. At the same
time, African Americans were becoming increasingly interested in the
British colonization project taking place in Sierra Leone. Cuffe learned
about Sierra Leone from his Quaker networks. He wanted to set up trad-
ing rights with the British colony, and encouraged the founding of sev-
eral African Institution auxiliaries in the United States. He spent two
months in the colony in 1811–12 and established the Friendly Society
to promote trade, Christianity, and ‘civilization’. The Friendly Society
was well received by many of the Sierra Leoneans from American back-
grounds. John Kizell, a Nova Scotian, became the leader of the Friendly
Society and maintained communication between Freetown’s Friendly
Society and Cuffe when he returned to America.
While in Freetown, Cuffe was contacted by the African Institution
which requested that he visit Britain. He left his nephew in the colony,
took a Sierra Leonean apprentice pilot in his place, and made way for
Liverpool.15 The aim of his mission was to seek permission to establish
trade between Sierra Leone, America, and Britain. However, the disrup-
tion of the War of 1812 ended British willingness to open up trade to
Americans and plans for cooperation in Sierra Leone were laid aside. In
the meantime, Cuffe established African Institution auxiliaries in the
United States and made plans to return to Sierra Leone with willing fam-
ilies of emigrants. In 1815, at the end of the war, Cuffe returned with a
group of thirty-eight African Americans intending to settle in Freetown
and numerous other families asked to join future expeditions.16 In 1815
and 1816, interest in joining the Sierra Leone colony seemed to be high
amongst emigrationist African Americans.
However, the coincidence of Cuffe’s death in 1817 and the foundation
of the ACS meant that the next expeditions would not be conducted by
Cuffe or even by the Friendly Society he founded. The Friendly Society
would play an important role in the choice of the site though. John
Kizell, now the president of the Freetown Friendly Society, and an influ-
ential member of the Nova Scotian settler community, encouraged the
ACS to set up the new settlers on Sherbro Island, 100 miles southeast of
Freetown. Kizell had previously dealt in both government and commer-
cial capacity with the ruling families on Sherbro and was on particu-
larly good terms with the Caulker family. So when he recommended
Sherbro as a site for the new settlement, his recommendation was taken
to heart by the ACS.
The ACS was founded in 1816 by a diverse group of influential
politicians and humanitarians including the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Henry Clay, Robert Stockton, related to a signer of the
Declaration of Independence, the Reverend Robert Finley, a prominent
anti-slavery campaigner, and Bushrod Washington, the first president’s
nephew and a former Supreme Court Justice. Even within the founding
group there was debate about their intentions: Clay warned that colon-
ization should only be for free blacks, not slaves, while Finley hoped
to use it for gradual emancipation.17 The coalition included those who
believed that slavery was wrong, but that, as Jefferson articulated, liv-
ing together would be impossible or undesirable; those who believed
that free black Americans were inferior and a drain on the commu-
nity; those who believed in the missionary promise of Africa; those who
believed in the anti-slave trade establishment; and those with commer-
cial motives.18 Some contemporary colonizationists – those who were
proponents of colonization as a means of affecting the end of slavery or
the slave trade – believed they were improving the life opportunities of
free blacks, giving them a chance for economic self-sufficiency, while at
the same time bringing civilization and Christianity to Africa.19 Nation
building and notions of empire also contributed significantly to the
ACS’s ideas of African colonization. Evangelical Christianity also played
an important role, both in the creation of the society by Reverend
Finley and in its stated goals of achieving a ‘spiritual empire’ driven by
missionaries and Christian settlers.20 These motivations ranged more
widely than British colonizationists, but in the major part, were roughly
similar in their moderate approach.
The model for ACS organization was part Sierra Leone Company,
part African Institution, part Plymouth Colony, part Massachusetts Bay
Company. In fact, the ACS and the settlers themselves often referred to
the settlement of America as their model. Reverend Finley’s Thoughts on
the Colonization of Free Blacks, the foundational text for the ACS, pointed
out that Britain was presently ‘peopling New Holland [Australia], a land
destined like our own to extend the empire of liberty’, while America
herself was colonizing the western frontier.21 Nicholas Guyatt points out
the rhetorical use of the Plymouth settlers and the notions of American
colonization in ACS propaganda. The ACS saw their role as spreading
civilization through the ‘traditional’ means of colonization, quoting an
extract from the Christian Spectator from 1823 in which the wellspring
of civilization seems to be the migration of peoples to new colonies:
Egypt to Greece; Greece to Italy; Europe to America and India.22
In the early years of its existence, the ACS very clearly stated its goals
of establishing on the coast of Africa a colony not only for the removal
of free and enslaved African Americans, but appealing to any potential
supporters who were interested in spreading an empire of American cul-
ture, civilization, Christianity, and commerce. In this way, it appeared
to be consciously modelling its new settlement in Liberia on the parish
plan of Sierra Leone. There were many slaveholders and free African
Americans who saw colonization as an opportunity to evangelize
‘heathen’ Africa. An anonymous proponent of Liberian settlement
responded to an attack by William Lloyd Garrison – the radical aboli-
tionist – that ‘it is not easy to conceive of a more successful method to
teach the native Africans civilization and Christianity, than by means
of civilized and Christian Colonies, planted by men of their own color –

by the descendents of those who were once stolen from among them’.23
Like their British counterparts, the evangelical ministers involved in
the founding of the ACS – Stockton, Hopkins, Finley – saw the benefit
of an African American mission to Africa.
One major difference in America was the direction evangelical faith
took in the 1830s and 1840s. Rather than representing the new wave
of millennialists, who dominated reform movements in the Northern
states of the United States, the ACS adherents who were involved in
the colonization of Liberia represented an older, personal spiritual con-
version that looked to the individual rather than society for the dem-
onstration of Christianity. Combined with the emphasis on individual
or state-sponsored emigration, there was no holistic approach to the
settlement of the former slaves: there was no regularized education pro-
gramme for training slaves before they departed; there was no provision
of welfare by the colonial government or even a partnership with mis-
sionaries; individual slaveholders or state ACS auxiliaries were respon-
sible for organizing emigrants, leading to a loose confederation of
settlements within the ‘federal republic’ of Liberia. The ACS responded
testily to critics that ‘if the Society is objected to because it does not
educate free blacks in this country, or because it does not liberate and
elevate the slave here, it is a sufficient answer to these objections, that
the Society was formed to accomplish ANOTHER object, TO WHICH ITS
ATTENTION IS TO BE EXCLUSIVELY DIRECTED’.24
With its leaders interested not only in the anti-slavery (or pro-slavery)
ideologies of the organization, but also the commercial and imperial
potential of a colony on the West African coast, it is not surprising that
they were able to find early supporters of the venture in Congress as
well as in the Navy, despite the official US government reticence on
the matter. The organization successfully pitched itself as a moder-
ate, reforming society that hoped to ameliorate and possibly eventu-
ally eradicate slavery by separating the two races. Their membership
grew to include Arthur and Lewis Tappan, William Lloyd Garrison, and
other future abolitionists, as well as important political figures such as
former president James Madison, future president John Tyler, and influ-
ential Quakers from all regions of the country. The National Intelligencer
and Georgetown Messenger were both pro-colonization newspapers in
Washington, D.C., influencing political opinion during the 1820s.
With the newly established ACS eager to begin its project, they turned
to the African American community to find their first recruits. Daniel
Coker was one of the first to join the emigration movement. A supporter
of Paul Cuffe, he travelled with the first American Colonization Society

ship, landing in Freetown in 1818, before moving on to set up a colony
on Sherbro Island. Coker was a preacher with the American Methodist
Episcopal Church, and had worked with the Reverend Richard Allen in
Philadelphia before moving to the Bethel Church in Baltimore. Despite
a rocky relationship with the African separatist church movement that
led to a year of excommunication, Coker was an influential figure con-
nected to both that movement and the African Institutions set up by
Cuffe in the United States.25 This may have been a reason for his choosing
to participate in the ACS’s first settlement: he was consistently frustrated
by opposition to the African church movement. A letter in 1817 –
a year before he travelled to West Africa – shows that Coker was pre-
vented from preaching ‘by the white Methodist[s] for that purpose and
the reason they oppose is very obvious Viz. Should African Churches
be established it would rob them of the support they git [sic] for their
Churches and Traveling preachers’. He went on to complain, ‘This is
Strange conduct in America’.26 Coker was interested in Cuffe’s com-
mercial and anti-slavery plans, but brought a different denominational
network into the equation. His brand of evangelical Methodism encour-
aged his vision of Africa as a site for conversions and somewhere where
he could conduct his own mission work, without white oversight.
On the other side of the equation, his African church connections
were meaningful to the ACS, which was trying to recruit support
amongst African Americans for a colonization plan. The AME Church
was one of the strongest African American networks in the early
Republic. As a body made up of all the licensed preachers of African
descent, with both quarterly and annual meetings, the AME Church
could reach a vast network of African Americans. Coker was one of the
founders of this church, along with Richard Allen of Philadelphia and
James Champion, and it is likely that Coker’s prominent role in both
the church and the ACS mission could conceivably convince the other-
wise sceptical African Americans to join the plan for settlement.
Coker joined the first ACS expedition in 1818, but the new colony, rather
than learning from the mistakes of the first Freetown settlement, was an
unmitigated disaster. Coker and John Kizell – the Nova Scotian Friendly
Society leader – were left in charge of the settlement after disease wiped
out a quarter of the population (including the ACS agents who were sent
out with the mission of securing land).27 Kizell had become involved
because he, like Coker, believed that Sherbro would act as a good centre
for an expanding Sierra Leonean trade and a hub for American interest
in the region. However, as the population declined precipitously and the
remaining settlers made no inroads with local traders, Coker and Kizell
began to complain about one another to the ACS. Each blamed the other
for the failure of the colony, with both arguing that the other objected
to the role of the white agents in the colony, but Coker was ultimately
successful in parlaying his influence with the AME network and the ACS
into public recognition for his service to the colony.28
Coker seemed hopeful throughout the 1820s that the two colonies
would work together to support the interests of all people of African des-
cent who chose to settle in West Africa. He wrote a plea in 1825 ‘O that
God may Unite England and America in this glorious work. The former
has mony [sic] and Experience and influence, the latter has people. Tell the
people to come tell them that they may have confidence in the American
Col. Society’.29 Coker’s hope – that the two colonies would eventually
become one enterprise supported jointly by America and Britain – was
in vain; but it demonstrates another reason for the proximity of the two
colonies. If they were to merge into some kind of Federal Republic, then
having them close to one another was the first place to start.
By 1822, the ACS had gained enough support to establish a new col-
ony in West Africa. Not only was the colony founded with $100,000
appropriated for the resettlement of recaptive Africans rescued from
the slave trade, but the ACS agent to the colony was almost always,
from 1822, also the US government agent for recaptive Africans. This
agent was responsible for securing territory for the settlers through
treaties with the indigenous groups on Cape Mesurado, which Howard
has demonstrated was not representing the ACS or the settlers, but the
combined authority of the US government and the ACS.30 After the
false starts at Sherbro Island and Providence Island, Monrovia – named
for President James Monroe, a supporter of the colonization cause – was
founded as the capital of the new colony of Liberia. Liberians came
from roughly three groups: manumitted slaves who may have had a
good relationship with generally benevolent masters who freed them;
free black Americans from the North and South who sought commer-
cial and educational equality with whites; and the recaptives from the
US naval patrol of the slave trade.
Having purchased the land from the Dei King Peter – held at gun-
point by the group’s leader, Lieutenant Robert Stockton – in December
1821, the new colonists set about establishing trade, clearing land for
farms, and building homes and shops. The group was hopeful for their
future, but also concerned with the high mortality rate, loyalty of their
ACS-appointed agent, and the difficulty of the task ahead. A letter to
the ACS in 1823, sent by a former settler who had fled to Sierra Leone,
reported that ‘the colonists are unable to cultivate the land & defend
themselves at the same time’.31
In the first two years, there were several wars with neighbouring
groups, particularly the Dei, Gola, and Vai. When the initial ACS agent,
Eli Ayres, abandoned the colony after moving the settlers from Sierra
Leone to Mesurado, Jehudi Ashmun took over unofficial control of the
colony. Ashmun, alongside settler Lott Carey, led the settlers in war
against King Peter and the Dei (supported by other leaders who were
upset about settler expansion) raising a strong militia of settlers and
erecting defences around the city with five cannon. The settlers repelled
two separate attacks in late 1822, establishing a predominately hostile
relationship with the indigenous Liberians.
Just after the Liberia’s founding in 1822, the Sierra Leone Gazette
reported that there had been numerous wars with unhappy indigen-
ous groups as well as local slave traders. The paper editorialized: ‘It is
impossible to reflect on the progress and present state of the American
settlement on this coast, without remarking the fatuity which appears
to have attended both those who projected and those employed in
establishing it’.32 A British anti-slavery squadron vessel, under Captain
Laing, helped to suppress the uprising and establish anti-slavery treaties
that recognized the American settlement.33
Transatlantic tensions
And yet the theme that pervades all the communication – public and
private – between Cuffe, Coker, and their various networks, is one of
competition, rather than cooperation. Coker wrote in his diary after
meeting with American settlers in Sierra Leone, before setting up the
Sherbro colony, stating that he hoped the new settlement ‘would con-
vince “the American people” to leave “the British colony”.’34 Later, John
Kizell wrote a letter to Ebenezer Burgess, addressed to Coker, in which
he points out that ‘on the Sixteenth Days work in Your first journel
Their you Charge the Hole three agents of trying to machure a Plain
to Cheatt the Governer of Sherbrow You Say But I belive you ment the
Governor of Sierra Leone’.35 From the very beginning, then, the ACS
agents were not necessarily looking for open, honest collaboration with
Sierra Leone. Even after he abandoned Sherbro and moved to Hastings
(on the Freetown Peninsula) Coker maintained interest in a separate
American settlement. In his diary entry for 3 May 1821, Coker wrote,
‘The Brittish are doing [going?] mad in getting inffluence in West
Africa. And it is some considerable pleasure to me to beleive that our
flag now flies on the beach of that part of St. Johns River in the grand
Basoa [Bassa] Country’.36
Similarly, despite Cuffe’s initial interest in the colony and his early
contacts with the African Institution, once in Sierra Leone, he and the
other African American settlers and merchants involved with the colony
began to chafe. And although Cuffe liked the goals of the Sierra Leone
colony, and its potential for providing a home for people of African des-
cent to distinguish themselves, his vision for this rested on the idea
of a transatlantic trading network – between Freetown, Britain, and
the United States. The British philanthropists he was in contact with,
however, preferred a vision of British governance, and British trade.
As Governor of the Sierra Leone Company, Macaulay had travelled to
Liberia ‘to ascertain whether Cape Mesurado were a favourable situation
for an Establishment and an Admiralty Court, in case the proposed par-
tial abolition of the slave trade should take place,’ and ‘of this I was
quite satisfied’.37 Clearly, the British humanitarians felt that this part of
West Africa was theirs for first refusal. As Ebenezer Burgess learned from
Samuel Swan, and American importer based in Sierra Leone, ‘it may be
questioned wether [sic] any advantage would be derived from its being so
near to Sierra Leone, the interested views of which place would lead them
to throw every obstacle in the way of a settlement that would ultimately
take from them a large portion of their trade to the different rivers –This
Objection would also obtain against fixing in the Sherbro’.38
Cuffe’s interest in establishing international trade was shared by many
of those in the African Institution. In fact, both the American and British
colonization movements saw trade as a potential positive consequence of
these new settlements. ‘Legitimate’ commerce and the growth of a new
agricultural trade were of particular interest to those colonizationists of
the late 1790s and early decades of the 1800s.39 American colonization-
ists’ mixed reception in England and Sierra Leone highlights the fact
that the African Institution and other humanitarians were keenly aware
of both the humanitarian and commercial threat of another ex-slave col-
ony in the region.40 At the society’s foundation, Wilberforce was highly
supportive of the endeavour and put the ACS’s representatives in Britain
in touch with other important humanitarians.41 Bruce Mouser writes
that cooperation in colonization goals dried up as ‘the British began to
see American actions in settling free and freed African-Americans as
part of a covert attempt to undercut British power and influence at Sierra
Leone’.42 The cold reception of the ACS by British humanitarians who
had supported colonization suggests that the economic motivations car-
ried a large weight in their imperial considerations.
With African American interest so focused on Sierra Leone, why then,

in 1818 and especially in 1822, did the American Colonization Society
begin its own project, aimed at establishing a separate colony? And why
did they choose a West African site so near to Freetown? From the begin-
ning, middle class Freetonians were not sure how to view American
settlers. In response to the first settlement, Sierra Leone’s Governor
MacCarthy became concerned about American smuggling and tried to
occupy Sherbro Island but was forestalled by an unconcerned British
government.43 MacCarthy’s promotion in 1822 to Governor of West
Africa from the Gambia to Accra exacerbated the irritation caused by
the small Mesurado settlement in the middle of his territory and its
ongoing wars with local slave traders.
Cuffe and Coker’s Atlantic networks hint at the role that cooperation
and competition played in influencing the site and type of colony founded
by the American movement. Quaker networks helped Cuffe travel to
Sierra Leone and make inroads with the African Institution; the trans-
atlantic African Institution brought credibility to early ACS emigration
schemes; but ultimately the commercial and African separatist church
motives revealed the burgeoning nationalism involved in the American
Colonization Society, and the African Institution’s reluctance to cooper-
ate with American emigration plans on a large scale showed the limits of
those networks and emerging competitive colonization that would char-
acterize much of the endeavour. Although all anti-slavery campaigning
drew on ideas of universalism that encouraged public interest and inter-
vention beyond national boundaries, anti-slavery colonization especially
fostered a type of competitive expansionism as American and British
organizations sought to demonstrate that their own utopian model for
a post-slave Atlantic system was superior. National goals competed with
universalist humanitarian ones. While drawing on the same primarily
religious transatlantic networks of philanthropy and humanitarianism,
the British and American colonization movements were each promoting
their own claim on the title of moral leader of the post-Revolutionary
Atlantic world.
Cuffe’s connection to Quaker commercial and humanitarian networks
first kindled his interest in Sierra Leone. His visit and establishment of
the Friendly Society in Freetown began a network of communication
between Cuffe and the American Freetonians led by John Kizell. After
Cuffe’s death, the emerging replacement for his emigration movement
lacked the African Institution connections shared by Cuffe. It therefore
turned to the two well-known and trusted networks already involved in
African American self-determination and emigration: the AME Church
and the Friendly Society. Kizell’s role in the Friendly Society made him
a trusted choice as a contact for the ACS. Coker, similarly, was trusted
by both the ACS and the broad membership of the African Separatist
church network. He had also participated with Cuffe’s US auxiliaries to
the African Institution, so was a trusted figure by the British author-
ities he would need to deal with in Sierra Leone. Both Coker and Kizell,
however, shared the ACS’s desire to establish a colony separate from
British Sierra Leone and the paternalistic governance of white British
governors. They hoped to spread both commerce and Christianity in
Africa, on their own terms in a separate American colony. Despite the
initial failure of the ACS venture, these three men, through their various
transatlantic networks, were able to direct the course of the American
colonization movement: it would not merge into a British settlement,
but would be a separate venture nearby on the West African coast, and
a venture perpetually in competition with its neighbour.
* * *
The establishment of these colonies reveals the personal nature of the

early transatlantic anti-slavery colonization movement. It also high-
lights the early antagonisms between the British and American soci-
eties that would continue to dominate their relations in West Africa.
The commercial and Christian connections influenced the type of
scheme that developed in the United States, the choice of location in
West Africa, and the model for the American Colonization Society. In
particular, two individuals – Paul Cuffe and Daniel Coker – and the
networks they were part of and with which they engaged were crucial
to the development of the plan to resettle African Americans in West
Africa, and in the choice of the particular part of West Africa that would
be chosen.
These early connections also had an important impact on the rela-
tionships that developed between Sierra Leoneans and Liberians,
and between the British and American colonization societies in later
years. Liberia’s expansion during Ashmun’s tenure as governor – an
expansion based on commercial necessity, anti-slavery ideology, and
Christian values – would carry on after the governor’s death in 1828.
Over the course of the 1820s and early 1830s, the settlers were able to
establish a growing population, in spite of frequent wars and disease,
an unstable government (there were six governors between 1828 and
1833), and most of all, in spite of increasing resistance amongst the
African American population at home.
2
An African Middle Class
After the initial foundation of the colonies and the wars and disease
that took their toll on the first groups of settlers, Sierra Leoneans began
to focus on creating a new society that reflected their values and ambi-
tions. Both colonies maintained strong links to the metropole – particu-
larly the humanitarian societies that supported them – and both focused
on establishing homes for freed slaves and centres for the promotion of
Civilization, Commerce and Christianity. These similar objectives led to
the gradual creation of quite different societies on the ground, though,
and the development of quite different relationships with the metro-
pole. This chapter examines the development of the colonial institu-
tions – schools and churches – that were the foundation of settler life in
Sierra Leone and the basis for the developing ideology of ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’. The development of these institutions
and the emerging colonial ideology that accompanied them shaped the
settlers’ relationships with the metropolitan organizations, particularly
in the crucial years of the 1810s and 1820s.
In the Sierra Leone context of African British settlers, recaptive
Africans, indigenous traders, British traders, and European missionar-
ies, no party was always dominant, forcing the others to submit entirely
to their culture. Instead there was an ongoing interplay, as they sought
to achieve what was best for them economically and politically. In the
process of working together to achieve these ends, there was a disper-
sion of European material culture and disruption of old settlement pat-
terns, which ‘led to an unprecedented era of hybridity and mixing of
forms of material culture’.1 In new settlements, this mixture of mater-
ial culture consisted of assigning new values to objects and redefining
oneself in a new cultural context. The Sierra Leonean identity emerged,
pulling together elements of British identity with an amalgamation of
33
West and Central African traditions.2 Black identification with British

values and material and institutional culture was not uncommon in
this period, when settlers constructed their identities to reflect British
imperial values. For example, as Timothy Parsons points out, ‘ “Afro-
Victorians” held senior positions in local civil services and played a
willing role in the expansion of British influence because they assumed
they would be its primary beneficiaries’.3 Choice of clothing, develop-
ment of relationships, political engagement, civic involvement, and
participation with institutions and associations were part of the process
that helped create settler culture and identity. Donal Lowry singles out
allegiance to the monarch as another unifying symbol under which all
subjects could identify as equally British.4
The anti-slavery humanitarian universalism put into effect by the
doctrine of Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity provided a means
of incorporating Sierra Leoneans into a sense of Britishness – an iden-
tification based on the association of anti-slavery with ‘modernity’.
The adoption of Civilization, Commerce and Christianity gave Sierra
Leoneans shorthand to identify as British subjects. Although it was
intended to ensure that British and Sierra Leonean goals were aligned
in their common pursuit of the end of slavery in West Africa and the
spread of the British way of life, Sierra Leoneans often had their own
interpretation of the doctrine, which frequently led to conflict with
British authorities. Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity in West
Africa was not merely a British anti-slavery message; it represented
the core elements of Sierra Leonean identity and contributed to their
interventions throughout West Africa in the period before partition.
The development of Sierra Leone created a society characterized by the
legacy of the parish plan, a commitment to the spread of anti-slavery
values, and identification with the British Empire.
The legacy of the parish plan in Sierra Leone
The parish plan established by MacCarthy attempted to instil British

middle class values into the newly arriving Liberated Africans. The
Reverend Daniel Coker, now resident in Freetown, wrote to the CMS
in 1823 explaining the success of the parish plan in imbuing the
Liberated Africans with a sense of British loyalty. Coker was given the
opportunity to preach in Reverend Nylander’s church in the parish of
Hastings. At the end of the service he noted, ‘I could not but notice the
loyalty of one of the members of his Church, manifested in his prayer
last Sunday ... This man from Kissey prayed, and in his prayer, with
An African Middle Class 35
his cheeks bathed in tears, said “Glory be to King George for ever!” ’.
Coker’s commentary on this expression of British loyalty reveals that he
at first ‘thought it a strange expression, but when [I] reflected on what
His Majesty’s Government has done and is doing, I ceased to wonder,
and I do believe that the people in this Colony who enjoy the power of
religion, when they pray for their King, do it from their heart’.5 By the
1830s, a regular pattern was observed by Lieutenant Governor Octavius
Temple (1833–34), who wrote back to the Colonial Office praising the
progress of Liberated Africans from their ‘degraded and debased’ arrival
to the ‘outward observance’ of Christianity, to the ‘obligations of mar-
riage and the consequent reciprocal duties of Parents and Children’,
finally to the ‘comforts of civilized life’ made available by his newfound
employment as an artisan or small trader, or labourer.6
However, this system was not without flaws. MacCarthy wanted the
focus of the CMS and other missionaries in West Africa to be the educa-
tion and administration of existing, formal British colonies, rather than
individual, independent projects outside of the colonies. The CMS mis-
sionaries, and to a lesser extent the Wesleyan missionaries, were given
an advantage by partnering with the government, but since many of
them had hoped to use Sierra Leone as a base for going into the interior
to convert ‘heathens’ rather than to cater to the development of civil-
ization within the colony, they were not always pleased with their role.
MacCarthy wanted to use the missionaries to develop a beacon of civ-
ilization in West Africa, from which civilizing missions could go forth.
Ultimately he hoped they would be led by African missionaries, rather
than Europeans, and this required that the European missionaries
remain in the colony, training and educating the Liberated Africans.
There were also frequently clashes between those who saw religion as
an aspect of British identity and those who viewed it as a separate and
purely spiritual experience. Church membership was viewed as essen-
tial to institutional identification with the goals of the British colony.
The linking of worldly benefits to baptism posed a problem for some
of the more traditional evangelical missionaries. There were disputes
between Governor MacCarthy and some of the CMS missionaries as he
was setting up his parish system because some missionaries objected
to MacCarthy’s lenient prerequisites for baptism: MacCarthy and some
missionary supporters argued that once a Liberated African showed
signs of becoming ‘civilized’, he should be baptized; some missionaries
objected that baptism should follow a change of heart, not a change
of dress. MacCarthy saw Christianity as a tool for civilization and had
his loyal missionaries to support this view, including William Davies,
a Welsh Methodist who commented that ‘Christianity alone can civ-

ilize: for godliness is profitable for all things, and when they get reli-
gion they will be industrious’.7 Davies, like MacCarthy, viewed religious
instruction as the beginning of the civilizing process, rather than the
end goal.
Both the established churches, and the nonconformists saw struggles
between European missionary leaders sent to convert Liberated Africans
and the settler preachers. There were struggles between the European
missionaries and the more loosely regulated ‘native’ missionaries as
well.8 Self-styled preachers were often dismissed by the European mis-
sionaries as missing the point of conversion: since Christian association
was linked to state benefits, recognition, and social advancement, many
were perceived as ‘converting’ for purely practical reasons. One German
CMS missionary wrote of African American preacher and founding set-
tler, the Reverend Joseph Jewett, as having a ‘very erroneous and objec-
tionable criterion of conversion’.9
The parish plan, then, was a contentious approach to the colony’s
anti-slavery and civilization mission. For this reason, after MacCarthy’s
death in a war with the Asante in 1824, the rigidly structured parish
plan was abandoned by his successor, Charles Turner, who preferred
to spend money on military intervention in the slave trade. The CMS
was removed from its official role and a number of the parish settle-
ments were abandoned. By the late 1820s, Liberated African settlers
were steadily moving out of the colony’s jurisdiction to conduct agri-
culture and trade with indigenous groups. Turner was concerned about
the tendency of the recaptives to ‘retrograde in the woods, into a state
of nature and barbarism’.10 This problem was so extensive by the early
1830s that Lieutenant Governor Alexander Findlay (1830–33) ‘deemed
it necessary to issue an order of the Governor and Council to impose
a fine on any person who should afterwards harbour or entertain any
runaway among Liberated Africans in his or their Hamlet’.11 This order
initiated one of several conflicts between Findlay and the settlers, who
argued – led by prominent attorney and settler William Savage – that
the order was illegal.
However, the legacy of the parish plan continued. The widespread
impact of Christianity was commented upon by all visitors to the col-
ony: US agent Ephraim Bacon wrote of his visit to Sierra Leone describ-
ing the religiosity of the Sierra Leoneans and expressing his esteem that
they spent all day on Sunday in church.12 Although the parish system
was divided after MacCarthy’s death under the administration of both
missionaries and ‘managers’, a modification of the government–church
partnership remained responsible for pastoral, educational, and admin-

istrative duties with Samuel Ajayi Crowther commenting in 1852
that ‘there are thirteen parishes, each having its own clergymen as in
England’.13 Religious institutions were crucial to the political and gov-
ernmental development of the colony because they also fulfilled the
educational and pastoral/welfare obligations of the state. Conversion
was a celebrated event and aided in the receipt of government benefits,
such as education, employment, recognition of marriage, and the abil-
ity to travel more freely in the colony.14 It is clear from the responses
of the settlers and the Liberated Africans that religion took on a com-
bination of the two approaches: many saw Christianity as a link to
their new British colonial identity and simultaneously used religion as
a means of advancement within colonial society; but the piety, respect,
and communal support that grew out of their religious conversion was
by all appearances genuine.
However, despite the conviction of their beliefs, settlers were also
willing to use church membership politically, maintaining their own
dissenting churches and ministers. Petitioners to the British govern-
ment complained in 1832 that Governor Findlay was attempting to
extract confessions of disloyalty through protracted questioning,
‘while others have been on the Sabbath day, examined intimidated and
required to repeat private conversations’.15 The petitioners were frus-
trated by Findlay’s refusal to use their skills in government positions
and felt persecuted by his constant accusations of disloyalty. To prove
their suitability for government employment and their loyalty to the
British Crown, these businessmen and other local notables appealed to
a shared sense of Britishness expressed through a common Christian
sensibility. The Sierra Leoneans understood the perceived importance
of Christianity to their allies in Britain and they used this to shape their
requests for political change.
That is not to say that they were using religion for purely polit-
ical purposes, but that they understood the importance of Christian
mission in Africa as a goal for their allies in Britain and framed their
requests and petitions accordingly. A petition in 1836 asked the colo-
nial government to grant two lots to settlers in Waterloo and Goderich
so that they could ‘erect Stone Chapels to be for ever appropriated for
Divine Worship’.16 Not only did the Sierra Leoneans want to actively
participate in the spread of Christianity, they also wanted to construct
churches in the English style. In a collection of petitions to celebrate
Governor Campbell’s service (1835–7) in 1838, the Liberated Africans
wrote ‘that your Majesty’s petitioners view with extreme delight ... the
success which has attended Governor Campbell’s exertions, in establish-

ing habits of morality, sobriety, and decency, throughout the colony’.17
The petition from the Maroons followed a similar theme: Campbell had
‘the true spirit of a Christian, in respecting the religion of others, and
by promoting by pecuniary and every other means in his power, the
building of chapels and schools by other sects, has thus furthered the
spread of Christianity in the Colony’.18 The petitioners valued a govern-
ment that allowed them to profess their Christianity as both a religious
identity and a cultural and political identity.
Despite these continuities and legacies, changes did come about after
the relaxation of the parish system and the confusion of frequently
changing governors. Villages became more ethnically homogenous as
‘Aku’ (Yoruba), Egba, and ‘Ibo’ (Igbo) recaptives moved to areas popu-
lated with their countrymen. The largest group of Liberated Africans
were the ‘Aku’, made up of Ota, Egba, Ijesha, Oyo, ‘Yagba’, Ekiti, Dsumu,
Oworo, Ijebu, Ife, Dsekiri, and Igala from the region of what is now
western Nigeria.19 They had their own king (King John Macaulay) who
was recognized as their leader by the Freetown government and who
acted as their representative. They also maintained political organi-
zations and affiliations, as well as some cultural characteristics from
before their capture. The ‘Ibo’ were the next largest group, derived from
the area of Biafra. Nupe and Hausa were also represented amongst the
recaptives.20
All groups drew on their African heritage in forming mutual relief
societies but also worked within the British system, putting forward
petitions to the Colonial government and the British government with
their complaints and advancing the prestige and influence of the group
through church leadership, British commerce, and the adoption of
Western styles of dress. Most of all, these groups worked to promote
legitimate commerce in the interior. Liberated Africans acted as middle-
men for the Freetown-based merchants. They were willing to travel into
the interior and deal with the sometimes hostile encounters in order
to open up new markets for British-made goods or secure new areas of
timber export.
Since much of the Sierra Leone population was made up of recap-
tives, religion was a more contentious aspect of Britishness than trade.
With as many as 15,000 ‘pagans’ in the colony out of a total popula-
tion of 45,000 in the late 1840s, it is not surprising that there was some
ambiguity in the colonists’ dealings with the Temne and the groups
they called the Ibo and Aku.21 An equally large percentage of the Sierra
Leone population retained their Muslim religion or converted after
coming into contact with the Mandinka and Fula, with acting Governor
Pine estimating that ‘the number of persons attending Christian and
Mahomedan worship is about 23,000’.22 This gave the original settlers
unique insight into the indigenous religions they were encountering as
missionaries, as well as a sense of their own British Christianity in con-
trast to the indigenous African religious identities. With Christianity
a minority religion in the region, Liberated Africans and settlers were
continually negotiating their own understanding of Christian teach-
ings and what it meant to be ‘civilized’ in contrast to their neighbours.
Despite the clear outline for Christian conversion and ‘civilization’
laid out by the colonial government, and apart from those who retained
their Islamic or animist beliefs, there were a large number of recap-
tives who, having been baptized as Christians, subsequently left the
church to become Muslim. In 1833, Governor Findlay had written to
the Colonial Office that ‘in consequence of the great influence which
the Mahommadan Priests have over the Liberated Africans, I have by the
advice of the Council issued a Proclamation prohibiting them from set-
tling in any of the Liberated African Villages’.23 With an extensive Muslim
population travelling to and from the colony as traders, there was signifi-
cant incentive for poor recaptives to embrace the religion: not only did it
provide important commercial links to the interior, but it also allowed its
adherents polygamous marriage and the ability to hold domestic slaves.
In fact, by 1839 the Muslim population had grown to the extent that it
was beginning to worry Governor Doherty, who wrote to Lord Russell
complaining that ‘they live in the open practice of the polygamy allowed
by their law, and of course in the open contempt or violation of the quiet
and decency of the Christian sabbath and of every other observance of
the christian community surrounding them, which itself has always been
distinguished as pious and orderly in no common degree’.24
The choice to convert to Islam was perceived by British authorities as
undermining British goals of cultural hegemony in the region. When
Findlay was concerned that too ‘many of the discharged Soldiers set-
tled in several of the villages of the colony have adopted their original
native Superstitious customs by following the Faith and assuming the
Garb of the Mahommadons’, he reacted by forbidding this ‘on pain of
the forfeiture of their pensions’.25 While the colonists had very little
problem interacting with Muslims, particularly since they provided the
majority of the interior trade, the colonial government attempted to
use its power to ensure that Sierra Leone’s citizens remained true to
the British civilizational message, which included the profession of the
Christian faith.
Sierra Leonean Christians’ relationships with indigenous beliefs were

more ambiguous, as is demonstrated by the persistence of the Muslim
‘problem’ facing governors. Although many governors described the
leftover ‘native’ habits of some Liberated Africans and the tradition of
funeral societies was continuously popular amongst the Sierra Leone
population, in venturing out of the colony, many Sierra Leoneans felt
their ‘civilization’ reconfirmed by a contrast between their Christian
beliefs and the indigenous beliefs they encountered. Liberated African
Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s account of the Niger Expedition recalled the
image of an African woman praying ‘as if she was asking for some pro-
tection from the gods. Whether she was performing this act of worship
to the figure in the front of the ship, or to the steamer itself, was not
certain: however, it sufficiently shows into what degree of superstition
this people are sunk’.26 Some Sierra Leoneans contrasted their own asso-
ciation with the Christian church with the ‘heathen’ and ‘pagan’ beliefs
of the indigenous Africans in order to highlight their Britishness and
distance themselves from associations based on race.
Although the governors reported that there was continuing belief in
witchcraft and some other African traditions amongst the Liberated
Africans, these seem to have been absorbed into a new hybrid Christianity.
As Acting Governor Pine pointed out in 1848, ‘a belief in the powers of
magic and witchcraft ... is not wholly eradicated from the minds of a large
number of persons who profess Christianity’.27 He wrote that the continu-
ous influx of Liberated Africans with animist beliefs posed a challenge
to the Christian core of the society. However, the continuation of these
practices was not viewed by the Liberated Africans as contrary to their
profession of Christian faith. Perhaps because of the lax prerequisites for
baptism in some of the native churches and under some of the CMS mis-
sionaries, many converts to Christianity viewed their new religion in
terms of their traditional beliefs. Once ordained, the Reverend Crowther,
for instance, did not require converts to give up polygamy. He also drew
parallels between some of the Igbo gods and Christian theology, hoping
to draw out lessons for the anti-slavery campaign. Finally, he, along with
numerous other African and European missionaries, worked on translat-
ing Gospels and sermons into indigenous languages – particularly Susu
and Yoruba – in order to preach to the Liberated Africans and native
Sierra Leoneans.28 Together they negotiated a hybrid religion, bringing
together their traditional culture with the social, religious, and ideo-
logical Christian values instilled at Sierra Leone.
In contrast to the Liberians, discussed in Chapter 3, the relation-
ship between Sierra Leoneans and the Africans in their region was less
fraught. In dealing with the British government in the colony and in

London, the colonists played on their common Christian traditions; in
dealing with their African neighbours, they both embraced their ‘civi-
lized’ Christian educations and attempted to reach out to people from
their own indigenous backgrounds. The ‘civilization’ and Christianity
that Sierra Leoneans promoted, therefore, was negotiated by their
African heritage.
Consumption and ‘civilization’
The petitions from the Liberated Africans, Maroons, and Nova Scotians
in support of Governor Campbell also supported the argument for the
link between ‘Civilization’ and Christianity. Campbell was praised for
promoting public health initiatives, swamp drainage, bridge building,
street naming, dwelling numbering, the promotion of Christianity,
and, most frequently mentioned, the clothing of the Liberated Africans
and Kru in Sierra Leone. One of the first changes expected of Liberated
Africans arriving in Sierra Leone was conformity to European stand-
ards of dress. The first settlers were insistent that governors and gov-
ernment officials in the Liberated African department dealt with this
issue almost before any other. The fact that this came from the settlers
themselves helps to demonstrate what has already been noted in studies
of white settler societies: a hardening of moral expectations linked to a
fear of ‘going native’.
One of the reasons for the petitioners’ emphasis on clothing was its
association with morality and propriety. Clothing was seen as the phys-
ical representation of the domestication of recaptive men and women,
as well as indigenous people who moved into the colony. It reflected
the same arguments that were occurring over the role of women in the
West Indies and the same emphasis on the values of civilized wife- and
motherhood that had to be inculcated in formerly ‘savage’ or enslaved
peoples.29 Maroon petitioners, for instance, wrote that ‘numbers of poor
women have also been employed in making clothing for the liberated
Africans newly imported ... and thus been enabled not only to clothe
themselves respectably from the proceeds of their industry’.30
This is notable because it also shows the definition of women’s work.
Sewing was an important domestic skill that missionaries emphasized
as vital to the education of girls. The annual CMS report from the col-
ony in 1833 commented that although ‘we confess the people are much
behind in industry and civilization’, the Church was aiding the fight for
civilization as ‘the Colony-born girls who attend our Schools, receive
instruction in sewing and many of them also in spinning cotton, mak-

ing very satisfactory progress in both’.31 Although women were highly
involved in the commerce of the colony through the 1830s and were
continually important in subsistence agriculture, domestic differenti-
ation in accordance with mid-nineteenth century British values was
already being adopted.32
Clothing was also tied to commerce by the settlers, with the Freetown
Liberated Africans writing that ‘the clothing of the people, but more
particularly their poor fellow-sufferers, the newly imported Liberated
Africans, must be felt by every real friend to Africa, to be a measure of
great moment to the furtherance of civilization and commerce’.33 But
dress was not the only outward display of ‘Britishness’ adopted by the
settlers and Liberated Africans. Once commerce had begun in earnest
and picked up speed in the 1830s, ties to ‘home’ became tangible as well
as institutional.
A look at the imports into Freetown and the stocks at local shops
reveal what Sierra Leoneans considered to be essential to their Sierra
Leonean British lives. For Sierra Leoneans – many of whom had only
experienced ‘British’ life in other colonies, and even more of whom were
imbibing the spirit of British culture through the institutions described
above – links to the ‘home’ country were tenuous and therefore even
more important to maintain. Religion and education were the primary
ties to British culture in this early period of Liberated African domin-
ance. However, a growing identification through material culture and
civic organizations was also burgeoning by the early 1830s. A list of
imports in 1830 demonstrates the demands of both Sierra Leoneans
and the indigenous groups they were trading with by the middle of the
decade. Ninety-five per cent of their trade was with Great Britain in the
1830s.34 Apart from necessary provisions, the list of imports from Great
Britain includes thirty-nine trunks of apparel, worth £890; beads worth
£6,311; ‘India Goods’ worth £12,305; ‘Manchester Goods’ worth £5,392;
1,027 tons of salt; 1,041 boxes of soap; £1,429 worth of boots and shoes;
£870 worth of hats; £16,335 worth of molasses; 159 pipes; 425 boxes of
cigars; and 10,000 bricks.35 Sierra Leoneans were buying the products
of Empire, dressing themselves as British subjects, building their houses
with British brick, and consuming British luxury goods.
Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, the growing merchant class made
itself the political voice of the colony. By the 1820s, this new polit-
ical class had already caused conflict between the settlers and the more
autocratic governors. A number of Sierra Leoneans – both the original
settlers and the Liberated Africans – had already used a British education
to gain professional standing. Stephen Gabbidon, a Maroon, was a mer-

chant in Freetown and also a captain in the Sierra Leone militia. He
had acted as sheriff, mayor, alderman, and justice. Jason Bonard, also
a Maroon, had been a shop boy to Gabbidon before becoming a sub-
manager of the Liberated African Department. Acting Governor Fraser
noted that he had left the department after being offered a higher salary
in the private sector. James Wise, a Nova Scotian, was a trader, a dissent-
ing preacher, and a Lieutenant in the Sierra Leone militia. He had also
served as Colonial Printer, Sheriff and Justice of the Peace. Benjamin
Leigh and Andrew Shaw were both Maroons employed in the offices
of the British trading firm of Macaulay and Babington.36 Educated set-
tlers became writers, managers, and other officials, with the number of
Liberated Africans in these roles increasing throughout the 1830s and
establishing themselves as the Sierra Leonean elite as they began to out-
number the original Nova Scotian and Maroon settlers.
John Ezzidio, another leader amongst the Liberated Africans, also
demonstrated the growth of this British Sierra Leonean middle class.
Ezzidio, like Crowther, was settled in Sierra Leone as a teenager. He
worked for a French merchant and quickly accumulated wealth, build-
ing a house in Freetown and establishing his own business. He com-
bined his commercial success with involvement in politics and religion.
He became a class leader in the Wesleyan Methodist church and in
1845, he became mayor of Freetown. He was an active petitioner – along
with fellow merchants Stephen Gabbidon and William Savage, though
unlike them, he tended to stay in the good graces of the government.
Through petitions and audiences with the governor, Stephen Gabbidon,
William Savage, and other prominent traders and merchants made it
clear that they wanted to form a Chamber of Commerce with commen-
surate political powers to that of the merchants at Cape Coast, recently
released from their protectorate under the Sierra Leone government.37
William Henry Savage, a prominent colonist, who dominated settler–
government relations in the 1820s and 1830s, had migrated to Sierra
Leone as a teacher in 1808, had briefly become a slave trader, and then
returned to the colony as a legitimate merchant, establishing import
and export links with England. He eventually became an attorney and
gained a position as a lawyer at the Courts of Mixed Commission. By
1836, Savage had gained a position as King’s Advocate, this despite the
fact that he had clashed with the colonial government on numerous
occasions.38 The political voice of the merchant class became increas-
ingly important as a means of directing government policy with regards
to the interior of the country, anti-slavery and anti-slave trade policy in
30
25
Domestic wages in grams of

silver per day
20
Predial wages in grams of
silver per day
Trade wages in grams of

15
silver per day
Timber loaders wages in

grams of silver per day
10
Professional wages in grams
of silver per day
0
36
38
41
43
45
47
49
51
53
55
57
59
61
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
Figure 2.1 Five major wage categories, in grams of silver per day
Source: TNA CO 272/1–38.
the colony and its surrounds, and in the formation of the government’s
Liberian policy.
The growth of ‘native’ traders was viewed with some pleasure in the
metropole, especially since the Sierra Leoneans seemed to have an appe-
tite for British manufacturers. Sierra Leonean merchants were becom-
ing wealthy through their trade on behalf of British merchant houses
and their own companies, formed to jointly purchase condemned slave
trade vessels and sell the materials onboard. Comparison of several
major wage categories with other parts of the world in this period shows
that unskilled daily wages in Sierra Leone were roughly commensurate
with unskilled daily wages in much of the world, although not on par
with London.39
In terms of purchasing power, Sierra Leoneans engaged in trade were
able, in the 1830s, to earn enough money to buy their household staples
within a week. Although this fluctuated between 1836 and 1861, for the
most part, this remained the case. The major disruptions occurred in the
late 1830s, a period of instability and high levels of anti-slavery activity,
and in the late 1850s, with a dramatic increase in rice prices. However,
given that many of these products had ready local substitutes – palm oil
for butter, cassava for rice – and that other unlisted staples, such as cot-
ton, were available for domestic trade (country cloth), and that in many
180
160
140
120 Soap
Rice per bushel
100
Beef per pound
Sugar per pound
80
Wheaten Bread
per pound
60
Butter per pound
40
20
0
1836
1837
1838
1839
1841
1842
1843
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
Figure 2.2 Price index for Sierra Leonean consumption goods, in grams of
silver
Source: TNA CO 272/1–38 Blue Books, Price Index.
cases both men and women were working, Sierra Leoneans may have
been able to subsist for less than the peak prices suggest.40
Sierra Leone’s developing ‘legitimate’ commerce, particularly in tim-
ber exports, was making the population of Sierra Leone increasingly
wealthy and desirous of claiming the rights and privileges of their
analogous class in British society. This created tension with the colo-
nial government, who did not always accept the merchants’ claims on
Britishness or the rights of British subjecthood. Many merchants did
identify with Britain to such an extent that in 1835, after a dispute
with Campbell over a tax on spirits, the merchants petitioned the gov-
ernment for similar rights as were being disputed in Britain after the
Reform Act and before Chartism began in earnest. The petitioners wrote
‘that the intelligence of the community is far in advance of the original
inhabitants in force for the Government of this colony, do therefore
consider it now absolutely called for that the inhabitants should also be
advanced in political consequence’. These petitioners argued that the
Governing Council should be made up of members ‘chosen from the
community by the inhabitants, under such restrictions as may make
persons of the highest reputability and freehold proprietors only’ and
in this way, ‘insure the economical expenditure of the colonial revenue,
its proper application and also prevent any laws but those calculated for
the public welfare being in future passed by the board of the Governor
and the Council’.41
Campbell determined to interpret this petition in the narrowest sense
possible, arguing that the merchants had been violating the spirits law
and contravening temperance ordinances. Not all of the anti-slavery
advocates involved with the colony were pleased with the development
of civic and commercial values amongst the Sierra Leoneans because
the society that was emerging raised questions about the millennial-
ist reforming intentions and hopes for Jamaica and the West Indies.
A major impetus of the immediatist movement in both Britain and
America was the hope of creating a perfect Christian society through
missionary work, education, temperance, anti-slavery, and hard work.
The application of many of these values in Sierra Leone without cor-
responding changes in the society forewarned some non-immediatist
abolitionists that this was a more realistic vision of post-emancipation
society. This may have contributed to the colony’s generally dismal
reception by anti-slavery forces at this time, as governors chose to cast
political struggles in the colony as narrower temperance or morality
issues. However, it is clear to see the political stances taken by the mer-
chants involved as they came up again and again as ‘agitators’ in gover-
nors’ letters to the Colonial Office.
Amongst these regular ‘agitators’ for settler rights were the prominent
Maroon settler Stephen Gabbidon and the influential William Savage.
Both men were signatories to the petition above, and had long irritated
Sierra Leone’s governors by demanding political and civil authority.
Lieutenant Governor Alexander Findlay, promoted from the Gambia
in 1830, wrote back to the Colonial Office constantly complaining of
Savage. Savage, the prominent Freetown attorney and merchant, had
begun agitating alongside other wealthy settlers in the late 1820s for
recognition in government. Supported by Findlay’s rival for the post
of Governor, Captain Fraser, they had petitioned for more civil service
positions but were rebuffed in Findlay’s correspondence as unworthy
of the posts. He wrote that if positions opened up – which happened
only rarely, he claimed – then obviously suitable candidates would be
considered from amongst the settler population.
However, by 1833, Findlay was actively campaigning against Savage
to the Colonial Secretary. Findlay complained of ‘those disaffected
persons of colour whose ambition I believe is to put the Government
into their own hands, which they are not capable to conduct’. He felt
that ‘nor is there one of them with the exception of Wm Savage, fit to
perform the duties of any of the higher offices in the colony, and I cer-
tainly would not recommend Wm. Savage (unless a wonderful change
takes place in his conduct) to be placed in any office of trust’. He went
on to explain why Savage was unsuitable, arguing that he was ‘cunning,
artful, mean, deceiving, and will no doubt endeavour to make every-
thing appear in its worst light’.42
Savage was accused of stirring up discontent amongst the merchant
class, but also of telling Liberated Africans that it was illegal for the colo-
nial government to impose a fine on their movement from the village
in which they were settled. Findlay found this dangerous because he
thought it would interfere with the rehabilitation of Liberated Africans.
Not only did he fear that Liberated Africans would return to their old
habits if they were free to roam around the country, but he pleaded that
he was thinking only of their interest. However, although he claimed
to wish to leave the colony in their hands, a follow-up letter regard-
ing use of Sierra Leoneans as managers in the villages was rejected by
Findlay. After exhausting a list of ‘suitable’ candidates, some of whom
were already employed in government positions, Findlay declared of
the rest that ‘they are not capable of managing the affairs of a Village
themselves’.43
Despite Findlay’s reluctance to concede to settler demands for
representation, it was becoming clear to some in Britain that over the
course of the 1830s Sierra Leoneans were in fact adopting and promoting
the civilizing and Christianizing mission in Africa. Campbell reported
to the Colonial Office that ‘I feel the Liberated African Department to be
the most important one in the Colony for the furtherance of the great
objects of the British Government – the civilization of the Africans, but
it has heretofore been thrown completely in the background and sac-
rificed to the interests of all as well as to that of private individuals’.44
Despite their clear successes in trade, in 1836, only 6,500 out of 35,000
Sierra Leoneans were reported as attending church.45 Campbell worried
that Findlay’s priorities had seen the advancement of commerce at the
expense of civilization, and he worked to correct the balance, much to
the appreciation of the Christian population.
Trade was important to the success of the colony because duties pro-
vided a significant portion of colony income. Exports included ‘ship-
timber and camwood ... ivory, palm-oil, hides and gold, and a small
export of wax, gum, ground-nuts, coffee, arrow-root, dried peppers,
starch, ginger’.46 In the period 1839–41, custom duties amounted to
£11,005/11/5, £12,609/13/6, and £7,480/16/1/5 respectively.47 That rep-
resented roughly 77 per cent, 82 per cent, and 79 per cent of the total
income of the colony for those years. Given that 1839 and 1840 saw
income exceed expenditure, it is clear that trade represented an import-
ant concern for both the merchants in the colony, and the anti-slavery
colonizationists in Britain, who could now argue that Sierra Leone was
making money for the Empire.
By 1842, a Parliamentary Select Committee hearing revealed that
the Liberated African merchants not only had gained supremacy in
the Sierra Leone market, but had also ‘created a class of native traders
who have extended commerce inland further than British trade by
itself, in its natural course, would have done’.48 The material culture
of the Sierra Leonean society can be traced through descriptions of
Freetown, import lists, and the architecture of the period. Lieutenant
Governor William Fergusson wrote to Buxton describing the rise of
a Liberated African merchant class. His description paints the Sierra
Leoneans as middle class Victorians, with the same material culture
and values. He described a merchant class, many of whom ‘have their
children being educated in England at their own expense’ and who
live in ‘comfortable two-story stone houses, inclosed all round with
spacious piazzas ... built from the proceeds of their own industry’. Not
only did they build houses with their profits, but they spent money
on consumer goods imported from Britain, including ‘mahogany
chairs, tables, sofas, and four-post bedsteads, pier glasses, floor cloths,
and other articles indicative of domestic comfort and accumulating
wealth’.49 These ‘Afro-Victorians’ developed a creolized British set-
tler society that occupied positions of prestige within the commer-
cial, Christian, and civic realms of Sierra Leone life, and they believed
themselves to represent British interests in West Africa. The commis-
sioner of the Mixed Courts at Freetown reported to the Parliamentary
Select Committee in 1842 that goods from Manchester and India
were traded in Sierra Leone for exports, while ‘for colonial use and
consumption’ ‘spirits, tobacco, salt, beads, hardware and common
crockery-ware’ as well as ‘many articles of British dress, necessaries
and luxuries’ were imported.50
Exports also reflected the importance of legitimate trade to the anti-
slavery argument even after abolition and emancipation. In 1841, Dr.
Robert Madden’s report to parliament indicated the potential for the
growth of the palm oil trade in the Sierra Leone region. In 1839, Sierra
Leone exported £7,993 worth of palm oil, as compared with that of
Niger Delta’s £50,000. Explaining that palm oil, whose import into
Britain had grown exponentially between the beginning of the century
and 1840, was primarily imported directly from indigenous traders in
the Niger region, Madden concluded that British interest in West Africa
should concentrate on commerce as the best means of effecting the
civilization of Africa and the abolition of the slave trade.51 Despite the
unwanted political pressure a strong middle class merchant population
could place on Sierra Leone’s governors, they remained critical to the
image of Sierra Leone’s effectiveness in promoting civilization in West
Africa and combatting the slave trade.
Education
What were the origins of the material and social impetus for this Afro-
Victorian culture? It could be found in the continually expanding insti-
tutions of education and religion and the socialization of Liberated
Africans into Sierra Leone’s growing civil society. Schools had proven
popular with both the original settlers and the Liberated Africans who
hoped their children would succeed in the colony. The provision of edu-
cation became one of the most successful aspects of the parish system.
Andrew Porter writes that ‘wherever possible, the village school, plus a
range of English learning, religious literature and preaching’ helped to
facilitate ‘a straight missionary transfer of British beliefs and values’.52
Even after the CMS ceased to manage the parish system, they played
an important role in the provision of education for the growing middle
class. Religious instruction and literacy were the major components of
the CMS education system. Both the government and the settlers and
Liberated Africans looked to the partnership between government and
religious institutions to help lift them out of the poverty they experi-
enced on first arrival in the colony to a civilized, middle class existence.
The direct connection between religion and education was encouraged
by the colonial government and the British humanitarians, but was
also the response of a growing class of Sierra Leoneans who shared the
Victorian value systems of their European counterparts.53 In the early
1820s, the CMS reported that there were a total of 491 students enrolled
in the colony’s schools.54
Demand for higher education, and particularly missionary prepar-
ation, increased over the decades. In 1820, the CMS established Fourah
Bay Christian Institution to provide higher religious education. The
institution was re-founded in 1827 as a college for the training of native
missionaries and teachers.55 Schools provided Sierra Leonean children
with the opportunity to work their way up to government employment
or make their way as merchants through their connections to British
trading houses. The CMS itself wrote to the Secretary of State as early as
1824 that they planned for ‘the Liberated Africans themselves to take
charge, under the respective Clergymen of the Country Parishes, of the
education and civil superintendence of their Towns’.56 Education pro-
vided by the state enabled the development of a Sierra Leonean presence
in the colonial bureaucracy as early as 1830. The Liberated Africans had
been successfully imbued with the values of middle class Britain and
framed their interactions with the colonial and metropolitan govern-
ments accordingly.
Sierra Leoneans were encouraged to expect education for their chil-
dren, both in the form of religious instruction and as liberal studies
which could further their career prospects beyond dependency on
the state. In 1834, the CMS noted that French was being taught in
the Freetown School. They cautioned Reverend Schön that ‘it is very
important that the time of neither the Master nor the Scholars should
be wasted in any of the schools; but that it should be deliberately applied
primarily to the religious and moral improvement of the Scholars +
next to the imparting to them such ... general knowledge as may be best
calculated to ... their social and civil welfare’.57 Clearly the parents of
students attending the Freetown School had their own ideas of what
constituted a British education and what would be most useful for their
children’s advancement both within Freetown and within the wider
imperial context.
These efforts were not limited to the education of their sons. A peti-
tion from the settlers to Governor Campbell in 1836 praised his efforts
in the field of education: ‘We are happy to see Public Schools both for
male and female children; and that the mother church of this Colony
has now been permitted to be used for the accommodation of the Public
female School, as was heretofore the ancient Custom of this Colony’.58
A group wrote to Governor Campbell in 1837, ‘on behalf of the resi-
dent inhabitants of Freetown ... praying for a yearly grant and for other
assistance in support of a school for the Education of Young Females’.59
Their petition was successful. The education of girls was important to
the growing middle class in Sierra Leone. Missionaries emphasized the
proper role of women’s education for the development of a civilized
society. Although girls had been educated from the beginning of the
CMS parish plan, the Sierra Leonean-led focus on separate sphere edu-
cation revealed that the domestic values of middle class British society
were present in 1830s Sierra Leone as well. While women continued to
be involved as traders and participants in mixed mutual aid societies, a
new focus on the creation of a Victorian domestic sphere was growing
by the late 1830s.
Frequently, schools were still administered by European missionar-

ies. However, when the CMS and other missionary organizations found
it difficult to fill teaching positions, as was the case increasingly over
the 1830s and 1840s, Sierra Leonean men and women were recruited
to fill vacancies. Educational institutions provided the opportunity for
Sierra Leoneans to identify as culturally British in the act of providing a
British education to Africans. Many school teacher positions were filled
by Nova Scotians and Maroons in the early years, replaced by educated
Liberated Africans as the years progressed. Lieutenant Governor Findlay
reported to the Colonial Office in 1833 that of the Sierra Leoneans con-
sidered eligible for positions in government, George Fox was already
‘Employed as School Master at Freetown by the Church Missionary
Society’, and John Wise was ‘Formerly an Assistant to the Colonial
School Master’.60
The prestige attached to these positions was related to both the salary
and the perceived influence the teacher held in the community. This is
best demonstrated by an incident during the governorship of Lieutenant
Governor Campbell. Campbell wrote repeatedly to the Colonial Office
complaining of two men: the Reverend Mr. Morgan and the Reverend
Mr. Jones. The men were accused by Campbell of apparently trying to
get two Sierra Leoneans – Mr. Palmer and Ms. Fox – removed from the
positions of male and female school teachers (respectively) by impugn-
ing their character. Campbell wrote that ‘it is scarcely to be credited but
such is the fact, that Mr. E Jones’s object in trying to get rid of Mr. Palmer
and Mrs. Fox was to obtain those situations for himself and wife ... Not
being able to procure a better person to read prayers in the Church I
ordered the School Master to do so, Mr. Morgan immediately objects to
this and attempts to injure the poor man’s character for no other reason
that that he is a person of colour and finds his endeavours to thwart me
are vain’.61 Clearly there was tension between the white and black Sierra
Leoneans as association with educational institutions and adoption of
British middle class values reduced the perception of difference between
the two races. Identification with educational opportunities and even
control over the education of future generations of Liberated Africans
put Sierra Leone settlers in the position to internalize the values of the
British middle class and pass them on to students.
However, the number of educated, middle class Sierra Leoneans was
already outstripping available positions in government. Petitioners
wrote in 1829 requesting that available government positions for those
with a colony education ‘would be open only to merit and good con-
duct without reference to the color of the individual’.62 The petitioners,
irritated at the better salaries offered to Europeans in similar govern-

ment positions, reminded the governor that ‘they have embarked all
their means in adding to its respectability, and appearance, that their
whole fortunes have been expended in furtherance of such objects and
they have hitherto contributed their full share to the increase of its
revenue, cheered they must confess by the hope that they would at
some no distant period, be permitted to participate in those favors, so
exclusively bestowed on their European, British fellow subjects’.63 They
sought advancement within the colonial structure, hoping for positions
within the government. Using economic as well as humanitarian argu-
ments, they requested that the government ‘permit the African British
subjects the full opportunity to become a useful member of the com-
munity, create in him a laudable, and virtuous ambition’ while saving
European lives in the process by reducing the number who needed to
be sent to fill positions (and subsequently suffer from ‘fever’). Finally,
the petitioners recalled their loyalty as British subjects, requesting the
opportunity to demonstrate ‘their loyalty and devotion to His Majesty
in the performance of the duties of such offices as the Public Service
may require in this Colony’.
Clearly under pressure from the colonial secretary to answer the
charges of the petition, acting Governor Alexander Fraser, in response to
this petition and the resulting inquiry of the Colonial Office, reported
that ‘I am confident that if opportunities were offered for the devel-
opment of Anglo African talent, sufficient would be found to fill with
respectability all the Departments of the Colony with the exceptions
that have been pointed out’.64 In fact, a return on the settlers employed
by the government as early as 1829 showed that there were eighty-eight
Liberated Africans holding minor offices in the villages and approxi-
mately twenty-four Nova Scotian or Maroon settlers employed by the
government, mostly in positions that were available to them as a result
of their educations.65 Older settler families used their wealth and influ-
ence to establish private grammar schools in Freetown and even send
their children to Britain for higher education, establishing the links
that helped them identify as equal, middle class, British subjects. In
1845, a CMS Grammar School was established in Freetown to respond
‘to the wishes of those Parents in the Colony, who, with a conscientious
regard to their sons’ moral and religious obligations’ sought a higher
quality of education that they could now afford.66
Educated Sierra Leoneans also became missionaries and went into
the service of the CMS and Wesleyan Missionary Society. Despite hav-
ing long been separated from their administrative roles in the colony,
the missionary societies were still closely allied to the government.

The Christianized and ‘civilized’ Liberated Africans, settlers, and their
descendents often sought to proselytize their communities. Henry
Venn, the newly appointed president of the CMS, wanted to create a
class of Sierra Leoneans who could act as models of Christian virtue
throughout West Africa. He focused on both male and female educa-
tion, attempting to resurrect the original CMS parish mandate for edu-
cation by establishing a grammar school for boys, one for girls, and
further expanding the Fourah Bay Institution into a college over the
course of the 1840s. At the same time (1842), the King Tom Institution
was founded by the Wesleyans, further expanding the range of edu-
cational opportunities available within the colony. As Commissioner
Madden’s report on his visit to the colony concluded in 1841, education
not only provided an opportunity for social mobility for the Liberated
Africans, but for stratification as older settler families sought exclusive
education opportunities to identify more closely with their British mid-
dle class counterparts and separate themselves from any association
with ‘Africa’.
* * *
The early nineteenth century saw the development and implementa-

tion of Sierra Leone’s Liberated African policies. The parish plan was
an effective, but contentious way of institutionalizing ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’ amongst both the original settlers and
the newly liberated African settlers. The development of schools and
churches in the Freetown peninsula fostered a sense of growing identi-
fication with Britain for Sierra Leoneans, leading them to demand both
better treatment by the British press and parliament, and an increas-
ing role in government affairs in the colony. Religion and education,
two of the hallmarks of the plan, expanded in these years, even after
MacCarthy’s death brought an end to high levels of government invest-
ment. The commercial strength of Freetown society showed that mater-
ial as well as ideological British values could help to integrate Sierra
Leoneans into a British imperial project.
Although religion acted as a symbol of reaction against the colonial
establishment in the early period, by the 1830s and especially the 1840s,
the education systems put in place by the government and the mission-
aries had successfully created a ‘middle class’ in Sierra Leone that had
fully absorbed the three tenets of Britishness. Many Sierra Leoneans
saw themselves as fully British subjects. This meant that they took on
British priorities of missionary expansion and recaptive education as

their own just as the British abolitionists were overcome with a need to
focus on the West Indies and there was a sudden decline in anti-slav-
ery interest in the 1840s. At the same time, Sierra Leoneans were able
to balance their Christian identities with traditional values and ideas,
making their relationships with their indigenous African neighbours
generally harmonious and conducive to the goals of civilization and
Christian mission. The hybrid Sierra Leone identity emerged from their
association with British educational and religious institutions uniquely
adapted to integrate the constant stream of new recaptives arriving in
the colony.
With ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ supporting their bid
for British modernity, Sierra Leoneans were able to integrate themselves
into a broader British Empire. Despite the generally hostile mood of
British pro-slavery interests and apathy of anti-slavery interests during
the 1820s, missionaries and settlers worked together to form a cohesive
middle class institutional identity within Sierra Leone. They used com-
mon institutional identities politically to remind governors, the Colonial
Office, and the anti-slavery movement that they were British subjects,
serving their country, with the same God and the same rights. Within
the colony, ‘civilization’ and proximity to British culture were deemed
desirable and could be gained through acceptance at the right churches
and schools in Freetown. Government-mission schools provided social
mobility to recently arrived Liberated Africans. These new settlers learned
to identify with British modernity through the religious instruction and
education provided by the government’s partnership with the CMS, but
this was reinforced by their regular contact with the older settler fam-
ilies and the established hierarchy of church membership and middle
class educational aspirations. Imbued with the values of their British
education, Sierra Leoneans were able to reflect and recreate the desires
of the colonies’ founders to spread British commerce and civilization –
and loyalty to Britain – throughout West Africa.
3
Americans in Africa
From the early nineteenth century, African American settlers began

arriving in West Africa – first in Freetown, later on Sherbro Island, and
finally along the coast of what is now Liberia. These settlers arrived
to escape slavery and racial prejudice at home. But like other settlers
before and after them, they did not entirely sever their ties to their
home country or their friends and family left behind. And since their
move to Africa was political, as well as personal, they also kept in touch
with the societies that promoted colonization. In these communica-
tions, the ‘Americo-Liberians’ (as they came to be known) demonstrated
themselves as a convincing middle class, not necessarily rejecting, but
trying to incorporate their African experience into a broader story that
embraced bringing modernity, democracy, Christianity, and civiliza-
tion to other parts of the world. Although their interpretations of mod-
ernity and their relationship with American material culture paint a
picture of strong American connections, like many settler societies,
their claims on metropolitan identity were interchangeable with affir-
mations of their African-ness, particularly in their assertions of the ben-
efits of Liberian life. While Sanneh has written that ‘the colony had
America in its eyes while it turned its back on Africa; though it was
necessarily in Africa, it was preferably not of it’, the actual negotiation
of American identities abroad was more complex and contingent.1
Recently, the focus of Liberian historiography has been the social
developments that preceded the ‘black apartheid’ of the mid-twentieth
century and the subsequent civil wars that dominated the country’s his-
tory at the end of the century.2 This approach to the historiography of
Liberia focuses on a feudal, pre-capitalist image of both Southern soci-
ety and its successor in Liberia. The hierarchical, steadfastly Southern
culture of Liberia provides an interesting counterpoint to the hybrid
55
civilization emerging in Sierra Leone, but it potentially overstates the

Liberian settlers’ unease with life in Africa.
Descriptions of Liberia from emigrants during 1820s–1840s reveal the
struggle many colonists had with reconciling their identification with
American, African, and settler values. Modernity and American iden-
tity were tied to a number of ideological and material factors for these
emigrants. Agriculture (democratic yeomanry) and Christianity, as well
as material culture – ranging from clothing, to books, to houses, to city
planning – were all bound together. Liberians used these aspects as sig-
nifiers in writing back to America in order to identify their work in the
colony as creating a convincing middle class alternative abroad. Like
the early American settlers before them, Americo-Liberians described
Liberia as more American than America, since only in Africa could the
African descendent practice unfettered Christianity, participate in dem-
ocracy, own his land, and engage in modern life.
Liberian settlers and the ACS also focused on education and religious
institutions in these years. Liberians emphasized the importance of reli-
gious freedom in their choice to emigrate. Although not all of them
took up missionary work on arriving in their new home, the spread
of Christianity was also seen as an important justification for the col-
ony. Education, too, was frequently cited by emigrants as a benefit that
was available only in their new homes. In contrast to the situation in
Sierra Leone, these educational and religious institutions in Liberia fre-
quently served to alienate Liberians from their compatriots in America,
rather than aiding in creating a unified imperial identity founded on
these values. Liberian society was characterized by a love–hate relation-
ship with the United States, by a commitment to spreading Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity, and by sometimes violent interactions
with neighbouring peoples.
American colonization
After the initial founding of the colony, Liberian settlement tended to

occur in waves, as the ACS or its auxiliaries gathered enough eman-
cipated or free African Americans to make the journey. The regional
make-up of the Liberian population, and inter-colonial and inter-
state struggles over emigration contributed significantly to the devel-
opment of colonial institutions and antagonisms between Liberians
and the ACS, as well as Liberians and indigenous Africans. The settle-
ments dotted along Liberia’s coast by America’s state colonization soci-
eties encouraged a settler frontier mentality, while also relying on the
Americans in Africa 57
goodwill of indigenous groups and European slave traders. Liberian set-

tlers, not content to leave this in the hands of the ACS, sought practical
and political solutions to the problems raised by the sporadic nature of
American colonization.
The largest portion of Liberia’s settler population was made up of black
emigrants from Virginia and Maryland, with between 30 and 40 per
cent of emigrants coming from these two states.3 Free Virginian Joseph
Jenkins Roberts and his family immigrated to Liberia in 1829, establish-
ing trade links with Roberts’ former business partner, William Colson.4
Another important group of emigrants in the early period were those
free Northerners who chose to emigrate despite growing social pressure
not to leave the country. This group had another set of motivations
for leaving America which influenced their experience in Liberia. John
Brown Russwurm, a graduate of Maine’s Bowdoin College and editor
of Freedom’s Journal, argued that ‘full citizenship in the United States is
utterly impossible in the nature of things, and that those who pant for
it must cast their eyes elsewhere’.5 He left America in 1829 for Liberia,
where he established the Liberia Herald.
By the mid-1830s there was also a rise in state-sponsored emigration
plans in America, as it became increasingly clear that there would be no
official assistance from the federal government (other than the establish-
ment of the settlement, care of liberated Africans, and continued naval
assistance). State legislatures in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,
Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Maryland allocated funds for emigra-
tion, purchase of land, and support of colonists. These state colonization
societies tended to have specific goals in mind in their founding: the
colony at Edina founded by New York and Pennsylvania was intended
to be a pacifist and temperance society; Maryland in Liberia, at Cape
Palmas in the South, was an egalitarian society with a tolerant relation-
ship with their Grebo neighbours.
Maryland, in particular, stands out as an exemplary state colonization
society, maintaining as an independent colony until 1857. Maryland in
Liberia was formed in response to the Nat Turner rebellion, after which
the state had allocated $20,000 the first year and $10,000 each sub-
sequent year for twenty years for resettlement in Africa.6 The colony
at Harper operated its own laws and customs and regarded itself as a
distinct colony. Its black governor, John Russwurm, appointed in 1836,
attracted the positive attention of African Americans in Maryland, who
saw the colony as representing true potential as opposed to the rest
of the Liberian settlements. New York’s Colonization Society met in
1834 to form their own colony because they felt that ‘the colony already
established in Africa is more commercial in its character, than is sup-

posed, is most beneficial for the emigrants, or the neighboring popu-
lation. It is therefore intended, and indeed, resolved upon by the New
York Society, to give their colony a decided agricultural cast, and to
make agriculture the controlling, and almost the exclusive occupation
of their colonists’.7
Commerce flourished in these settlements and the mid-1830s wit-
nessed a growth of Liberian trade, particularly in the region just to the
southeast along the coast from Monrovia – Bassa Cove. A letter from
the Liberia Herald noted that in many of these settlements, ‘We are
informed that several English vessels have stopped there lately, and we
are confident, that Americans, will in a short time also find it profitable
to do the same’. The Herald noted that ‘though we are free trade men, we
think that American vessels should always have the preference where
they dispose of their goods at equally low prices’.8
However, these colonies presented increasing problems for Liberia over
the course of the decade. First, the state colonization societies did not
always toe the national organization’s line. The Virginia Colonization
Society, for example, developed into a defiantly pro-slavery organiza-
tion. This became increasingly apparent over the course of the decade,
and tensions between the two strains of colonizationist thinking came
to a head at the 1833 meeting, when it became clear that the society’s
Northern auxiliaries were promoting colonization as an anti-slavery
tool, while the Southern auxiliaries saw it as a means of shoring up the
institution.9 The Virginia Colonization Society was unwilling to pres-
sure the state legislature to support Liberia.
The second issue raised by the state colonization societies was the
security and funding of the settlements themselves. The colony at
Edina could not defend itself against indigenous attacks, and relied
on the ACS agent at Monrovia for support, despite the wealth of the
Pennsylvania and New York Colonization Societies. In addition, the
colonies found it difficult to support the colonists beyond the first six
months. However, as settlers repeatedly pointed out in their letters
back to the state colonization societies or to their patrons in America,
‘six months is not long anough [sic] to find [furnish] any person here
that’s not got means to start with’.10 Attention to commerce in these
diffuse settlements had left the colonists dependent on unfriendly
indigenous neighbours for food. Although the mid-1830s was a boom
period for Liberian trade, by 1837 and 1838, the settlements were
engaging in increasingly common wars with these indigenous groups
over trading rights and being ‘governed by a colored Man’.11 A number
of the settlements experienced food shortages in these years. These

disparate settlements were also all vulnerable to attack by indigen-
ous and European slave traders who objected to their presence and
their anti-slavery treaties. In 1838, the Liberia Herald reported that ‘all
the American Liberian Factories at Sugary have been recently com-
pletely destroyed by the natives. The first attack was on the factory of
Mr. James Thomas, who sustained a loss of $1200’.12 This led many to
question the governance of the colonization societies as well as the
ability of the state colonization societies to carry on their missions
without a more unified approach.
Meanwhile, in addition to the mismanagement of the ACS and state
societies, the growth of civil society in Liberia led naturally to some
questions about the role of the settlers in the governance of the col-
ony. Although the colonies had experienced unprecedented popula-
tion growth in 1831 and 1832, by 1833 immigration had dropped and
Liberia was without the educated, skilled workers it needed to build a
strong colony. Religious and civil society leaders emerged as the few
highly educated Liberians who hoped to play some role in their own
government. This coincided with ACS statements that supported the
eventual self-government of the colony by its settlers.
Since the founding, Liberia had been governed by an agent of the
ACS and the American government, whose duty was to provide for new
settlers, as well as Liberated Africans arriving in the colony. However,
each of the state colonies was responsible to the state colonization soci-
ety in addition to the ACS agent. This made for a confusion of bur-
eaucracy, as well as a reduction in resources available to the colony as
a whole, since individual or state auxiliaries funded projects in their
own colonies. In 1838, the settlers in Monrovia asked that the original
Plan of Government be amended. The colonists were permitted to sub-
mit a draft of a new constitution, while Thomas Buchanan, Governor
of Bassa Cove, wrote an alternative draft. Neither document called for
the dismantling of the ACS government; however, both suggested more
powers for a governor who was still to be paid and appointed by the
ACS, but might at some future point be appointed by some settlers. The
aim of the document was to satisfy settler demand for a more efficient
government that represented their interests, consolidated the settle-
ments, and protected them from indigenous attacks and slave traders.13
The new commonwealth constitution responded to the demands of the
Liberian settlers, although it did not represent a full departure from
company rule. This marked a large step towards self-government for the
Liberians, a fact that did not go unrecognized by British abolitionists or
Sierra Leonean settlers who began to add their voices to the chorus of
complaints about anti-slavery colonization.
Civilization and Christianity
Behind the scenes of these dramatic political developments, Liberian

cultural identities and non-political institutions were forming. In the
early years of the settlement, religious and educational opportunities
in Liberia both linked the colonists to America and defined their diffe-
rence from their American families and friends. Religion provided a
route to education, which was denied to them in the plantation cul-
ture of the South. ‘Liberty of conscience’ was repeatedly asserted by
Liberians to their former compatriots as one of the benefits of emigra-
tion: unlike their American counterparts, they were not restricted from
church membership by strict masters, recognition by white church offi-
cials, or segregation and prejudice.14 Their ability to worship freely, to
preach, to receive education, to teach schools, and to participate in the
Christian mission to Africa underlined the freedoms they enjoyed in
Liberia and the difference of their institutional experiences to those of
African Americans still struggling for freedom in the American South.
Despite the commonality of Christian purpose, therefore, the Liberians’
separation from the day-to-day struggles of African Americans meant
that their common ground decreased over time as Liberian religious
freedoms expanded at the same time that both free and enslaved
African American faced a decreasing focus on institutional identity and
the shared middle class values implied by them in favour of a racial,
territorial identity.
The church was one of the centre pieces of settler life, with even-
ing prayer meetings, regular revivals, and a strictly observed Sabbath.
Membership in a formal church was a new concept for many of the set-
tlers who had emigrated as newly freed slaves. Although Philadelphia
and some other Northern cities had active black churches, the religious
life of slaves was rarely so institutional. In response to questions about
the morality of the colony, most observers remarked on the number
of churches. Joseph Jones, an African American sent by the Kentucky
Colonization Society to comment on the state of the colony reported,
‘There are in Monrovia two Baptist and two Methodist churches, and
one Presbyterian church, well supplied with ministers. At Caldwell
there is a Baptist and a Methodist church. At New Georgia, there is a
Baptist church, and a Methodist society that has no meeting-house. At
Millsburg there is a Baptist and a Methodist church. At Edina, there is a
Methodist church’.15 Others reported that Christianity was widespread

and diverse, and a former sheriff of Monrovia informed a Congressional
Committee that ‘they have three Churches, one Baptist, one Methodist,
and one Presbyterian; divine service is attended three times on Sunday,
and also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings’.16 One Liberian wrote back
to his former mistress that ‘we have preaching every Sunday, and prayer
meeting every night through the week’.17 Thomas Brown, a colonist
who returned to the United States, reported that if a visitor came to
Monrovia he might be apt to think it was a missionary town ‘if he were
there on the Sabbath’.18 Public revivals were common, as were spontan-
eous prayer meetings.
The formalization of religion and the creation of an institutional
identity at the church was a new experience for many of the former
slaves who arrived in Liberia. In contrast to the itinerant preaching,
secretive religious revivals, and lack of formal religious instruction in
America, Liberians were able to attend church several times a week,
receive instruction at Sunday Schools, and participate as lay leaders and
clergy. As one Maryland abolitionist wrote, ‘in this State it is expressly
in violation of the Law for the coloured people to hold public meet-
ings unless conducted by a Learned white preacher’.19 Many of the early
colonists arrived having had some amount of religious instruction from
amenable masters or itinerant African American preachers. The Liberian
settlers’ Christianity allowed them to express an aspect of their identity
that was often legislated against in America. A sense of special, Godly
purpose made many determined to bring the Word to their ancestral
home. However, the religious traditions from which these colonists
came gave them a set of expectations – worldly and spiritual – that
affected the way they dealt with the challenges of colonizing an inhos-
pitable land.
Slaves, who were frequently prevented or severely restricted from prac-
ticing their religion, saw the potential for full religious freedom in emi-
gration. Samson Ceasar, for example, wrote back to his former master
that he hoped to serve God in the new colony, because back in America,
‘the people in Buchannon Stood in my way in trying to Serve god’.20 As
Sanneh has described, the African American preacher, particularly in
the South, was subject to severe restrictions on what, when, where, and
to whom he could preach.21 Similarly, many plantations were witness
to secret revivals and prayer meetings. Freed from the furtive brand of
Christianity they knew in America, settlers from the slave states were
eager to proclaim their religion in the open. In a letter to the Maryland
Free People of Color, Liberians wrote, ‘We have all that is meant by
liberty of conscience’ suggesting a freedom to create religious, political

and social identity free from a master’s restrictions or a state’s laws.22
A delegation representing the Free Coloured People of Natchez went to
Liberia and wrote back that ‘one of us, being a Minister of the Gospel,
preached three times to large and attentive congregations’.23 Liberians
experienced increased opportunities for advancement as clergy and
participation as preachers and Sunday school teachers. With abundant,
previously suppressed enthusiasm for Christianity and an ambitious
population, the religious life of the colony was thus filled with daily
prayer and lively weekly Sabbath gatherings.
However, it was membership of a church that helped formerly enslaved
Liberians create a Christian identity in opposition to their American
identities, because they were now able to belong to a group of their
choosing. This was a similar trend to one that had taken place through-
out Northern and border state cities: free black churches broke away from
their white governing bodies in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Wilmington,
and New York during the 1810s and 1820s.24 Gary Nash writes that ‘just
as their personal emancipations from slavery had involved a psycho-
logical rebirth, the collective emancipation of their church had enor-
mously heartening effects on the black community’.25 Once the colony
began to expand into a federation of settlements, church leaders saw
fit to create overarching bodies, such as the Liberia Providence Baptist
Association, to meet and discuss issues such as membership, construc-
tion of church buildings, Sabbath schools, mission work, and doctrine.26
The establishment of these institutions and associations helped to cre-
ate an interconnected colonial identity that existed beyond the local
community and conferred a sense of common purpose. These inter-
church associations were also following a precedent set by both white
and free black churches in America, indicating that the Liberian settlers
used these American institutions as examples.
Despite the appearance of shared institutional identity, because reli-
gious identity was established in direct opposition to their religious
experiences in America – free worship, the ability to preach, church
membership – Liberians’ religious identity acted to separate them from
their American brethren rather than unite them. Although ‘emancipa-
tion’ of the black church as a separate institution could be viewed as a
parallel experience in Liberia and Philadelphia, for instance, religious
institutions in Liberia often served to highlight the difference between
the colony and America. The focus of letters back to masters, relatives,
and friends was on the difference in religious experience found in
Liberia. A meeting of the ‘Free Persons of Colour in Charleston, South
Carolina’ resolved in 1832 ‘That we go to Africa as Harbingers of Peace

in the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ, and determined
by every virtuous deed, to set such examples as shall be worthy of the
Christian name’.27 Samson Ceasar, an emigrant from Virginia, wrote
back to his former master that one woman in Monrovia fell ill but
‘She Says Se [sic] would Sooner Die than to go back and discurage the
mishen’.28
By disassociating themselves from the struggles facing those still
enslaved, Liberian settlers cut a tie with their American identities, which
had been similarly founded in struggle. Even free African Americans
commented on the difference of their religious experience, which was
often subject to discriminatory laws, even in the North. James Eden, of
the ‘Free Persons of Colour in Charleston, South Carolina’, stated that
‘the sacrifices that will be made here, are not worth a thought, when
compared with the advantages we will have in Africa. There we and our
children will enjoy every privilege, as well as civil and religious liberty’.29
Their ability to worship freely and have liberty of conscience was com-
mented on in much of the interactions with the ACS, former masters,
and the addresses to free people of colour in America who they actively
sought for emigration to the colony. Elizabeth Winder wrote to Moses
James of Maryland, ‘I would advise you to come, and as many others
of you as want to enjoy freedom and liberty; for here we have both,
and enjoy it, as God intended we should do’.30 The difference between
the freedom of association enjoyed by the Liberians and the oppression
facing most African Americans, free or enslaved, was one of the main
arguments Liberians used for their emigration and Christianity charac-
terized the early colony.
The avowed purpose of the ACS in their settlement of Liberia was
‘to spread civilization, sound morals, and true religion throughout the
continent of Africa’ while at the same time providing a route to the
eventual demise of slavery in America.31 Because of steady conflict with
interior indigenous groups and no colonial power to support them,
mission was often impractical and frequently dangerous. At the same
time, the institutions of church and school helped to separate the set-
tlers from the indigenous Africans, as they were used to form a sense
of who was Liberian in contrast to their ‘heathen’ neighbours. In gen-
eral, the Liberian settlers had an uncomfortable relationship with their
neighbours, which influenced the direction that societal developments
took over the course of the mid-nineteenth century and contributed to
the negative impressions of Liberian settlers that began to circulate in
America, as well as in Sierra Leone and Britain.
The Dei, who had dominated the region to the north of Monrovia
since the foundation of the settlement, were slowly being encroached
upon by the Gola under the leadership of Fan Fila Yenge. The Condo
confederation, under Yanby (a Mandingo), was also expanding into Dei
territory during the mid-1830s. The colony sent several temporarily
successful commissions to the warring parties, attempting to resolve
the conflict and re-establish peaceful trade with the interior. In 1838,
Yenge and the Gola captured significant territory to the northeast of
the colony, fortifying a town at Digbe, capturing the infamous slave
trader Theodore Canot, and establishing Gola presence in the coastal
trade in the territory between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Although by the
mid-1830s conditions between the colonists and the Dei had markedly
improved, ongoing wars between the Condo confederation, the Dei,
and the Vai made any interaction with the interior difficult, and per-
manent missionary settlement next to impossible. 32
Because Liberian settlers formed much of their claim to a special
Americo-Liberian culture in contrast to the surrounding African popu-
lations – as civilized Christians as opposed to African animist or Islamic
religions – they were taken aback by the assumptions many white
missionaries made about their religious instruction. The Methodist,
Episcopal, and Baptist churches in Europe and America were active in
missionary work in Monrovia as the colony grew in the 1830s, and it
was reported in the United States that ‘the civilizing influence of mis-
sions on the commonwealth of Liberia and the surrounding native
tribes, is an important fact’.33 Many Liberians regarded the missionaries
with suspicion because they attempted to control religious life. Pride
in their institutional membership and leadership roles in the Christian
community made the Liberians wary of white missionaries. This led
to one of the ongoing conflicts over the perception of the purpose of
the colony: some argued that the colony was established to provide a
place for freed American slaves to flourish, while others contended that
the goal of civilizing and Christianizing the rest of Africa was equally
important.
The Liberian settlers’ religion strangely provided further fuel for the
delay in missionary endeavours. Some black preachers expressed con-
cern that the arrival of Christians in the uncivilized African wilder-
ness would act ‘in retarding their advancement to the summit of civil
and religious improvement’.34 A group of black ministers in America
wrote that they were wary of the susceptibility of ‘their own morals,
and those of their children, to the influences and temptations of the
most treacherous and sin-sunken heathen that live, and of the demons
called Christians, by whose teaching and example these same heathen

have been raised to their eminence in vice and crime’.35 Many Liberian
settlers felt the same way, and tried to prevent contact between them-
selves and non-Christians lest they fall out of Grace. The political and
territorial battles that raged between the Liberian settlements and local
groups did not aid in the establishment of friendly, Christian inter-
course between the two. Although mission work was supported by the
Liberian settlers, as well as the ACS and its auxiliaries, a combination
of hostilities between the settlers and the indigenous Africans, and
reluctance for ‘civilized’ former slaves and free African Americans to
identify with Africans acted to isolate the colony and create a uniquely
non-American, non-African definition of ‘Liberian’ for the settlers. The
Liberian settlers formed their ideas of Christian institutional belonging
not only in opposition to their former oppression in America, but in
opposition to the ‘pagan darkness’ of Africa.
The settlers recognized the potential they had to ‘civilize’ Africa
and spread the Gospel message, even if they felt they could not do it
themselves. The Liberia Herald reported in 1833 that a new Board of
Domestic and Foreign Missions in Monrovia had appointed a new mis-
sionary, Adam W. Anderson ‘to locate himself, for the space of one year,
at Grand Cape Mount (West Africa) among the Vey people, to teach
the children of natives, as far as possible, the English language, and
to preach when opportunity would offer itself, to the adult part of the
tribe’.36 Many freed African Americans who settled in Monrovia were
often keenly aware of a popular understanding of slavery as the painful
means through which God brought his promised people to his Word. A
Liberian wrote to his former mistress, ‘Many of the recaptured Africans
come to be baptized, and we expect more shortly; they appear to be
more diligent than the Americans’.37 Some settlers thus saw their return
to Africa as the completion of the mission of bringing Christianity to
their people. Settler James C. Minor wrote to his former master, John
Minor, explaining that ‘I wish to become one of the blowers of the
Gospel trumpet’.38 Peyton Skipwith wrote to his mother that ‘I believ
[sic] I shall have more help in this dark benighted land, to try and civil-
ize the heathens and bring them to know life and life eternal’.39 Many
of the colonists’ letters home indicate this acceptance of this peculiar
black Christian mission.
When they did participate in it, mission work allowed the settlers to
contribute to expansion and Christianization, goals for the promotion
of anti-slavery and civilization that had been laid out explicitly by the
state colonization societies and in the new Commonwealth constitution.
Liberians inspired by the Providence Baptist Association’s call for mis-

sionaries were eager to reach out. By 1844, Peyton Skipwith wrote to
his former master, ‘Since I has been here, the ministers of the “Gosple”
were only allowed to preach the “Gosple” around the Colony, but now
they can go as fair as a hundred miles, in the interior’.40 This was part
of a concerted initiative of the Monrovia churches and also part of the
expansion of Liberia beyond the borders of the city. These new com-
munities were encouraged to reach out to the indigenous population
surrounding their outposts. The Edina church, for example, ‘formed a
missionary society numbering 30 members which supports and edu-
cated a native youth’.41 George Erskine, a minister in Liberia, wrote to
Gurley that ‘there is a large field for the labours of a Gospel Minister’ in
and around the colony.42
A missionary impulse did exist, then, amongst the settler population.
However, despite this missionary sentiment, the lack of funds from any
American missionary body directed towards what was in Sierra Leone
called the ‘native’ mission, meant that there were fewer chances for
Liberian missionaries to interact with their non-Christian neighbours.
With no equivalent to the CMS funding the education and expeditions
of Liberian ministers, they were on their own, preaching their own
vision of Christianity rather than one that united a metropolitan, colo-
nial, and Christian message. Nevertheless, Naval Commodore Matthew
Perry noted in 1844 that ‘so far as the influence of the colonists has
extended, it has been exerted to suppress the slave trade ... civilize the
natives in their immediate vicinity ... [and open] to the labours of the
missionary’.43 The connection between Christianity and anti-slavery
colonization was still being heavily promoted by influential Americans
in the 1840s, even as colonization’s popularity amongst anti-slavery
activists dropped to a new low.
However, without a streamlined system for educating, converting, and
integrating new arrivals to the colony from neighbouring African villages,
the ability of indigenous Africans to rise in Liberian society was based
on personal circumstances. Institutional opportunities and membership
were generally closed to them, unless they converted and married into
a settler family. Some were able to gain work as domestic servants and
apprentices, but many were employed as labourers or, as some observers
noted, slaves. Sixty Dei children had been integrated into the commu-
nity in the late 1820s, establishing the tradition of integration through
taking in indigenous children as wards.44 The ward relationship could be
an opportunity for advancement, with some taking in children as their
own; but others used their wards as free domestic labour.
The nature of relationships with indigenous groups is reflected in the

sex ratio information from the 1843 Liberian census. As Shick points
out, ‘assuming that monogamy was the pattern of family organiza-
tion among the early settlers, the generally even sex balance within
each settlement would have had the effect of reducing the urgency of
inter-marriage between settlers and the indigenous people’.45 Thus it
was perhaps not for ‘slave’ labour or an assumption of inferiority that
settlers were willing to take the children of indigenous parents into
their houses, but in order to facilitate assimilation in a society that had
no need for inter-group marriage. In fact, the colonists seemed to be
proud of this particular relationship with local groups. An editorial in
the Liberia Herald explains how this practice helped to spread a good
civilizing influence amongst indigenous groups, and conveyed its hope
‘that those who take native children to rear, will feel the responsibility
of the charge. Such have it in their power to confer a lasting blessing
upon the country’.46
The Liberian settlers clearly believed themselves to be bringing civiliza-
tion to the region. In Governor Roberts’ message to the Commonwealth
Council in 1845, the leader of the colony congratulated them that
‘through the interposition of this government, the cruel and inhuman
wars that have existed for the last five years, and furnished so many
cargoes of human beings, to be transported across the atalantic [sic] into
perpetual slavery ... have happily been brought to a close, and we are
permitted to rejoice in the prospect of returning intercourse with the
tribes of that section of the country’.47 The motivation for trade, civil-
ization, and anti-slavery appears to have helped motivate the Liberian
settlers to promote peace with their neighbours.
The complex relationship with the indigenous population meant
that, while religion formed a vital part of all correspondence home,
it did not always create productive results. Many settlers expressed
shock that they could be related to the Africans they encountered upon
arrival in Liberia. Peyton Skipwith wrote that ‘it is something strange
to think that those people of Africa are called our ancestors’.48 Samson
Ceasar also commented that ‘when I first Saw the nativs [all] naked I
though [sic] that I never could get ust [sic] to it’ but acknowledged that
‘it is an old saing [sic] use is second nature I do not mind to see them
now’.49 Despite the missionary work of the settlers and the introduction
of American civilization and culture to local apprentices, much of the
Liberian settlers’ identification stemmed from the perceived superior-
ity of American descent and this extended to the provision of religious
instruction.
Education initiatives
Liberian settlers embraced the opportunity for religious participation

and education presented by their removal from the oppressive educa-
tion laws they faced in America, but with little support from the ACS
or other American institutions, education was a much more sporadic
opportunity. The availability of schools may have been a good reason
for choosing to emigrate; however, the reality of these opportunities was
represented differently to the abolitionist press. Free emigrants tended
to be well-educated, but this added to tension between them and those
who were manumitted for colonization, since they had different edu-
cational needs competing for the same resources. Although there were
some educated free African Americans who emigrated, their numbers
were far fewer than the growing population of recently emancipated
slaves.50 Since the running of both churches and schools was left in the
hands of these few educated settlers, the schools were incapable of edu-
cating everyone in the colony. It was not until 1833 that funding was
given for the establishment of a high school. The Liberia Herald excitedly
announced that ‘Mr. Henry Sheldon, of New York, has placed at the dis-
posal of the Board of Managers of the Parent Society the sum of 2000
dollars, towards forming a fund for the support of a High School in
our colony’. The article went on to say that ‘Our Coloured brethren in
America must be up and doing; their wealthy men must give more’.51
In Liberia, as in Sierra Leone, there was a strong connection between
education and mission. Peyton Skipwith wrote back to his former
master, John Hartwell Cocke, that another of Cocke’s emancipated
slaves was attending ‘every day to the Methodist Mission School’
while Skipwith’s daughters attended both the daily school and Sunday
school that were established by the Baptist church at the end of the
1830s.52 Diana Skipwith taught Sunday school at the Baptist church,
but had received only rudimentary instruction in reading and writing
before leaving for the colony; the focus was on teaching Bible stories
and encouraging spiritual, evangelical conversion, rather than critical
study of scriptures and preparation for evangelism and mission work.53
Eunice Sharp Moore wrote to a friend in New York about her experience
teaching a mixed class of settlers and local Africans of all ages: ‘I have
heard them tell me the nature of a noun, conjugate a verb, and tell how
many times one number is contained in another, but all this was not
half so entertaining to me, as when I saw them crowding to the altar of
God ... the way is opening for the poor native, who is now worshipping
devils, to become acquainted with the worship of the true and living
God’.54 This demonstrates that the emphasis of much of the education

was on Christian conversion.
Although colonists professed to be eager about the educational oppor-
tunities available in Liberia, the charge of some observers was that the
settlers framed their identities around the plantation lifestyle they had
witnessed in their masters. Wilkeson observed in his history of the col-
ony that ‘the citizens in general, felt no due sense of the importance of
preparing their children, by education, for usefulness, indolence and
self-government. Their sudden elevation of circumstances and privi-
leges, and their rapid acquisition of property, had, to some extent, pro-
duced a spirit of emulation, display and extravagance, unfavorable to
the moral and religious interests of the colony’.55 Somewhat contradict-
ing the abolitionist stance on equality, this statement suggests that, left
to their own devices, the freed slaves were directionless. This was likely
an exaggerated claim, but may have been based on some real examples
of Liberian identity constructed from an association with what they
perceived ‘liberty’ to mean with regards to their own plantation and
farm experiences.
Similarly, in contrast to the sanctions on formal education in America,
the little education received in Liberia may have been enough to frame a
new sense of institutional identity. Having attended school at all would
have marked a significant break from life as a slave. Abolitionists sus-
pected that the educational institutions were restricted to the wealthy.
Despite the claims by the Herald in 1833 that ‘schools have been estab-
lished in our different settlements’, progress was slow.56 Without a
dedicated church–government partnership, such as that found in Sierra
Leone, the educational institutions floundered, particularly outside of
Monrovia. Schools were dependent on the good will of a variety of mis-
sionary societies, individual donors, or ACS subscriptions. The colonist
George Erskine wrote to R.R. Gurley, secretary of the ACS, in 1833 that
‘the thing most to be deplored in this colony is the want of a good
school, and an enlightened teacher for poor children whose parents
cannot school them’.57 The disruption of education was also remarked
on by Wilkeson in his 1839 history of the colony. He complained that
‘the whole system of schools which had been suspended by the death of
Mr. Holton, was reorganized, and in efficient operation this year [1827],
under the superintendence of Rev. G. McGill, an experienced colored
teacher’. The main problem facing the schools was ‘the want of proper
books and well qualified teachers’.58
The availability of qualified teachers fluctuated from year to year.
Wilkeson wrote that ‘the schools were all taught by colored people, and
supported partly from the colonial treasury, and partly by subscrip-

tions from the colonists’.59 Although the Providence Baptist Association
called for the establishment of Sabbath Schools at each of the mem-
ber churches, the money they raised also had to contribute to build-
ing church buildings, paying preachers, setting up missionary societies,
and poor relief. The Ladies’ Auxiliary of the ACS was founded in 1833
to support education in the colony. The society reported annually on
the state of education in the colony and sent money and emigrants to
assist already established schools, as well as founding their own school
for the education of recaptives.60 The Auxiliary was successful in pro-
viding replacement teachers when emigrants died, as well as ensuring
that for much of the 1830s, all of the major settlements of Liberia were
equipped with some kind of school. By 1837, Diana Skipwith described
the existence of five ‘public’ schools in Monrovia.61 These were prob-
ably all religiously affiliated and run by missionaries or individuals
who set themselves up as teachers. They also all charged subscriptions
for tuition, putting them beyond the means of many colonists, which
meant that they frequently did not collect enough money to operate.
While missionaries abounded in Liberia, there was no dedicated mis-
sionary society acting as a pastoral link between America and Liberia.
Sporadic educational opportunities were complicated by the fact that
education was not available to slaves in America and many free, edu-
cated African Americans chose not to emigrate after the initial emi-
grant boom of 1830–2 and before the peaks of the 1850s. Despite
the numerous letters home and messages from Liberians to the ‘Free
People of Color’, the emphasis on educational opportunities was lost on
many free African Americans, who valued their educational systems in
America and perhaps did not understand the emancipated slaves impa-
tience for their own education, and thus their desire to leave America.
As a result of increasing wealth and investment in the colony, schools
expanded in the 1840s, and the 1843 Liberian census revealed that the
literacy rates within the colony were higher than literacy rates of those
arriving in the country.62 The schools were still supported primarily by
the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the ACS and the Ladies’ School Association. An
article in the Liberia Herald reported that ‘the second term of the School
under the patronage of the N.Y. Ladies’ Society for the promotion of edu-
cation in Africa, will commence the second week in March. The patron-
age received from the friends of this Institution, during the past term,
has been peculiarly gratifying to the Principal’. However, wealthier par-
ents in Liberia were beginning by the 1840s to contribute to education.
The article went on to say that the principal wanted ‘to acknowledge
the sum of $20 contributed in cash, work, and plank, by the parents and
guardians of the scholars, for fitting up the school room’.63
Education still remained a major attraction in selling the colony to
potential emigrants. When the ACS faced criticism from black and white
abolitionists, as well as more highly educated emigrants in the 1830s
for not attending to the education of emigrants, the Ladies’ societies
had responded. As a result of these efforts, educational opportunities
had expanded from the rudimentary Sunday Schools that the Skipwith
children had attended on arrival. The Liberia Herald advertised that the
school run by B.V.R. James offered ‘Spelling and Defining, Reading,
Writing, Geography ... Arithmetics ... Grammars, History, Composition,
and Declamation. Instruction in Needle Work twice a week by Mrs.
James. Terms, $1 per quarter’. The charge was described as ‘very low’,
giving a sense of the accessibility of the school. Signalling the discern-
ing tastes of a growing (lower) middle class who wanted the best for
their second generation Liberian children, the advertisement stated
that ‘the school is open at all times for inspection of those who feel
disposed to give us a call’.64 Education was critical to the Liberian self-
image of modernity, and to their own ability to promote civilization in
the colony. Rather than serving to consolidate an American ‘modern’
identity abroad, however, it continued to separate Liberians from the
African American experience they had left behind.
Commerce and the development of society
With a population desperate to maintain a connection with their

American lives, indications of civilization were important for Liberians,
in order to convince their American friends and relatives that they had
not succumbed to, and in fact, were successfully taming, the wilderness
of Africa. They hoped that this would convince more settlers to immi-
grate and also that it would prove the settlers’ ability to establish and run
their own country. Settlers wrote home in terms that could be under-
stood by these people, trying to link their former and present lives. G.W.
McElroy wrote to Mary Todd Owen Russell Wickliffe, a former owner
in Kentucky, retelling the story of another former slave in Liberia, Lucy
Russell, who had encountered a run of bad luck on arrival. McElroy
wrote that ‘to each of her sons (who she said had not had a garment
since they had been here except what she made for them by cutting up
her own clothes) I sent a small present from my own scanty wardrobe’.65
The lack of appropriate clothing was meant to confer exactly how dire
the situation could be for new arrivals in Monrovia.
Figure 3.1 Jane Roberts
The artefacts of material culture are easy to track in the case of

Liberia, since the many letters home frequently feature requests from
the settlers for the items they found invaluable to their daily lives:
books (other than Bibles), tools, leather, tobacco to trade with the
‘natives’, ‘Shirting Coton and 2 Handkerchiefs’, food and paper.66
The steady flow of visitors and emigrants meant that Liberian mater-
ial culture retained its American roots. One passer-by commented on
the decoration of President Roberts’ house, which contained ‘folding
doors, walls hung with oil portraits, a tapestry carpet, embroidered cur-
tains, and numerous books and ornaments’.67 Photographic portraits of
President Roberts, his wife, and other notables depicted a fashionable
Figure 3.2 Joseph Roberts
elite. Liberians were trying to hold onto the material culture they had
known in America, but also used those objects to convey a continuing
relationship with ‘civilization’. Wills from the 1840s show that much of
that material culture was carefully handed down through the genera-
tions, as was an increasing amount of inherited land wealth. Catherine
Jacobs, for instance, left her ‘furniture + beddings’ and ‘apparel’ to her
granddaughter Emma.68 Liberians valued the material possessions they
had brought with them, received from friends and former masters, or
saved up to purchase in the colony.
By the mid-1830s paintings and engravings commissioned by the
ACS and depicting Monrovia were arriving in America as propaganda
that confirmed the ACS’s message of Liberia as a microcosm of America,

using many of the same archetypes as those depicting Western fron-
tier towns or Southern plantations.69 Descriptions of Liberian houses
in the later 1840s and 1850s revealed typical Victorian living condi-
tions. Reuben Moss sent a letter to his brother Benjamin, which was
subsequently published by the Maryland Colonization Society. The
letter declares that in Liberia he ‘found large storehouses, and others,
built of stone, as we have in the United States; and some rich people
living in style, as in any other country’.70 Others described the similar-
ity of houses, decorations, and clothing styles seen in Monrovia espe-
cially. Eliza Hatter wrote to her former mistress that when her husband
returned to Liberia ‘he intends to build us a stone house’.71 Families
kept their inheritance intact by forbidding their heirs from dividing
landed estates. Isaac Deans, who signed his name with a mark, was in
possession of considerable farmland, and directed his heirs that ‘nei-
ther of them shall sell or cause to be sold any part of the property but
the property is to be kept together and inherited from heir to heir’.72
Other documents from the time, including recalls of loans, reveal
the collateral that some Liberians had access to. One legal document
reveals that $51 was at stake in a damages suit that took place in 1841,
for which Francis A. Harris, Deputy Sheriff of Montserado County, was
charged with selling the ‘goods and chattels of Joseph Blake’ in order to
cover the costs.73 The growing wealth of the colony was therefore not
solely represented in the aggregate trade between America and Liberia,
but could also been seen in the material possessions and land owner-
ship of the colonists.
It is clear that there must have been some economic drive on the part
of the free black settlers who chose to emigrate. John Brown Russwurm,
an important free black leader who converted to the colonization cause,
praised colonization as the only way for free African Americans to ful-
fil their true economic potential.74 Joseph Roberts, the first president
of the Republic, made his fortune by establishing a transatlantic trad-
ing partnership with a friend in Petersburg, Virginia, before he left
for Monrovia.75 One visitor to Liberia in 1835 reported that ‘many of
the colonists own small vessels. There are nine in the coasting trade,
and two more were building when I left’.76 In addition, a number of
American firms, such as the New York-based Rogers & Co., operated in
Monrovia using Liberian agents.77
Colonists too commented on the trade of the colony. An emigrant
named Edward Morris from New Orleans wrote that Liberia was ‘a
healthy colony, well situated for trade, which is greatly on the increase – a
good landing place, with a fine river running at the back of the town,
with every accommodation for the landing and shipping of goods’.78
Indicating the type of commerce that could develop in Liberia, he con-
tinued that ‘I have planted a farm with three thousand coffee trees, and
other produce; my stock of cattle consists of twenty-six head, besides
pigs and other animals; my trade with the natives is large for palm oil
and other commodities, and upon the whole I am doing very well –
thank God for it’. George Seymour wrote to Anson Phelps in America,
noting that ‘this is the land for the colored man in all circumstances
of life. The farmer, the merchant, the mechanic, all stand on one equal
footing here’. Settlers wrote to their contacts in America encouraging
the establishment of trade. Elizabeth Clarke wrote to her brother to tell
him that ‘you could make money hear [sic] there are something of Great
Demand. Shingles is from four to six ($4 $6) a thousand’.79
As in America, success in business was clearly related to success in
other sectors of Liberian society, which would allow potential entrepre-
neurs to raise the support needed. A notice in the Liberia Herald in 1848
advertised the creation of a soap manufactory ‘to keep in the Republic
the large sum Which have been annually drawed off for the article’ by
the settlers Hilary Teage, John Lewis, Deserline Harris and J.S. Payne.80
These were men of means and influence in the new country, who had
access to capital from their various business pursuits. James Payne was
one of the Methodist missionaries to Liberia and had acted as assistant
secretary to the ACS agent. In the 1860s and 1870s he would serve as
president of the country. Hilary Teage was the editor of the Liberia Herald
from 1835 to 1849 and had helped to draft the country’s constitution.
The small Liberated African population in Liberia demonstrated the
growing prosperity and influence of the colony. The captain of the U.S.S.
Dolphin reported in 1840 that the settlement of Liberated Africans at
New Georgia was succeeding in spreading civilization: ‘They call them-
selves Americans; and, from the little civilization they have acquired,
feel greatly superior to the natives around them; they have the same
privileges as the emigrants; have a vote at the elections; each man has
his musket, and is enrolled in the militia’. Just as in Sierra Leone, the
domestication of women and the household was regarded as a sign of
civilization. Captain Bell reported that ‘their women, instead of being
nearly naked, as all the native African women are, we found dressed in
the same modest manner as our own emigrants; all take great pride in
imitating the customs and manners of those who are more civilized,
having furniture in their houses, and many comforts they never dreamt
of in their own country’. Bell summarized the situation of the Liberated
Africans by quoting a recaptive originally from the Congo region who

claimed that he would rather stay in Liberia than return to his home-
land because he could not be made a slave in Liberia and instead was
regarded as a ‘white man’, which Bell qualified by pointing out that ‘the
emigrants are called white by the natives on the coast; they appear to
think the word denotes intelligence’.81
Despite the integration of the Liberated Africans into Liberian society,
questions remained about the proper level of integration of indigenous
Africans. The type of society that these emigrants hoped to build in
Liberia was based on a Victorian, Christian work ethic, even if it was
sometimes an ideal rather than a reality. Seymour commented that ‘But
when I say all men, I would not encourage the idler to emigrate; for the
fact is, a man cannot get a living here without working at something; nor
would I encourage a man who will drink rum’.82 Separating themselves
from the ‘unmanly’ image of the African and the slave, many Liberian
settlers disparaged the indigenous Africans even as they sought them
out as partners in trade. Liberians struggled with the image they had as
former slaves in America. They hoped to reassert their gender roles in
line with the white norms of American society. At the same time, they
recognized the value of some African traditions in the local context, par-
ticularly the male and female social societies, and struggled to balance
capacity for civilization with the racism of their American past.
The militias that were assembled to fight the indigenous people also
helped solidify a sense of what ‘Liberian’ national values were and high-
light the role of anti-slavery intervention in those values. Jehudi Ashmun,
leading the militia into battle against King Peter in the 1820s, gained the
respect of the colonists. However, while they were supportive of Ashmun
as a military leader, the settlers objected to his land policies and ration
distribution. They forced him from the colony in 1824. ACS member
Ralph Gurley was sent to the colony to ascertain the circumstances of
his removal and attempt to bring the settlers into line. He was success-
ful in reconciling the settlers and Ashmun by giving the settlers more
responsibility and representation in the colony. Ashmun was convinced
to return upon his appointment as Governor of the colony, which gave
him a budget from the Slave Trade Act of 1819 through which to build
defences, a Governor’s house, and various storehouses. Gurley in turn
was rewarded in 1825 with the position of secretary of the ACS. Despite,
or perhaps because of, the newly built defences and expanded militia,
violent confrontations with surrounding groups eased briefly, only to
be resumed in 1826 after the settlers attempted to expand the borders
of the colony. Ashmun and his settler militia were more than willing to
fight foreign and native slavers, to end the slave trade, to reduce compe-
tition for their own trade from ‘immoral’ sources such as alcohol, and to
aid the ACS in ‘building a new America to include the present countries
of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia’.83
However, despite the important role of the militia in establishing an
antagonistic relationship with the indigenous people, the militia played
a lesser role as a cultural institution in Liberia than in Sierra Leone
because there were no secondary benefits such as an American govern-
ment pension or claim to American citizenship. While the ACS praised
the militia for repeatedly defending the colony and attempted to con-
nect their frontier experiences with those of American frontier settlers
through resolutions such as that passed at the ACS meeting in 1840,
these did not necessarily have the desired effect. African Americans’
inability to own or use firearms in much of the United States, combined
with the largely urban experience of many of the free Northerners for
whom this literature was intended, divorced their daily experiences from
these descriptions. Therefore, while the occasional calling up of the mil-
itia was an important event for Liberians seeking to establish their new
home and differentiate themselves from their neighbours, it did not
provide a cultural link to the metropole as it did in Sierra Leone.
This relationship between the Liberian settlers and their African neigh-
bours presents an interesting contrast to the Sierra Leonean policy of inclu-
sion. Rather than the structured missionary incorporation that brought
settlers, recaptives and natives together in MacCarthy’s governorship, the
Liberian state was almost always at war with their surroundings, attempt-
ing to impose a deliberately American civilization on their decidedly
African milieu. Early Liberian settlers found themselves in pitched bat-
tles with neighbouring tribes who were dissatisfied with the land pur-
chase arrangement.84 When not at war with these groups, trade was the
predominant form of interaction. Clegg writes that the settlers created
networks of trade and employment by apprenticeship with the natives
and recaptives and through them, ‘spread both colonial culture among
indigenous people and African cultures among immigrants and provided
a bit of security for the latter’.85 However, since Liberia never faced the
same overwhelming immigration as Sierra Leone did, it did not develop
the same creolized culture of the eventually dominant recaptives.
* * *
Liberian society reflected the emphasis that settlers and the ACS placed
on ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ and the values associated
with the anti-slavery project. In Liberia, religion and education pro-

vided both an escape from the suffering many had undergone in the
plantation culture of the South and an opportunity to assert a new class
identity in West Africa. Liberians repeatedly wrote back to American
friends and colonization allies that the ability to move up the social lad-
der and provide socially mobility for their children through education,
church attendance, and commercial success underlined the freedoms
they enjoyed in Liberia. But this also highlighted the difference in their
institutional experiences to those of African Americans still struggling
for freedom in the American South or equality throughout the country.
Despite the anti-slave trade activity undertaken by the colony, there-
fore, the Liberians’ separation from the daily anti-slavery struggles of
African Americans meant that their common ground decreased over
time. As Liberian freedoms expanded both free and enslaved African
American focused less attention to their own institutional identities and
the shared middle class values implied by them in favour of an increas-
ingly unified campaign for freedom and equality within America.
In Liberia, the spiritual was disconnected from any nationalism.
Religious feeling was strong, but did not demand the form of missionary
evangelism or educational commitment seen in Sierra Leone. Although
there were settlers who saw it as their duty to Christianize Africa, there
was no colony-wide goal of missionary work or institutional education.
The federal nature of the colony also fragmented any unified efforts
towards mission or education. Combined with their poor relationship
with the indigenous population, this meant that, while religion and
educational opportunities formed a vital part of all correspondence
home, they did not create productive results.
While identification with the anti-slavery project of promoting
‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ helped Sierra Leoneans to
identify as British and make claims on colonial and metropolitan author-
ities for equal treatment, Liberian religious and educational claims,
and their own participation in the spread of Civilization, Commerce,
and Christianity in some ways severed their ties with America and
American identity. Although both colonies were using similar methods
to approach the problem of creating a model community of ‘rehabili-
tated’ formerly enslaved Africans and Americans, the small differences
in the institutionalization of these methods, the assimilation of new
or indigenous groups, and the relationships with the metropole led to
divergent results in the two colonies.
Part II
Interactions
4
The Abolitionist Propaganda War
In the 1820s, anti-slavery colonizationists in both Britain and America

watched with anxious anticipation to see if Sierra Leone and Liberia
would live up to their hopes of ending the slave trade through the estab-
lishment of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ on the contin-
ent of Africa. US agent to Africa, Ephraim Bacon, on his visit to West
Africa, remarked on ‘the very friendly disposition which the colonial
authorities [of Sierra Leone] manifested towards the objects of our mis-
sion’.1 In the late 1820s and early 1830s, he visited Britain to encour-
age support for the society and establish a transatlantic branch of the
organization. He established the British African Colonization Society,
received support from leading abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and left
hoping that Liberia and Sierra Leone could be merged into the ‘Empire
of Liberia’. An 1833 pamphlet ‘by a citizen of New England’ pointed
out that ‘the Society and colony have become known in Great Britain.
Donations amounting to several hundred pounds have already been
received, and distinguished individuals have expressed their deep inter-
est in the prosperity of the enterprize’.2 This same author pointed out
that Clarkson and Wilberforce had indicated support for the ACS.
However, by the mid-1830s, the ACS was rejected by Zachary Macaulay,
Thomas Fowell Buxton, and William Wilberforce and the ACS was gen-
erally rejected by anti-slavery activists as a true anti-slavery organiza-
tion.3 Developments in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the course of the
1820s and early 1830s contributed to an increased scepticism in both
Britain and America about the efficacy of anti-slavery colonization.
The emerging differences between the colonies had a significant
impact on the home countries’ views of the success of their anti-slavery
projects. By the 1830s, the education systems put in place by the gov-
ernment and the missionaries had successfully created a ‘middle class’
81
in Sierra Leone that had begun to absorb and shape the tenets of British
anti-slavery ideology. The hybrid Sierra Leonean identity emerged from
their association with British educational and religious institutions
uniquely adapted to integrate the constant stream of new recaptives
arriving in the colony. This close connection to Britain was challenged
in the 1820s and 1830s as a result of the colony’s lack of success in
replacing the slave trade through the application of civilized values in
the region. This was compounded by the British anti-slavery squad-
ron’s desire to focus on the Bights of Benin and Biafra, rather than
Sierra Leone, in turn causing many prominent members of the British
Anti-Slavery Society to turn away from colonization as an anti-slavery
solution.
This period after the settlement of the colony was controversial in
the metropoles because of anti-abolition hostility in Britain and a grow-
ing awareness in America that emigration was not going to be popu-
lar amongst all groups of African Americans. Many of the difficulties
reported by both colonies were exploited by anti-colonizationists,
even as Sierra Leone’s ‘parish system’ of Civilization, Commerce, and
Christianity, proved so effective as to be a model for developments in
other parts of the Empire. General anti-abolition hostility toward Sierra
Leone in the 1820s as well as African American and abolitionist hostil-
ity toward Liberia that grew over the course of the decade and into the
1830s led the British anti-slavery establishment to reconsider its early
connections with Liberia and the American colonization movement.
Regional rivalries also began to develop in earnest as a result of
this challenge. Sierra Leonean settlers, Liberated Africans and gover-
nors were all chagrined at the lack of success in suppressing the slave
trade. Blaming Liberia eased some of the metropolitan pressure on
them, but contributed to a growing negative impression of Liberia in
Britain which fed into a cycle of negative publicity facing the colony.
Liberian colonists’ institutional identities and the nature of ACS propa-
ganda meant that Liberian colonization was soon viewed negatively in
Northern American black and white abolitionist circles, further fuel-
ling the growing antipathy toward anti-slavery colonization amongst
both American and British anti-slavery leaders in this period. Although
Sierra Leone and Liberia had been developing along similar lines in the
first half of the nineteenth century, the underlying tensions that had
appeared during the establishment of the colonies emerged once again
when the American anti-slavery movement developed its immediatist
arm. While ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ was initially
promoted as an anti-slavery tool in both societies, the perceived failure
The Abolitionist Propaganda War 83
of this approach to eradicate the slave trade led to a re-evaluation of the

practicality of anti-slavery colonization. Sierra Leone blamed Liberia for
their failures in anti-slavery activities, and this contributed in part to
the poor images of both colonies in the metropolitan presses in the
1820s and 1830s.
British anti-slavery activities
Britain’s contribution to naval suppression of the slave trade had var-

ied between the abolition of the trade in 1807 and the 1830s as a result
of ongoing debates on the best method for slave trade suppression.
Throughout the 1820s, the anti-slavery squadron patrolled the West
African coast between the Bight of Biafra and the Gambia River. Despite
its constant presence, the slave trade did not diminish. Commodore
Bullen, serving on H.M.S. Maidstone off the Gold Coast wrote in 1825
that ‘the Slave Trade is still carried on briskly in the neighbourhood of
the Gallinas’, a region between the Sierra Leone colony and Monrovia.4
During the governorship of Charles Turner (1824–6) Sierra Leone and
Liberia issued overlapping proclamations against slave trading from
Trade Town to Cape Mount, and Cape Mount to Sierra Leone territory.
The Sierra Leone Gazette reported that ‘we are called upon by higher
motives than mere regard to our interest and convenience, to interpose
the powerful influence (which this colony has lately eminently proved
it possesses) between these unfortunate people and their utter ruin and
destruction’.5
However, Sierra Leoneans involved in the trade ignored the Liberian
blockade and Governor Neil Campbell rescinded the Sierra Leone block-
ade in 1827.6 This was under the explicit orders of Earl Bathurst, who
directed Campbell that ‘a blockade is strictly a belligerent measure, and
authorized only by a state of War. It is not one to which you can have
recourse solely for the purpose of putting down the Slave Trade’.7 This
mixed message regarding the international legality of slave trade sup-
pression continued through the 1830s. The relationship between the
naval squadrons and both colonies were not always easy, with some
governors requesting more naval involvement closer to Sierra Leone
and the naval commanders preferring to focus on the Bights, where the
majority of slave trading was taking place.
Campbell wrote to Commodore Bullen requesting that he spend more
time patrolling the Gallinas and Sherbro areas. Although Campbell
wrote that he did not want Bathurst to ‘consider these remarks arise
from any desire to interfere with another branch of service totally
Table 4.1 Sources of slaves, 1808–63

Bight of
Biafra and
Gulf of
Sierra Windward Gold Bight of Guinea
Leone Coast Coast Benin islands Totals
1808–1810 3,190 753 2,660 26,051 14,743 47,397
1811–1815 1,111 997 1,273 42,096 33,161 78,638
1816–1820 3,859 1,372 368 17,618 12,523 35,740
1821–1825 15,461 2,516 688 19,151 32,423 70,239
1826–1830 8,496 1,604 1,440 20,852 40,811 73,203
1831–1835 7,006 490 841 13,208 29,963 51,508
1836–1840 13,584 1,685 702 23,147 23,669 62,787
1841–1845 3,623 21,734 3,984 29,341
1846–1850 3,515 26,427 2,736 32,678
1851–1855 612 3,767 2 4,381
1856–1860 1,028 6,583 673 8,284
1861–1863 3,794 3,794
Totals 61,485 9,417 7,972 224,428 194,688 497,990
Source: Slave Voyages Database.
distinct from my own’, his recommended course of action was that

Bullen direct one ship to patrol between the Gallinas and the Gambia
at all times. He claimed that ‘although the number of slaves exported
from that part of Africa bears but a very small proportion to those who
are exported from Benin and Biafra, it is, I presume, of great import-
ance that in the immediate vicinity of Sierra Leone the traffic of slaves
should be entirely put an end to’.8 The Admiralty did not agree with this
prioritization of the colony and in 1826, the Secretary to the Admiralty
recommended moving the Mixed Courts from Freetown to Fernando
Po, closer to the source of slave captures, to reduce the time between
capture and adjudication.9
Throughout his tenure, Lieutenant Governor Alexander Findlay com-
plained of a weak naval commitment to the suppression of the slave
trade. In 1830, he wrote complaining ‘that the Colony is left without
Naval Protection for 4 or 5 Months together and the Slaver Traders
insult the Colony with impunity’.10 This was followed by complaints
in 1831 that Commodore Hayes was reluctant to cooperate in sending
an ‘Expedition to the Pongos to obtain the release of certain Liberated
Africans illegally detained in Slavery in that place’.11 Sierra Leoneans
were also facing difficulties in convincing the Temne and Loko to give
up the slave trade and cease slave raids on each other and the colony. In
October 1831, Findlay reported on the ‘Dissatisfaction of the Chiefs in
the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone with the measures taken for seizing
the Slaves sent by them thro’ the Rivers of the Colony’ noting that ‘they
have stopped the Trade and put the Purrah on the Colony’.12 By the end
of Findlay’s tenure, things had not improved overall, with his despatch
of February 1833 noting, ‘Naval Squadron unsuccessful in consequence
of the small extent of Force, only four Prizes taken. Four Vessels have
lately left the Nunez + Pongos with Slave. Pluto Steam Vessel has taken
nothing since she has been on the Coast as she has been stationery in
the Bights and her Station consequently known to the Slave Traders’.13
In a tone that conveyed the general sentiment of the Colonial Office
at this time regarding Sierra Leone, Findlay complained that ‘I wish the
government could with propriety give up the management of the col-
ony to those persons of colour who appear ambitious to have the gov-
ernment of it but if that should ever be the case, I would say, God help
the Liberated Africans.’ Findlay was ‘convinced before the end of twelve
months, two thirds of them would be again sold into slavery, and there
would be nothing but civil war amongst them’.14
The Christianizing and civilizing of indigenous groups was taking
place slowly, but steadily. Commerce was flourishing – almost too much
in the mind of many who had hoped that agriculture would prevail in
Sierra Leone and provide an alternative model for plantation production.
But the relationship between Sierra Leone and British humanitarians
in this period was complicated by the colony’s growing pains and the
humanitarians’ focus on the West Indies. The issue of apprenticeship, so
vital to the Birmingham anti-slavery activists after abolition, was seen
as too complex in Sierra Leone, where apprenticeship was a regular fea-
ture of the ‘civilizing’ process for newly liberated Africans. During the
period of the Courts of Mixed Commission (1807–63), roughly 50,000
recaptives were disembarked in Freetown, with 12,765 of those arriving
between 1814 and 1824.15 These recaptives required food, clothing and
shelter, as well as education and employment. MacCarthy’s parish plan,
while abandoned officially, still functioned in terms of apprenticing
out newly arrived Liberated Africans to the villages, with the Liberated
African department providing education and the basic needs. Without
the strict bureaucracy of the early 1820s, however, the apprenticeship
system became a means for settled Liberated Africans to accumulate
wealth by ‘buying’ apprentices from the government. Not all officials
were comfortable with this arrangement. Rather than contacting the
metropolitan authorities and risking the intervention of anti-slavery
activists as in the past, governors took matters into their own hands,
either supporting or condemning the practice.
Clearly frustrated by the official attempts to end the slave trade

through treaties and naval suppression, Sierra Leone’s governors in the
1830s had instead focused on increasing legitimate trade, operating on
the belief that free and open trade in African produce and British manu-
factures would quell the demand for slaving. Governor Henry Dundas
Campbell travelled to Magbele, on the Rokelle River, to resolve an
ongoing conflict between two factions of the Loko. Rather than insist
that all the parties to the treaty renounce the slave trade, the treaty sim-
ply ensured that all routes to the interior from Freetown would be kept
open for free trading.16 Campbell informed Lord Glenelg that, in nego-
tiating the treaty with Dala Modu, the chief of the Rokelle region, he
had conceded ‘a trifling increase of expenditure, but I have a confident
hope your Lordship will not deem it worthy of notice, when the great
advantages gained by this Convention in a Commercial point of view,
are considered’. These advantages included ‘the opening of the commu-
nications with the interior ... the introduction of British Manufactures ...
authority ... over the Native Chiefs, and consequent protection which it
will afford to British Subjects, and their property, the immense increase
in the shipping of Timber ... [and] the security obtained for the recovery
of Liberated Africans’.17 This approach to slave trade suppression would
have interesting consequences in the late 1830s and 1840s, contribut-
ing, as it did, to the exponential growth of Liberated African trade with
the interior. The growth of Sierra Leone commerce in this period, as
well as the development of a Creole culture amongst the original settlers
and the increasing population of Liberated Africans meant that despite
the British anti-slavery movement’s neglect of the colony in this period
while they focused on West Indies emancipation and American aboli-
tion, Sierra Leoneans had an increased attachment to British interest.
With trade representing Sierra Leone’s best hope for suppressing the
slave trade, the emergence of Liberian competition proved unnerving.
This expansion was not accompanied by a corresponding growth in
Liberian military or naval presence along the coast. This meant that
trade was disrupted by American settlement, but subsequent wars
could not be effectively ended. As the decade progressed, the Gola
and Dei began a prolonged war and slave trading began again from
the interior.18 The Liberian settlements, supported only by a minimal
anti-slavery squadron and the ACS militia in Monrovia, were unable to
control these internal conflicts, which the Sierra Leonean traders saw as
contravening their anti-slavery mission and disrupting their own legit-
imate commerce. Liberia was, in the view of many in Sierra Leone and
Britain, partly to blame for the continuing slave trade.
This was in part because for much of the 1820s, the ACS was strug-
gling with finances, attempting to win support from Congress, and
encouraging emigration through the press, speaking tours, and
through the support of the federal government. The society focused
almost exclusively during these years on securing the backing of the
government, attempting to turn the organization into a federal assist-
ance programme. They spared little attention at the national level to
building strong, grassroots support for the idea, particularly neglecting
the very people whom they were proposing to help. With little concern
for African American opinion, or awareness of the regional nuances of
arguments that could be used to convince them, ACS leaders focused
instead on getting Congress to pass legislation supporting the purchase
of land in West Africa, naval support for the colonies, the provision of
new emigrants, and even the funds to send ships of emigrants. But with
the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, the ACS lost access to import-
ant government funding.
One of Jackson’s first acts upon taking office was the veto of a bill to
expand Liberia.19 The early negative reports on the colony appearing in
the African Repository combined with a recalcitrant federal government
meant that both private and public funds began to dry up, as did African
American enthusiasm for the project. The US government’s refusal to
cooperate in slave trade patrols after 1828 meant that Liberia was effect-
ively open to the slave trade once again, with only the Liberian militia
to prevent it. This meant that the ACS was more reliant than ever on
sustaining good public opinion and receiving support from Britain.
However, British humanitarians were in no position to support
Liberia. With the re-founding of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823,
aimed at eradicating slavery once and for all, the anti-slavery move-
ment came under attack by the West Indies interests. Sierra Leone, with
its many problems, was an easy target in parliamentary debate. The col-
ony’s struggle to either produce significant exports – the early founders
had dreamed of cotton, coffee, and indigo – or convert vast swathes of
West Africa to British products was deemed a failure by many of the col-
ony’s critics. This failure was debated in parliament and supporters of
the colony were increasingly under pressure to remove Britain from any
obligation to Sierra Leone. In a famous series of letters, James Macqueen
wrote to Lord Liverpool arguing that
The complete failure of every effort which has hitherto been made
in and through Sierra Leone, to introduce industry, agriculture and
civilization into Africa, leaves the friends and supporters of the place
no resource, but to deny boldly that ever any such objects were enter-
tained by those who colonized it, and to assert, that it was merely
resorted to as a point from which Christianity, without any refer-
ence to industry, commerce and agriculture, might be introduced
into Africa.20
Macqueen pointed out that ‘the population of Sierra Leone, my Lord,

can no more be called voluntary residents, than the slaves in our West
India Colonies can’.21
The major problem seemed to be the perception of Sierra Leone as a
waste of government money. In fact, until 1829, expenditure did exceed
revenue, sometimes by vast amounts. MacCarthy had undertaken expen-
sive infrastructure projects, building churches, government offices, roads,
and developing the parishes. As the decades progressed, however, the
revenue of the colony increased and for the most part, the colony broke
even. This image problem remained with Sierra Leone for the duration of
its colonial existence. Part of the problem was the perceived expense of
the anti-slave trade squadron, which in the period between the abolition
of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery itself, faced criticism for its
expense. This put both the British government and the Colonial gover-
nors under pressure to find the most economical and efficient method
for suppressing the trade and integrating the recaptive population.
In Sierra Leone, meanwhile, the press and inhabitants were upset
with the negative portrayals of their society. ‘An Inhabitant’ wrote to
£90,000.00
£80,000.00
£70,000.00
£60,000.00
£50,000.00 Revenue
£40,000.00 Expenditure
£30,000.00
£20,000.00
£10,000.00
£-
1824
1827
1829
1831
1833
1835
1837
1839
1841
1843
1845
1847
1849
1851
1853
1855
1857
1859
1861
Figure 4.1 Revenue and expenditure in Sierra Leone, 1824–61

the editors of the Sierra Leone Gazette begging them to refute the ‘fallacy
and ignorance’ of the naysayers.22 The Gazette did just that, over a series
of editorials that sought to undermine the ‘gross calumnies and abuse
which have been so lavishly bestowed upon this unfortunate Colony,
and its inhabitants’.23 The Sierra Leone government was frustrated with
what they perceived to be the inconsistent policies emanating from
the metropole. MacCarthy’s successor, Charles Turner (1824–6) and
his successor Sir Neil Campbell (1826–7) were active in using the naval
squadron to pursue slavers, blockade known slaving areas, and annex
territories. Effective as these policies were, they were repeatedly repudi-
ated by the Colonial Office.
In the mid- to late-1820s, Sierra Leone was facing as much abuse at
home as Liberia was from anti-colonizationists. Despite having access
to an anti-slavery naval squadron, in many ways the British governors
were as constrained as their Liberian counterparts in terms of enforcing
an anti-slavery doctrine. Poor impressions of Sierra Leone were com-
bined with pressure from the growing Sierra Leonean establishment,
which, having had the benefit of a British education and seeing itself
representing the Christian, commercial, and civilizational aspects of
British life, did not understand why they were precluded from involve-
ment in the running of the colony.
The result of this campaign against Sierra Leone was a new experiment
in anti-slavery settlement on the island of Fernando Po. This island, in
the Bight of Biafra, was put forward by Macqueen as the solution to
Freetown’s poor location for policing the traffic and its association with
poor health. The Select Committee settled on Fernando Po following the
suggestions put forward not only by Macqueen, but also by the Admiralty
itself, which saw the Bights of Benin and Biafra as the key to the aboli-
tion of the slave trade and the chance for their withdrawal from Sierra
Leone.24 Macqueen and the commercial interests in both the West Indies
and Liverpool supported the move: the West Indian lobbyists because a
reduction in the foreign slave trade would bolster their own prices; the
Liverpool merchants because they were focused on the development of
the new palm oil trade in the Bights.25 Palm oil was becoming increas-
ingly important as an industrial product in Britain, used for processing
tin plate, lubricating machinery, and producing soap and candles.26
There were specifically humanitarian reasons for the shift as well,
although Macaulay and the majority of the African Institution did not
support the move. A Commission of Inquiry found, in 1827, that ‘as long
as the great majority of the slave captures shall be made in the Bights of
Biafra and Benin, and the place of their location is so far to windward as
Sierra Leone, we fear it will be exceedingly difficult to remove the evil

altogether’ and suggested that ‘a leeward station should be selected for
the establishment of the Courts of Mixed Commission’.27
From the outset, the governors of Sierra Leone and the employees of
the Courts of Mixed Commission were against the new colony, believ-
ing that moving the centre of British power in West Africa would mean
reduced interest in their success. As early as 1822, the Sierra Leone Gazette
was publishing editorials stating the fallacies of the pro-Fernando Po
and anti-Sierra Leone lobbies in London.28 London did not understand
the dispute until it played out in Freetown in 1827 in a clash between
Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen, the superintendent of Fernando Po,
and Lieutenant Colonel William Lumley, acting governor of Sierra Leone.
The latter refused to provision the former with the necessary men and
supplies to found the settlement until explicit orders were received from
London.29 Although Owen was successful in freeing over 2000 slaves
in the first few years of the settlement, his aggressive methods irritated
the British government and strained diplomatic ties in the region. Their
waning enthusiasm for the project found a voice in the ongoing com-
plaints of the Sierra Leoneans, particularly those who had joined the
settlement. In 1830, acting governor Fraser wrote to the Colonial Office
complaining of both Owen and his successor, Nichols’s, behaviour. He
enclosed a petition from mechanics on Fernando Po who ‘complain of
various arbitrary acts on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Nichols, and
seek redress from the authorities of this Colony’.30 Fraser accused Owen
and Nichols of forcing the Sierra Leonean mechanics who had accom-
panied the original expedition to remain in the failing colony. His
evidence was a petition from those mechanics that stated that ‘we the
undersigned ... do voluntarily make oath that we are forcibly detained
in this Settlement of Clarence on the Island of Fernandopo [sic] by the
power unjustly and illegally exercised by Lieut. Col. Edward Nicholls
[sic], Superintendent’.31 By calling into question the state of freedom in
the colony, Fraser and the Sierra Leoneans who objected to Fernando
Po were able to cast doubt on the humanitarian efficacy of the colony,
despite the apparent successes of Owen’s anti-slave trade campaign. The
Fernando Po experiment was gradually abandoned by the British gov-
ernment, and by 1832, the Admiralty had withdrawn entirely.32
Abolitionist attacks on Liberia
While religious and educational possibilities for Liberians were much

greater than for those remaining on plantations, they were seen as
inferior by free African Americans living in Northern cities because

of the surrounding threats of ‘barbarians’ and the threats of climate
and disease.33 Aside from these factors of environment, many African
Americans did have access to the institutions championed by Liberians
in their letters home. There were a number of schools in Philadelphia,
New York, and Boston directed specifically at educating free African
Americans, and the establishment of Oberlin College in Ohio in 1833
meant that higher education was also available.34
However, the opportunities available to those who took advantage of
educational institutions open to them within America had few pros-
pects for fulfilling any commercial or political ambitions free of the
fears that preyed upon successful African Americans. Liberia also pro-
vided hope of better opportunities for their children to attain a free,
middle class existence without the racial struggles that existed through-
out America. A letter from the Liberian settlers to African Americans
commented that there was ‘not a child or a youth in the colony but is
provided with an appropriate school’.35 Religious instruction and the
basic education provided, sporadically, in the colony were seen as great
steps toward personal and family advancement in the world. These
motivations also caused division between those who chose to emi-
grate and those who remained in America, with the latter believing the
former to be opportunistic and negligent of their duty to their fellow,
enslaved compatriots.
Despite the religious focus of almost all educational institutions in
Liberia, by the mid-1830s, the ACS was facing negative publicity from its
evangelical wing, who argued that the state colonization societies were
doing nothing to provide for the religious teaching and preparation of
emigrants. The lack of formal, institutional ties between American and
Liberian education was symptomatic of the uneasy relationship educated,
free African Americans had with the idea of African colonization and the
conflicted nature of the colonization experiment. The lack of continuous
structure also provided fodder for the anti-colonization movement in
the states, where they argued that the ACS was abandoning uneducated
slaves in the African wilderness. A letter to the editor of the anti-slavery
newspaper Freedom’s Journal in 1827 summarized this argument:
We are an unlettered people, brought up in ignorance, not one in a

hundred can read or write, not one in a thousand has a liberal educa-
tion; is there any fitness for such to be send into a far country, among
heathens, to convert or civilize them, when they themselves are nei-
ther civilized or Christianized?36
Some notable religious figures – Reverend Dr. Spring and Reverend John
B. Pinney – argued for the establishment of a CMS-like partnership in
order to provide religious instruction to the recently freed slaves landed
in Liberia.37 One of the drawbacks of independent, religious education
was that it was criticized for neglecting to prepare students. Whereas in
Sierra Leone, practical apprenticeships and liberal education were guar-
anteed to all settlers and recaptives, those who immigrated to Liberia
were frequently sent abroad without any education and with only rudi-
mentary skills.
Negative reports fuelled anti-colonization sentiment amongst African
Americans who had at first publicly supported the ACS. This included
the Reverend Richard Allen, who had sent off a group of emigrants in
1822 with his blessing, but who, by 1827, repudiated his allegiance to
the project.38 The settlers attempted to balance the negative reports
with their positive impressions, but these were usually published in the
colonizationist press, or the ACS’s annual reports, rather than in neutral
sources, furthering suspicion amongst those who feared forced removal
to an unhealthy, distant colony. In 1827, for instance, the citizens of
Monrovia held a meeting ‘for the purpose of considering the expedi-
ency of uniting in an address to the Coloured People of the United
States’.39 The reason this address was needed, they wrote, was that they
felt ‘much speculation and uncertainty continues to prevail among the
People of Colour in the United States, respecting our situation and pros-
pects in Africa: and many misrepresentations have been put in circula-
tion there, of a nature slanderous to us, and, in their effects, injurious
to them’.40
Part of the problem in communication was due to the varied regional
experiences of African Americans. While this address to the ‘People of
Colour in the United States’ explained that the reason for emigrating
was to secure ‘that liberty of speech, action, and conscience, which dis-
tinguishes the free enfranchised citizens of a free State’, many African
Americans living in Northern states in the mid-1820s felt they either
had that liberty or were close to securing it.41 James Forten, a promin-
ent black businessman and leader in Philadelphia, stated that if colon-
ization continued, ‘parents will be torn from their children – husbands
from their wives – brothers from brothers – and all the heart-rending
agonies which were endured by our forefathers when they were dragged
into bondage from Africa, will be again renewed, and with increased
anguish’.42 He and other emerging anti-colonizationists suggested that
if the situation was that bad, African Americans should migrate to the
West, where opportunities abounded.
The ACS was unable to see the regional differences in experience,

assuming that black Americans all had similar backgrounds and goals.
Most of the ‘observations’ published in ACS Annual Reports, the African
Repository, or Colonization Society pamphlets are either from white
observers, or ‘translated’ into ‘proper’ English or unnamed, confirm-
ing free black suspicion that they were invented or written by white
ACS supporters. Even those letters like the one sent by the Reverend
George McGill to Moses Sheppard of Baltimore that claims ‘tell the col-
oured people, from me, that we all here are free’ were seen as suspi-
cious once conspiracy theorizing and a general atmosphere of anxiety
had swept the African American community in the North in the late
1820s.43 Confirming certain African American prejudices about the
colony’s lack of educational opportunities, the ACS published regu-
lar ‘News from Africa’ segments to be distributed to various free black
communities. Those letters that are quoted verbatim from emancipated
slaves were full of misspelling and errors, confirming their belief that
without education, there was no point to the colony. The anti-coloni-
zationists in the North did not accept that the rudimentary education
that Liberians wrote home about with such enthusiasm could be better
than what they would have received in America, had they been allowed
to stay. Determined to improve the situation in America, the American
Anti-Slavery Society produced tracts stating that one of its purposes
was ‘To improve, by every means in its power, the condition of the free
people of colour, by promoting education among them, and by holding
out to them strong inducements to be honest, sober, industrious and
frugal’.44
The class and regional distinctions that influenced the development
of religious and educational institutions in Liberia provided fodder for
the abolitionists who rejected colonization. Reinforcing this idea was
the class divide reported by arriving settlers. Liberia was a closed soci-
ety fixated on social gradations. For example, Thomas Brown reported
that on arrival to the colony he was greeted warmly by the ‘first fam-
ilies’ but ‘It was well known we had property, and we afterwards found
this was the reason of our being so well received at first’.45 In contrast,
when the Skipwiths arrived, they reported that, ‘poor people that come
from america hav [sic] no chance to make aliving for the nativs do all
the work’. Peyton Skipwith reported that work was very difficult to
come by because the wealthy colonists employed nearly free indigen-
ous labour (he reported that they were ‘Slavs’).46 The society remained
closed to those without means, forcing many emigrants to rely on the
benevolence of former masters or other connections in America to
provide them with the capital to begin trades, farms, or commercial

enterprises. The cheap availability of the indigenous workforce made it
difficult for uneducated former slaves to earn the money they needed to
advance in society through unskilled manual labour.47 This caused ten-
sion between the newly arriving settlers and the surrounding African
communities. Even those former slaves sent with skills and some capital
found it difficult to establish themselves, and disasters abounded. One
unlucky settler ‘has never drawn any land’ even though the ACS agent
was supposed to distribute lots to arriving settlers.48
Meanwhile, other settlers were growing in wealth and power, particu-
larly those who were free before they emigrated from Northern states
or the Upper South. They looked down on the uneducated who were
emigrating, and saw them as a burden on the struggling country. Settler
James C. Minor wrote back to America that ‘our recaptured Africans
seem somewhat presumptuous [sic] at times’.49 Virginian Samson Ceasar
wrote back to Henry Westfall complaining that ‘I must Say that I am
afraid that our Country never will improve as it [unclear: ought?] unti[ll]
the people in the United States keep their Slaves that they have raised
[like] as dum as horses at home and Send those here who will be A help
to improve the Country’.50 These letters and reports circulated amongst
free African Americans and were published alongside denunciations of
colonization in abolition newspapers such as The Emancipator and The
Liberator, who used them as further proof of the degraded nature of
Liberian society.
After realizing that the abolitionists were winning the propaganda
war in America and Britain, some in the ACS leadership – particularly
on the state level – sought out the support of Liberian testimonies and
interested African Americans who would be willing to go to Liberia
and publish or testify on their findings. The abolitionists had already
adopted this strategy themselves, and the ACS finally caught on that
the letters being sent back and published in the African Repository were
not enough to convince a sceptical public – and in fact sometimes con-
firmed their opinions of both the ACS and the colony (and the type of
people living there). Returned colonist Thomas Brown offered himself
for examination by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1834. His tes-
timony condemned the colony in the mind of abolitionists and many
African Americans because it depicted the colony as in a far worse state
than life for many free blacks in America.
The majority of Liberians, however, were from the Upper South, with
a smaller number from the Deep South and to them the conditions
of Liberia were often – though not always – an improvement on their
previous experiences. The Liberian response to Brown’s testimony was

recorded in the Herald in August of the same year. Impugning Brown’s
character, the Herald reported that it wanted to ‘let the world know that
Mr. Brown’s eagerness after Camwood and Ivory was the cause of the
Baptists Mission at Big Town, in the Vey country, being broken up, by
his sending trade goods into that region consigned to the young man
then employed by the Monrovia Baptist Missionary Society as their
Teacher. Let these things be known, and then let every man, friend or
foe, judge Mr. Brown’s impartiality’.51 The Liberians were aware that the
abolitionists in America were publicizing their misfortunes. The Herald
published selections from the Emancipator ‘Re the abolition movt. and
its charges against colonization’.52 There were plenty of charges for the
abolitionists to make, particularly in the fields of education and colo-
nial representation.
Transatlantic abolitionism
In many ways this poor publicity was due to the continued public rela-
tions myopia of the ACS leaders, who, influenced by their paternalistic
and racialist ideas, continued to rely on mostly white testimony to try
to win over free black support. Even more controversially, they contin-
ued to seek support for their cause amongst all groups. The nullification
crisis came to a head in early 1833, when South Carolina’s threat of
nullification of tariffs that it deemed detrimental to its economy was
moderated by a re-negotiated tariff that demonstrated the strength
of the South within the Union. Although the Southern states did not
secede on this occasion, the crisis made it clear that the threat of seces-
sion was enough. This combined with changing attitudes toward free
African Americans in Virginia after the attempted uprising in 1831 by
the slave Nat Turner – and the widespread belief amongst slave owners
that the larger uprising resulted from the help provided by free black
Virginians – to emphasize a growing sectional divide in approaches to
gradual emancipation and the slave economy. Many slaveholders had
abandoned the ameliorative stance of their predecessors for an overtly
pro-slavery argument. This challenged the pre-1830s consensus on
‘slavery as a necessary evil’ as slaveholders and their apologists began
to declaim on the benefits of the system and the inherent inferiority of
free and enslaved African Americans.
With a more strident pro-slavery argument emerging in the South,
the more radical abolitionist argument moved closer to the mainstream
of anti-slavery thinking in the North. Theodore Dwight Weld wrote
to the Corresponding Secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society

that ‘I have rebuked the spirit of Colonization ... .its persecution of
the free Black – its efforts to gag discussion and muzzle the Press – its
denunciations against emancipation in that all all that makes it what
it is’.53 Publications denouncing the ACS and the colonization mission
abounded. Fruits of Colonizationism! used ACS literature to demonstrate
‘unholy prejudice against the people of color, which is fostered and
nourished by the American Colonization Society’.54 The sections were
beginning to polarise from the gradual emancipation sentiments of the
early Republic, and immediate abolitionists’ arguments, in the vein of
Garrison, condemned slavery as a national moral sin that had to be
purged immediately.
The ACS, which had represented the earlier gradual emancipation
vanguard, now found itself struggling to please both sides and was sim-
ply exasperating everyone. State colonization societies grew in strength
in this period partially because of the impossibility of a national move-
ment in this changing climate. Although the case against the ACS
had been established with Walker’s Appeal and Garrison’s Thoughts on
African Colonization, the growth of the moral suasion argument against
slavery in the 1830s put the ACS on the defensive. One of the results of
this fragmentation was an escalation of the propaganda war with the
abolitionists. Pamphlets on the dangers of abolitionism ranged from
the innocuous to the pacifist to the overtly racist. Richard Colfax, for
instance, published an anti-abolitionist tract in 1833 that contained
thirty pages of ‘scientific’ evidence arguing that people of African
descent were naturally inferior and therefore must be removed from
America so that the country did not become tainted.55 The offensive
tone of the pamphlet reveals the strain of colonizationist thinking
that most drew the attack of black and white immediatist abolitionists.
Although the ACS rhetoric was mostly dominated by the paternalistic
attitude that prevailed in American and British humanitarian discourse
in this period, the presence of a literate, politicized black wing of the
abolitionist movement disrupted the traditional narrative of ‘childlike’
black slaves suffering with only the magnanimous ACS to lift them
from their condition and give them the opportunity to begin anew in
Africa.
As a result of increasing dissatisfaction with the extant gradual-
ist anti-slavery options, between 1830 and 1833, immediate abolition
came to dominate the anti-slavery movements in both countries. The
differences between the colonization and immediatist movements
were primarily ideological, and they competed for anti-slavery support
because each thought the other was undermining its cause. William
Lloyd Garrison, once a member of the ACS himself, launched a cam-
paign against the ACS in the wake of the publication of David Walker’s
Appeal in 1829. Walker argued against the colonizing plan, popular-
izing the belief amongst some African Americans that the plan was
intended to remove the influence of free blacks on the enslaved popu-
lation. Condemning those who had already chosen to emigrate, Walker
wrote ‘what our brethren could have been thinking about, who have
left their native land and home and gone away to Africa, I am unable to
say. This country is as much ours as it is the whites, whether they will
admit it now or not, they will see and believe it by and by’.56
Garrison’s new radical anti-slavery tone inspired others, who took
up this theme, writing their own tracts on the inevitable failure of
the ACS, its inherent racism, and its inability to provide an adequate
solution for the moral problem of slavery. Garrison himself wrote a
book condemning the ACS entitled Thoughts on African Colonization.
These publications were forwarded to important British abolitionists in
order to reduce overseas support for the ACS. British Quaker abolition-
ist James Cropper, influenced by Garrisonian views, wrote to Thomas
Clarkson imploring him to change his stance on colonization: ‘It has
caused me deep regret to see thy name amongst those of many long-
tried friends of humanity as supporters of the American Colonization
Society’.57
Meanwhile, the immediate abolition movement in Britain had been
established with the support of both moderates and radicals who hoped
to leave behind the moderate solution embodied by Sierra Leone. In
1830, a meeting of the top anti-slavery figures – including Clarkson,
Buxton, Wilberforce, and Brougham – delivered a petition to parliament
demanding immediate abolition of slavery in the empire.58 The first
year of the campaign by the newly established Society for the Abolition
of Slavery throughout the British Dominions was a success in terms
of bringing together the different factions. Despite early unity in the
British movement, by 1831 it was clear that, just as in the American anti-
slavery movement, there was disagreement over what method would be
most effective for achieving abolition and emancipation. Joseph Sturge
and George Stephen used the newly established Agency Committee to
pressure the parliament into passing an abolition act; Thomas Fowell
Buxton favoured ameliorative reforms. Buxton and some of his key sup-
porters never really gave up on the idea of colonization, or as he later
put it, the positive effects of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’,
while Sturge and like-minded supporters of the Agency Committee
were much more interested in the immediatism of Garrison and the

early black abolitionists in America.
Although they retained a unified front, it is likely that these issues
were also simmering under the surface of the confused British reaction
to the ACS. Was immediatism realistic? Was compensation for slave-
holders more or less morally reprehensible than including slaveholders
on the ACS board? How would abolition and economic and property
concerns be reconciled? In the end, the act passed by parliament was
a compromise, which abolished slavery in 1834, but with the continu-
ance of an ‘apprenticeship’ system, as well as £20 million compensation
for slaveholders. However, this did not stop either Garrisonian immedi-
atists praising the British Anti-Slavery Society’s unqualified success, or
the continued rejection of the ACS by most immediate abolitionists.59
The abolition of slavery marked a triumph for the Agency Committee
and the British Anti-Slavery Society, despite the concessions of £20
million in compensation to the planters and the establishment of the
‘apprenticeship’ system. In Britain, the shift from an abolition cam-
paign left leaders divided over which problem to tackle next. The mod-
erate, political abolition campaign that had provided a united front to
achieve the end of slavery in British territory now began to reveal the
significant differences in approach favoured by different leaders. Most
turned their attention to the United States, where slavery and the fight
over its continued existence was only beginning. Amongst supporters
of American abolition, there was an atmosphere during abolition leader
William Lloyd Garrison’s 1833 visit of passing the torch to this new
abolitionist. When Garrison made a visit to Buxton, Priscilla Buxton
commented to her aunt, ‘Oh how glad I am that we are disbanding
rather than forming our army!’60 Even as that army was supposedly
disbanding, some anti-slavery activists were aligning themselves with
new international anti-slavery causes.61
British abolition was also recognized as a vital blow to slavery by
American anti-slavery activists, despite the compensation of slavehold-
ers. This was a period of increasing radicalization in the anti-slavery
movement in America, and the British abolition of slavery galvanized
the proponents of radical moral suasion because of the apparent suc-
cess of the moral campaign in ‘abolitionizing’ the British population.
Garrison came over to England to meet prominent abolitionists in 1833
and 1834, both to encourage their support of his mission, and to stem
their support for the ACS. Because there was no viable pro-slavery argu-
ment in Britain at this point, Garrison’s primary rhetorical opponent
when honing his message overseas was the ACS. He found a willing
supporter in James Cropper, who focused his attention on converting

British supporters of the ACS to Garrisonian abolition. Cropper sent a
letter to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1834 proposing a plan
‘to expose the delusion of the Colonization Society’ calling it ‘the most
Diabolical Scheme that ever was proposed under the mask of benevo-
lence’ and decrying Thomas Clarkson’s support for the movement.62
The abolition movement was gaining momentum against the coloniza-
tion society, particularly in the North where there was growing concern
with the emerging pro-slavery argument.
Even as Garrison was making the rounds in England and Scotland
successfully promoting his immediatist abolitionism, Elliot Cresson
reopened his campaign for British support of the ACS. Although the
ACS had been regarded sceptically by many British anti-slavery activ-
ists in the period up to British abolition, supporters hoped that with the
abolition of slavery Britain would have more resources to dedicate to all
American anti-slavery movements.
Cresson focused his attention particularly on the influential Quaker
circles, much like the early colonizationists had when they had been
considering Sierra Leone as a destination for African Americans. He
attempted to re-unite Friends in Britain with an organization popular
amongst in America. His ally, Thomas Hodgkin, was called on to help
publicize the new colony established at Bassa Cove by the New York and
Pennsylvania Colonization Societies. Cresson wrote that ‘we hope ere
long to have at Bassa Cove, our temperance and peace colony ... and thus
by avoiding those causes of offence which have kept some Friends aloof
from the present society attract them to aid and co-operate with our
new plan’.63 John Stuart and James Mindenhall, Quakers from North
Carolina, wrote to Josiah Foster in England assuring him that emigra-
tion to Liberia was purely voluntary and ‘if Friends here had ever dis-
covered any compulsory measure in the active agents of that country we
should immediately withhold all correspondence and connexion with
them’.64 One British abolitionist wrote to an American friend that while
the British anti-slavery movement was at its height it seemed foolish to
divide attention with the colonization question, but ‘now Britain has so
nobly washed from her hands the polluted stains of the slave-trade and
slavery, it does seem very desirable, that these purified hands should be
employed in dispensing such blessings to Africa as the establishment of
a Colony similar to that of Liberia is calculated to furnish’.65
Despite these pleas and the occasional conversion to the colonization
cause, there was little change in the official anti-slavery hierarchy’s atti-
tude toward the ACS. British anti-slavery’s heavy involvement with the
American abolition movement – united at this point against coloniza-

tion – precluded any cooperation with the ACS, despite many individ-
ual Friends’ connections with the organization.
However, negative views of Liberia in Britain were not solely derived
from Garrison’s attacks. The anonymous author of a pamphlet in sup-
port of American colonization efforts explained that Britain’s imper-
ial interests were directing its cooperation with certain American
anti-slavery activities and not others:
A spirit of Commercial enterprise is exploring with eager expectation

the regions opened in Africa ... and the American Colony at Liberia
occupies a territory which would be very convenient for the use of
British capitalists, engaged in British commerce. And besides, this
Colony is becoming no mean rival of Sierra Leone. It is introducing
republican principles and American institutions and enterprise into
that Continent, in a manner which is not fitted to secure the special
favor of those who hold us and our institutions in contempt.66
The writer went on to explain that not only was the British anti-slav-
ery movement being misled in its views by the strength of Garrison’s
attacks, but it was forming negative opinions based on Sierra Leonean
reports that suggested Liberia would be a rival.
Attempting to transition directly from the slave trade to legitimate
trade through the colonization of slave trading areas meant that the
anti-slavery advocates found themselves competing for the same com-
mercial rights that American and British slave traders had before them.
This introduced a new element of commercial, territorial expansionist
rhetoric into both the Sierra Leonean and Liberian, and transatlantic
anti-slavery discourse. The ACS believed that it had an advantage over
the colony at Sierra Leone because its settlers were believed to have
an inherent immunity to the diseases of West Africa. In the Eleventh
Annual Report of the society in 1828, they predicted that ‘it may be
said that a jealousy of the advantages at which we are grasping, and
which, if we proceed, we will obtain, will cause the interference of other
nations’.67
In 1832, Liberia’s primary English supporter, the Quaker anti-slavery
advocate, Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, published his African Colonization, which
similarly pointed to the potential for rivalry as well as cooperation.
the British, whose cruisers have long frequented the coast, for the
purpose of suppressing the slave-trade, have possessed a greater
influence over the Natives than any other civilized power ... but it is
obvious that it must give way before the more powerful and bene-
ficial influence of America, exerted by means of her Colonization
Society.68
Hodgkin went on in his defence of the ACS, arguing that ‘as the prom-
inent opposers of the Colonization Society are those who are known
as the patrons of Sierra Leone, or as their friends and associates, I can-
not suppose them ignorant of the difficulties inseparable from African
colonization, or justifiable in the application which they have made of
them in their attacks on Liberia’.69 He took up the popular line of anti-
Sierra Leone sentiment, arguing that the colony had had its fair share of
problems. Therefore, to point to the problems of Liberia was hypocrit-
ical, if one supported Sierra Leone.
Despite the success of the Sierra Leonean campaign against the
Fernando Po colony, the continuance of the slave trade cast doubt on
the whole Sierra Leone experiment. The suspicion of continued involve-
ment in slave trading amongst Liberated Africans contributed to the
disrepute the colony was held in during this decade. Sierra Leonean
colonists were also frequently said to be involved in the slave trade
themselves. An 1830 correspondence dealt with the fact that various
inhabitants were ‘accused by the Chief Justice of Slave Trading’ and
noted that in the ‘trial of T.E. Cowan a Liberated African Schoolmaster
for selling one of his Pupils into Slavery’ the defendant was found
guilty and given a sentence of five years imprisonment.70 In America,
a publication condemning the ACS pointed to British experience and
the inability of Sierra Leone to put down the slave trade: ‘Judge Jeffcot,
Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, officially declared in 1831, that the colony
“established for the express purpose of suppressing this vile traffic, was made
a mart for carrying it on”. Parliamentary enquiries put the fact beyond
all doubt, that instances have occurred in the colony of persons being
actually spirited away, and sold as slaves, by their fellow colonists’.71
In 1833, Lieutenant Governor Findlay described Thomas H. Parker, a
former police magistrate, as having been ‘dismissed in consequence of
his having been accused of the crime of aiding and abetting in the slave
trade’.72 Although rare, this kind of incident served to reinforce anti-
slavery activists’ existing desire to move on from Sierra Leone – primar-
ily to focus on the West Indies and their potential, or the United States
and its abolition campaign.
Commercial rivalries between Sierra Leone and Liberia were also grow-
ing in this period. While Sierra Leoneans had looked on with sympathy
and some dismay as the Americans founded their colony at Cape Mesurado,
by the mid-1830s, there was a different tone emerging in their dealings
with the expanding group of Liberian settlements. This was increasingly
important as it became obvious to Sierra Leoneans and the British anti-
slavery squadron that the settlements were not completely effective in
suppressing the slave trade. Between 1808 and 1843, the slave trade was
actually seen to be increasing, especially under the US flag. The Slave
Voyages Database shows that the number of slaving vessels using the US
flag increased in the region of Sierra Leone, particularly between 1825 and
1840, even as the total number of slaves embarked in the region grew.
These negative impressions of Liberia’s influence on the slave trade
were confirmed for the British public by the interactions between
Sierra Leone and Liberia. Captain Polkinghorne of H.M.S. Isis wrote to
Lieutenant Governor Temple (1833–4) of Sierra Leone to inform him
about the state of Liberia in 1834. Polkinghorne wrote that ‘I wish it
was in my power to confirm all or even a considerable part of the glow-
ing picture set before the world by American Writers; the fact is the
Settlement is still in its infancy, the difficulties they have met with have
been manifold, the Climate is very bad indeed’.73 This was reported
back to the Colonial Office in Temple’s dispatch, with the accompany-
ing note that ‘this information is confirmed by all that I have heard
from various other quarters’.74 Mounting tensions between the colonies
over anti-slavery policies and territorial expansion during the 1830s
extended to the metropolitan organizations. American commitment to
the suppression of the slave trade was weak and, in the opinion of the
British squadron, totally ineffective.
The drop in the number of recaptives in Liberia was the primary cause
of complaint amongst the British anti-slavery squadron. As described
by several visitors to and inhabitants of Liberia, there were rumours
of slaveholding in the colony itself. ACS officials received word of this
anxiously, and revoked one of the only colonial measures intended to
assimilate the indigenous groups into Liberian settler lifestyles: appren-
ticeship of children. In their twenty-second annual report in 1838, the
ACS revoked an apprenticeship law because ‘some evils might, they
apprehended, result, and more, they felt certain, would be imagined, as
well from what it omitted as from what it contained’.75
However, more often than not the continuation of slavery and the
slave trade in the region of Liberia was to do with ineffectual controls,
poorly enforced treaties, and a hapless naval squadron. Although the
colony was founded with money for the recaptive slaves to resettle, and
between 1827 and 1830, 240 recaptives were resettled, by 1835 only 37
more had been sent and by 1839, only 9 more.76 Unlike Sierra Leone,
which had the Courts of Mixed Commission to contribute to its intake
of recaptives, Liberia had no official court for adjudicating the capture of
slave vessels. Compounded with the US government’s reluctance to par-
ticipate wholeheartedly in the anti-slave trade mission, Liberia therefore
was slow to get involved in the abolition of slavery in its region. This was
not for want of initiative on the part of settlers, many of whom would
have gladly participated in militia raids on slaving factories – as they
would do at the end of the decade – but want of metropolitan support.
Slaving was frequent within territory under the supposed jurisdiction
of the colony and the local groups with whom the colony had anti-
slavery treaties. The slavers were mostly Dei and Gola, either acting on
their own, or cooperating with Pedro Blanco and his factor, Theodore
Canot.77 Digbe, at the mouth of the Po River northeast of Monrovia,
was reportedly a major point of embarkation during the mid-1830s.78
The number of slaves embarked within the colony’s supposed sphere
of influence actually grew during the first few years of the settlement.
Jehudi Ashmun had been proactive in his approach to slaving in the
region of the colony, assembling militias to destroy slave factories near
Digbe and Bushrod Island in 1825 and 1826. He had also concluded
several treaties ‘for the entire abolition of the slave trade, with the con-
currence of the native Chiefs, along a given line of coast contiguous to
this Agency’.79 In the period 1831–5, there was a marked decrease in
slave trading in Liberian territories.
However, ‘the actions of the colony did not seem to intimidate the
local rulers’ who were soon back to the slave trade and as the Liberia
Herald suggested, the Gola and Dei wars, and Canot and Blanco’s
willingness to take advantage of them must have contributed to the
increase in the slave trade in the period 1836–40.80 The colony’s inef-
fectiveness in putting down the internal slave trade was commented
upon by abolitionists and Sierra Leoneans. This complaint occurred
frequently enough for the ACS Annual Report in 1837 to point out
that while ‘we desire, indeed, and confidently hope, to be the means of
kindling up on that wide and benighted continent, the beacon lights
of science and Christianity; but our immediate design is Colonization,
and Colonization only’.81 The ACS had argued that it was promoting
anti-slavery activity in the region and that it was carrying commerce
and Christianity to Africa; however, in the face of the evidence against
it, the society had to concede that its present purposes seemed to go
only so far on their own, particularly with the vague congressional and
presidential support they were receiving.
The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 had seen a precipitous

decline in US government interest in Liberia or any colonization plan.
Viewed as overly expensive and exceeding the original remit, colon-
ization was deemed to be no longer a function of the US government
agent in Africa or the US Navy Squadron off the coast. In 1832 the
agency was shut down. Although the Navy remained off the coast and
the Navy Department continued to be involved in the defence and sup-
ply of the colony, no continuous presence could be guaranteed, and
the slave squadron was increasingly inadequate to face the growth of a
renewed slave trade.82 The American government refused in 1833 to be
party to a ‘right-of-search’ agreement with Britain and France. In 1834
Palmerston, desperate for some assistance in the increasingly embarrass-
ing continuing trade, offered to ignore internal slave trading along the
American coast, but the Jackson government refused again, hardening
its line in defence of slavery.83 By 1838 there had been a steep drop in
the number of slave vessels captured by American ships. The low num-
ber of recaptives sent to Liberia further confirmed that the American
squadron was either inefficient or ill-equipped to handle the number of
vessels now using the American flag to escape British capture.
The existence of slave factories in Grand Bassa and the Liberian gov-
ernment’s inability to deal with slavery because of its constant wars with
indigenous peoples throughout the first decade of its operation were fre-
quently commented upon by the Sierra Leone Gazette. The inability of the
Liberian settlement to take care of its own problems or successfully abol-
ish the slave trade in the regions under its control played a major part
in the growing antipathy between the colonies and consequently the
metropolitan organizations supporting them. In a self-reinforcing dia-
logue between the anti-colonizationists, the British and American gov-
ernments, and the settlers themselves, a negative image of Liberia was
developing. This contributed in part to the poor reception of the ACS in
the United States, although the development of a distinctive Liberian set-
tler society also served to fuel the growing alienation between Liberians
and African Americans. Most importantly, this negative impression of
Liberia’s efficacy as an anti-slavery colony contributed to the British loss
of confidence in the ACS, which in turn hurt the ACS’s ability to fund-
raise and gain anti-slavery momentum within American society.
* * *
In this period, Liberia faced increasingly divided metropolitan anti-slav-

ery sentiment, weakening its own position in West Africa. Sierra Leone’s
vision of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’, meanwhile, was

aided by the relative strength and cohesion of the metropolitan anti-
slavery movement. Although it was not focused on Sierra Leone, the
anti-slavery lobby’s strength protected Sierra Leone’s anti-slavery activ-
ities on the ground. In terms of the anti-slavery colonization goals of
civilization and Christianity, the two colonies had different approaches
but similar aims.
Their other role – as a naval base and depot for recaptive slaves – drew
the two colonies into conflict from the very beginning. The early devel-
opment of the colonies depended heavily on the military and naval
support received by the settlers. The slave trade was ongoing and naval
support in particular was crucial to deterring European and American
as well as hostile West African slave traders from kidnapping the new
settlers and selling them back into slavery, as critics in the metropole
alleged would happen. As signatories to slave trade treaties with Britain,
included in the Treaty of Ghent which had concluded the War of 1812,
America had an obligation to patrol the West African coast as well as
intercept any slaving vessels in American waters. However, the extent
of this patrol was kept minimal, and Congress strictly controlled the
ability of Britain to either jointly patrol with American ships or stop
and search suspected American slavers. Congress and the president also
retained the right to try suspected American slavers in the United States,
refusing to cede authority to the Courts of Mixed Commission.84
The two colonies had similar goals that stemmed from both metro-
politan expectations and settler interests. These included the promo-
tion of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ as well as explicit
intervention in the slave trade. However, these settlements had differ-
ent methods for achieving those goals, and already from this period
these different approaches were affecting the ways that the metropol-
itan organizations saw anti-slavery colonization. Sierra Leoneans and
Liberians did not abandon the communication networks established
during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and wrote
about their experiences with a view to their audiences in America and
Britain. Communication of metropolitan and colonial ideologies, goals,
and results played a major role in both Sierra Leone and Liberia in the
1820s. Sierra Leone’s continued use of apprentice labour and both col-
onies’ communication of successes in religious and educational devel-
opments painted a complicated picture for both colonies’ metropolitan
anti-slavery supporters.
A comparative and connective approach reveals that even when the
colonies were not directly engaging with one another, the metropolitan
societies and the networks of communication around the Atlantic basin

kept them informed of each other’s development and aware of expecta-
tions and disappointments. As the first chapter explained, there were
longstanding competitive tensions between the British and American
colonization movements. This chapter demonstrated that the develop-
ment of the societies’ institutions, discussed in Part I, did not take place
in a vacuum. The perceived failures of anti-slavery activity in Sierra
Leone and Liberia affected the fates of the anti-slavery colonization
movements in the metropole during the crucial period of the develop-
ment of immediatism. Sierra Leone’s governors and influential settlers,
in particular, were keen to highlight Liberia’s role in that failure. While
not the primary cause of the turn to immediatism, the perception of
failure gave fuel to the fire of the new emancipation movement, as well
as to the reemergence of competitive feeling between the British and
American colonization movements.
5
Slave Trade Interventionism
Eighteen thirty eight marked the beginning of a new period of

anti-slavery colonization history for a number of reasons. First, the
Birmingham branch of the anti-slavery movement, under Sturge, suc-
cessfully achieved their goal of the abolition of apprenticeship in the
West Indies. This meant that the split between the slave trade and
apprenticeship aspects of the British post-abolition anti-slavery move-
ment was temporarily resolved and Buxton would be able to focus
humanitarian attention on his campaign against the slave trade in
Africa. Second, 1838 saw the establishment of a new Liberian constitu-
tion and the unification of the state colonies under a commonwealth
system of government, with a commonwealth governor appointed by
the ACS. Only Maryland in Liberia retained a separate government
under their governor John Russwurm. This gave Liberians a greater say
in government and resolved many of their demands. As Commander
Andrew Foote noted in his description of the colony at this time ‘the
United States government were beginning to realize the expediency of
keeping permanently a naval force on the west coast of Africa; and not-
withstanding difficulties and apprehensions resting gloomily on the
future, Governor Buchannan, on landing with the new constitution, at
Monrovia, on the first of April, 1839, seems to have inaugurated a new
era for the African race’.1
Despite the general focus of the British anti-slavery movement on
the West Indies and American immediatist abolition, the slow changes
in this period from 1833 to 1838 in Sierra Leone’s civil society, educa-
tional development, and demands for political involvement caught the
interest of Thomas Fowell Buxton. While Sturge and the Birmingham
radicals were focused on emancipation and the Scottish were involved
in Garrisonianism, Buxton was looking into possible solutions to the
107
continuing slave trade and seeing some hope of progress from the
‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ model emerging in Freetown
and Liberia. The publication of Buxton’s The Slave Trade and the corre-
sponding Remedy in 1839 and 1840 initiated a new interest in colon-
ization and the civilizing project amongst both British and American
anti-slavery activists. The mid-1830s had witnessed the low-point in
popularity of the subject of anti-slavery colonization in both Britain
and America. The period 1839–42 would see its height in Britain, even
as the British supporters finally rejected the ACS and grew increasingly
interested in Liberia as a rival to Sierra Leone.
This chapter looks at the brief period between the abolition of
apprenticeship in Britain and the failure of the Niger Expedition, when
the institutions, material culture, commerce, and networks that linked
Sierra Leone and Britain helped the settlers push for regional domin-
ance in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In both Sierra Leone and Liberia
there were movements amongst the elite to expand the role for black
settlers in the operation of the colonies. These movements were primar-
ily directed by the new commercial classes, who also objected to the
expansion of one another’s economic and territorial influence along
the coast. Responding to these sentiments, the ACS and Thomas Fowell
Buxton’s new organization – the African Civilization Society – publicly
argued over aims and methods.2 The values of Civilization, Commerce,
and Christianity which had developed both as colonizationist rhetoric
and as the practical approach of Sierra Leonean and Liberian settlers to
colonial life evolved over the course of the late 1830s and 1840s into
an expansionist form of sub-imperial anti-slavery intervention in West
Africa.
In both Sierra Leonean and Liberian communications with the
metropole, participation in militias, burgeoning ‘native’ missionary
activity, and a growing middle class interested in political participation
and commercial success revealed the strength of the settlers’ commit-
ment to the anti-slavery cause and the development of their societies.
Sierra Leone and Liberia responded to the anti-slavery critiques and
the development of their own tactics of Civilization, Commerce, and
Christianity with an anti-slavery campaign that pitted the British and
American anti-slavery colonization societies against each other.
Metropolitan developments
With the immediatists’ aims achieved in 1838, Buxton used the oppor-
tunity to promote his own anti-slavery vision, reviving many of the
Slave Trade Interventionism 109
moderate and African-focused policies of the African Institution. Buxton

had been investigating the continuing slave trade in West Africa and his
involvement had been part of the reason for Palmerston’s pressure on
the Americans in the mid-1830s. After emancipation was achieved in
the West Indies, the influential Baptist West Indian missionaries there
were also eager to turn their attention to Africa. The Reverend Edmund
Eliot, late Archdeacon of Barbados, wrote to Buxton in September 1838
to say that ‘I have often thought that the time may arrive when persons
of African descent born in W[est] I[ndies] and brought up either there
or in this country with an education qualifying them for the ministry
will be induced to settle among the present ignorant and heathen tribes
of Africa (their constitution fitting them for the climate) and preach the
Gospel of salvation to those who have not yet heard it’.3 The primary
supporters of Sturge in his battle for emancipation now saw Buxton’s
Africa plan as the next stage.
Buxton then published The Slave Trade in 1839 and the accompany-
ing Remedy in 1840, which set out a plan to ‘most materially aid in
the civilization of Africa, and so pave the way for the successful exer-
tions of others, whether they be directed to colonization and the cul-
tivation of the soil or to commercial intercourse, or to that which is
immeasurably superior to them all, the establishment of the Christian
faith on the Continent of Africa’.4 Buxton’s connections to the CMS
and Wesleyan Mission (he was vice-president of the CMS and regularly
acted as a chair for the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society) and his
moderate Quaker beliefs informed his ideas about how the African slave
trade could be combated, particularly focusing on the resumption of a
CMS-style parish project.5
This plan formalized the application of commerce, civilization, and
Christianity.6 He cited numerous examples of Civilization, Commerce,
and Christianity at work, transforming the slave trade in West Africa.
Of Liberia, he wrote, ‘Liberia presents the example of a black commu-
nity managing their own affairs on civilised principles ... [and] the
natives bordering on the American Colony of Liberia [are] very desirous
of putting their children under his care’.7 Although hesitant to whole-
heartedly support Sierra Leone, Buxton did acknowledge that ‘The only
glimmer of civilization; the only attempt at legitimate commerce; the
only prosecution, however faint, of agriculture, are to be found at Sierra
Leone ... and there alone the Slave Trade has been in any degree arrested’.8
In a memorandum regarding the African Civilization Society, Buxton
wrote that its purpose was ‘the deliverance of Africa, by calling forth
her own resources’ by measures undertaken by both the Society and
the government, including increasing the naval squadron, obtaining

Fernando Po, initiating treaties along the coast and interior of Africa,
forming a trading company and reviving the African Institution.9
The ACS had continued to make overtures and attempted to promote
its cause in Britain throughout the 1830s. The African Civilization
Society, which planned expeditions to parts of West Africa, hoping to
promote ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’, had very similar
goals to those of the ACS, as far as ACS Secretary Ralph Gurley was
concerned. This sentiment was confirmed for him in the publication
of Buxton’s seminal work. Gurley was certain that ‘the measures pro-
posed by Sir T.F. Buxton, and which had already been sanctioned by
the British government, indicated to many of the friends of Africa in
the United States, a mighty change of opinion in the English mind’.10
Heaping praise on the colonization efforts of Britain’s past, Gurley spoke
to the Pennsylvania Colonization Society. He emphasized the moral
claims of the British Empire, as well as the shared rebukes felt by both
Sierra Leone and Liberia, asking ‘were the Genius of Great Britain now
to stand before us and survey that empire upon which the sun is said
never to set, to what region would he more exultingly point – to what
spot look with an eye more brightly kindling with delight than to this
reproached colony of Sierra Leone?’ He went beyond simple praise of
what he determined was a return to colonizationist principles, claiming
that ‘the world is coming forward to sustain our enterprise. Mr. Buxton
has only adopted the original principles and policy of the American
Colonization Society; his plans are but a republication of theirs’.11
Taking the publication of The Slave Trade and Its Remedy as a cue,
Gurley initiated a series of public exchanges with Buxton, debating the
anti-slavery and civilizing credentials of the two organizations. The let-
ters reveal the perceived differences articulated by Buxton, who claimed
that his organization was a civilization society, and not a colonization
society. However, this was shortly followed by the acknowledgement
that ‘it is true, I may be desirous that we should form settlements, and
even that we should obtain the right of jurisdiction in certain districts’
but he continued to claim that ‘it is no part of my plan to extend the
British empire, or to encourage emigration to Africa, excepting so far as
may be requisite for the benefit of that country’.12 In a letter to Buxton in
1841, Gurley wrote listing the things the ACS had in common with the
African Civilization Society, including a hatred of the slave trade, pro-
motion of the civilization of Africa and the African mind, employment
of free African descendents in the scheme, engagement with African
rulers, the means of achieving civilization, and an understanding of
the good achieved. As far as he could tell, the two organizations only
disagreed about ‘the establishment of colonies or communities of free
persons of colour in Africa destined to self-government and to a per-
manent and independent political existence’ and ‘the question of tem-
porary authority to be exercised over such colonies, for their benefit by
the governments of England or the United States’.13
Even beyond their common goals, Gurley argued that they had com-
mon enemies, writing that ‘the union of the friends and foes of unlim-
ited slavery in America against the sober, practical, and most benevolent
scheme of colonization, resembles the coalition of the Chartists and the
Times to overthrow the African Civilization Society’.14 Clearly, with so
much in common, the two organizations would have been well-served
by combining forces and working together. After the Panic of 1837 dam-
aged the finances of the ACS, the society was even more determined to
secure British support for its initiatives. Gurley pleaded with Buxton,
asking ‘may we not hope that in Africa, as we have a common object,
there may be mutual kindness and cooperation?’15
Buxton and his allies, meanwhile, were in the process of convincing
Lord John Russell, the new Colonial Secretary, that Britain should sup-
port the establishment of a new settlement and model farm on the
Niger River. The Niger Expedition, scheduled to take place over the
course of 1841 and 1842, was organized by Buxton and the Civilization
Society as a practical solution to the continuance of the slave trade: he
proposed that a model society should be established in the Niger region
to demonstrate legitimate commerce, Christianity, and the values of
British civilization, thereby arresting the need for the traffic in slaves.
In August 1840 Buxton wrote to Russell that ‘the main object then
of the Expedition is to promote the extended cultivation of the soil
of Africa, & in order to do this, British Stations are to be established
on the river, & African produce admitted for British Consumption on
favourable terms’.16 Buxton warned Russell that ‘it is to be borne in
mind that opportunities of this kind if much longer neglected may be
finally lost ... the American Settlement of Liberia occupies 200 miles of
the Western Coast, and as we learn by a recent letter from Governor
Buchanan, they are continually accepting the voluntary allegiance of
Chiefs whose dominion stretches far into the Interior’.17
Buxton needed to convince Russell of the expediency of the exped-
ition because he faced growing antagonism from within the anti-slavery
movement. His plan, despite his protests otherwise to Gurley, included
the establishment of British Sovereignty over separate settlements
because ‘we might then ensure security of persons & property within
the precincts of our settlement & we might take care that there at least
none of the native superstitions & bloody rites were practised’.18 Sturge
and the ‘moral radicals’ objected to the violence they perceived would
be necessary to enforcing anti-slave trade treaties in West Africa and
declaring British sovereignty. The expedition was also contrary to the
anti-expansionist policy pursued in West Africa since Governor Turner’s
annexations had been disallowed in 1824. Russell, however, appeared
already to be on Buxton’s side, supporting in 1839 the establishment of
anti-slavery treaties with local headmen and encouraging the develop-
ment of model farms and legitimate commerce.19 He wrote to Freetown
in 1840 to tell Governor Doherty that England would promise favour-
able trading with those leaders who promised to ban slaving in their
territories. He did not, however, fully endorse the establishment of set-
tlements under British Sovereignty unless they were easy to come by
and would require no more than a simple treaty.20
While Britain was experiencing unprecedented levels of anti-slavery
cooperation, the late 1830s and early 1840s were a bad time for the
anti-slavery movement in America. Not only was the country still fol-
lowing an unstated pro-slavery line on its anti-slave trade obligations,
but the immediatist abolition movement was splintering. Garrison’s
domination of the anti-slavery movement began to falter in 1837, when
questions about his non-resistance and moral suasion approach were
raised by Lewis Tappan and others who preferred a more political, con-
frontational approach.
With increasing debate between these two wings of the abolition
movement, the ACS experienced a period of relative relief from the
constant barrages of negative publicity it had received for much of
the 1830s. Combined with the revived interest of the British in Africa,
the ACS saw this as an opportunity to promote its cause. After the 1837
economic crisis, many of the early philanthropic organizations were
faced with severely reduced budgets. The ACS in particular, as a decreas-
ingly popular group, resorted to soliciting for funds from their British
and American allies. Some of these solicitations were surprising: in 1839,
Gurley sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society requesting
‘The friends of African Colonization are compelled by a sense of duty
to a great and good cause to appeal to the benevolence of their fellow
Citizens for immediate pecuniary assistance to enable them to sustain
Governor Buchanan in his resolute and effectual measures against the
slave trade and to add strength and influence to the colony of Liberia’.21
Gurley described the progress that the colony was making in civiliza-
tion, education, and the eradication of the slave trade. He also cited
Buxton’s work and the promised financial support of the Philadelphia

Friends as testaments to the character of the ACS and its operations in
Africa.
However, African American disapproval for the scheme had not
diminished, in spite of the new constitution, the reinvigorated anti-
slavery campaign in West Africa, or the black governorship of John
Russwurm in Maryland in Liberia. After the brief success of the New
York Colonization Society’s settlement at Edina, colonization once
again collapsed in New York. A meeting of black New Yorkers in 1839
declared that the Christianizing and anti-slavery purposes of the
ACS were not sufficient to outdo the discomfort and hardship that
emigrants would experience on arrival in Liberia. They went on to
condemn these purposes stating that ‘The fact, that Christian colon-
ization has either uniformly wrought the extermination of the abo-
rigines, or that it tends to do so, except where the Colonists themselves
lapse into barbarism – as was the case with the Portuguese settlements
on the western coast of Africa – has not unfrequently been adduced,
to prove the ill success that will probably attend all similar efforts for
the Christianization of the heathen’.22 The authors explained that the
effects of colonization by Christians tended to result in the creation
of superior and inferior castes. They then pointed to the example of
Sierra Leone: ‘The experiment made by the British Government at
Sierra Leone, gives but feeble encouragement to the hope, that col-
onies composed, for the most part, of needy, ignorant, and uneducated
settlers, exposed to the malignant influences of every kind, which
abound on the western coast, will ever contribute either to putting
down the slave trade, or to Christianizing the aborigines’.23 While
the abolition movement became concerned with internal politics,
anti-colonizationist African Americans persisted in their resistance to
the organization, and this provided evidence enough for the African
Civilization Society to reject the ACS.
During this time, Sturge and the new British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society (BFASS) were organizing the first World Anti-Slavery Convention
in London in 1840. This was the pinnacle of Anglo-American anti-slav-
ery cooperation, as well as the beginning of its decline. The convention
was dominated by the BFASS’s agenda: the meeting focused on slavery
in America, its acceptance by the churches, the internal slave trade, the
Texas question, the status of free African Americans, and some discus-
sion of international slavery.24 Other talking points in the press revolved
around the public shunning of O’Connell, and Buxton’s denunciation
of colonization.
The convention is best known for the debates between the newly cre-
ated American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, led by Lewis Tappan,
and Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. Divided over a number
of issues, including the practicalities of moral suasion, the inclusion of
women as equal members of the society, and the fiery anti-constitu-
tionalism promoted by Garrison, the Society had split in 1840, imme-
diately before the World Convention.25 The Convention’s proceedings
were dominated by these internal disputes, as Garrison’s group brought
women to act as delegates and the British and American and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Societies refused to recognize them as delegates.
The Anti-Slavery Convention did not include delegates from the ACS,
and the organization received numerous attacks from the American
and British anti-slavery societies. Repeating many of the accusations
he made in his public letters to Gurley, Buxton denied that the organi-
zations had any common ground, articulating that while the African
Civilization Society did plan to explore and establish model settle-
ments in the Niger region, this was vastly different from the purposes
of the ACS in settling free African Americans and manumitted slaves in
Liberia. Despite Buxton’s continued disavowals of the ACS, his mission
was clearly very similar. Even the American Anti-Slavery Society recog-
nized this, although that did not stop the society from offering some
support to the African Civilization Society. Its Executive Committee
wrote in September 1840 that ‘we have sympathized with you in all
your Trials, and are now rejoicing with you in the success which the
God of the oppressed has so wonderfully vouchsafed to you. We bid
you God-speed in your efforts to civilize and Christianize Africa, and
especially to redeem oppressed and mis-governed India’.26 The ACS did
receive limited support: Gurley reported that Dr. Hodgkin, the colo-
nizationists’ important ally in Britain, and the author of numerous
pamphlets in support of the organization, ‘came before the Anti-slavery
Convention to sustain the cause of African colonization against attacks
made there upon it’.27 Hodgkin’s appeal was to no avail, though, and
the body unanimously voted against the ACS.28
Despite the convention’s success, broader expansionist issues were
coming to the fore in the wider anti-slavery movement that challenged
transatlantic cooperation. By 1840 and 1841, issues of Texas’ annex-
ation were dominating diplomatic and anti-slavery manoeuvrings
between Britain and America. Texas, which was at this point an inde-
pendent republic, interested the BFASS, which hoped that the British
government would sign a treaty recognizing Texas as independent on
the condition of the abolition of slavery within its borders. While the
US government had been reluctant to annex Texas in the late 1830s,

by the beginning of Tyler’s presidency in 1841, Southern politicians
began to see the British interest as a threat to the security of slavery in
the South.
In 1840, the BFASS requested of Lord Palmerston that any commer-
cial treaties with Texas include a condemnation of slavery. Palmerston’s
secretary replied that ‘it does not appear to Lord Palmerston, on the one
hand, that the refusal of Great Britain to conclude a commercial Treaty
with Texas would have had any Effect in inducing the Texians [sic] to
abolish Slavery within their Territory’ and therefore this would be left
out on commercial grounds.29 As with the emerging approach toward
native treaties in West Africa, anti-slavery forces in the British govern-
ment seemed reluctant to force abolition through any means but the
encouragement of legitimate trade in its place. Palmerston’s secretary
went on to write ‘it may indeed be hoped that the greater Intercourse
between Great Britain and Texas, which will probably result from the
Treaty may have the Effect of mitigating rather than of aggravating the
Evils arising out of the legal Existence of Slavery in that Republic’.30
In Sturge’s account of his 1841 visit to America, he recalled that ‘in
consequence of the promising aspect of these negotiations between
General Hamilton and Lord Palmerston in favour of Texas, the paper
money issued by that piratical government, and which had not been
previously negociable [sic] for more than one tenth of its nominal value,
rapidly rose’. He believed that this would be ‘an evil’ unless any rec-
ognition included abolition.31 It was clear to many abolitionists that
Palmerston was not interested in enforcing an anti-slavery doctrine if
it conflicted with strategic and commercial plans. Despite the fact that
the BFASS was getting nowhere with the British government, American
abolitionists worried that interference by the British society and gov-
ernment was creating an Anglophobic desire for annexation. This issue
would reach its peak in the mid-1840s, but in this early period, British
abolitionists were hoping to use commercial incentives and British rec-
ognition to bring about abolition in parts of America that were not yet
under US control.
However, the abolitionists underestimated Palmerston’s investment
in the anti-slavery cause. Palmerston had, in fact, negotiated for the abo-
lition of the slave trade with Sam Houston in 1840.32 However, he was
also under increasing pressure to push for a new, comprehensive anti-
slave trade treaty with a number of European countries – known as the
Convention of London – that would allow for search and seizure. The
pressure stemmed from the debate between free trade and protectionist
approaches to sugar: by 1841, British sugar was twice the price of the
rest of the world and the only way the British government could justify
its shift to a free trade policy to the abolition lobby would be to ensure
that other sugar producing countries enforced the slave trade ban as
well. Palmerston strongly believed in the connection between abolish-
ing the slave trade and expanding legitimate commerce, declaring of
the slave trade treaties in 1842 that ‘if the nations of the world could
extirpate this abominable traffic, and if the vast population of Africa
could by that means be left free to betake themselves to peaceful and
innocent trade, the greatest commercial benefit would accrue, not to
England only, but to every civilized nation which engages in maritime
commerce’.33
Exemplifying the growing diplomatic tensions between Britain and
America over the issue of slavery, the US ambassador intervened in
the proposed treaty, convincing Prime Minister Robert Peel to allow
Lord Ashburton and US Senator Daniel Webster to negotiate a new
treaty in Washington. The new treaty, signed in 1842, agreed that the
United States would provide a committed West Africa squadron for
patrolling American ships, as well as help resolving a number of out-
standing border disputes in Maine and in the Midwest. However, it
was referred to as the ‘Ashburton Capitulation’ by Palmerston, who
felt that the Americans had thwarted British attempts to control the
slave trade. Peel preferred apparent capitulation over the territories to
the possibility of war with the United States, but it was clear that not
everyone in his government was as comfortable with the success of
American military demands or their purported commitment to anti-
slavery patrolling.34
In part, this was due to the ongoing conflicts over slave ship cases
such as the Creole and Amistad. The Creole was an American ship oper-
ating in the internal slave trade between Virginia and Louisiana. When
the slaves onboard revolted and directed the ship to the Bahamas, the
British governor of Nassau stated that the slaves would be free upon
their release from the ship. This caused a diplomatic incident as both
British and American anti-slavery activists argued that if states’ rights
were invoked to protect slavery within the United States, slaveholders
could not then expect to invoke federal jurisdiction against the British
in this case. The abolitionists were successful in making their argu-
ment, though resolution of the issue did involve negotiation between
US Ambassador to England, Edward Everett; Foreign Secretary Lord
Aberdeen; US Secretary of State Daniel Webster; and British Ambassador
to the United States Henry Fox.35
The Amistad case was probably the most telling example of Anglo-
American anti-slavery rivalry during this period, and, as it involved
slaves shipped from Sierra Leone, it resonated both in the colonies and
the metropolitan colonization societies. The Amistad was a Spanish ship,
transhipping Mende slaves within Cuba in 1839. The slaves revolted dur-
ing the second Cuban journey, directing their captors to take them back
to Africa. They did not comply, instead directing the ship North, and
soon were captured outside of New York. The Spaniards decided to take
their captives to court for the murder of their shipmate. Lewis Tappan,
at this point still a member of the Anti-Slavery Society and founder of its
New York auxiliary, took up the cause of the slaves, arguing their case in
court. Meanwhile, the Amistad Committee was founded to raise money
for the captives, provide them with education, and supervise their con-
version to Christianity. Their case was dismissed in Connecticut by a
pro-slavery judge, but the prosecution decided to take the appeal to
the Supreme Court. The defence asked former president John Quincy
Adams to argue the case of the Mende. Finally, in 1841, the Supreme
Court determined that the captives were, in fact, free. The new celeb-
rities toured the Northern states as part of the Amistad Committee’s
campaign to raise money for their return to Africa and popularize the
anti-slavery movement.36
In a great irony for the ACS, the Anti-Slavery Society and the Amistad
Committee wrote to Sierra Leone’s Governor John Jeremie for his help
in locating the Mende homeland of the captives so that they might be
returned to Sierra Leone. Lewis Tappan, along with other anti-slavery
activists involved with the Amistad Committee, Simon Jocelyn, and
Joshua Leavitt, wrote to Jeremie that ‘it is known at Sierra Leone that
there is such a country in the interior of Africa, as Mendi’. He inquired,
acknowledging the ongoing anti-slave trade work of Sierra Leone and
Liberia, ‘what effect has the breaking up of the great slave factories
between Sierra Leone and Monrovia already had and what effect is it
likely to have in a short time, say, one or two years, in diffusing such a
degree of peace among the tribes inhabiting the intermediate country
between the home of these Africans and the coast as to render it proper
for them to attempt a return to their own country?’ Tappan and his
committee members even went so far as to ask whether they should
be resettled (with their accompanying missionaries) in Sierra Leone,
Monrovia, or the Gallinas.37
Since Governor Jeremie had died in the intervening period, Governor
Fergusson responded that ‘on their arrival here they and their backers
will be cordially received, adequately maintained, and provided for’.38
However, Lord Stanley in the Colonial Office objected to this gener-

ous offer, stating that he ‘cannot approve of your applying any portion
of the funds at the disposal of your Government to the cases of these
people’.39 Although Fergusson assured them that the journey to Mende
country would be safe, without the promised provisions, the mission-
aries and returnees chose to settle on Sherbro Island, negotiating with
Harry Tucker for permanent land for an American mission, called the
Mendi Mission. The Amistad Committee eventually evolved into the
American Missionary Association in 1846, continuing the work begun
by the Mende Mission.40
The decision of the Amistad Committee, and its successor, the
American Missionary Association, to transport the Amistad captives
and the American mission to Africa to Sierra Leone, rather than Liberia,
reflects the nature of the colonization debate in America, even dur-
ing this brief period of popularity. Clearly the public was interested in
the Amistad case and anti-slavery and mission enthusiasts subscribed to
the fund to repatriate the captive slaves. However, rather than tarnish
the mission by taking them to the existing Liberian settlement, Tappan
preferred to associate with the British colonization project. While the
Mende ethnicity of the captives would naturally suggest Sierra Leone,
the failure of the group to actually make it to Mende territory weakened
this argument for association with that colony over Liberia.
In response to the deteriorating international situation for the ACS
signalled by all of these separate events, Gurley organized a mission to
England which had several purposes, including to get ‘official informa-
tion of the intentions of the British Government in carrying out the
recently disclosed plans, relative to Western Africa – of making treaties
for acquiring jurisdiction of the coast or country’. He hoped to urge
‘them to abstain from all that part of the coast lying between Gallinas
or Cape Mount, on the north, and the river Assinee on the east’, the area
claimed by Liberia.41
Lord Russell’s response to Gurley’s mission took its cue from Buxton’s
earlier responses and foreshadowed the British government’s offi-
cial stance toward Liberia over the next two decades, asking for a for-
mal proposition from the US government regarding territory.42 Elliot
Cresson declared that Gurley had only increased British commercial
interest in the region and the American Minister concurred that now
that Liberia was in the British government’s sights, British commer-
cial interests would ensure that Liberia was made into a patron state.43
This was a far cry from the initial cooperation extended to the Liberian
settlement by the Foreign Office, despite Governor MacCarthy’s fears,44
and reflected the changing situation on the ground in Sierra Leone and
Liberia, where settler commercial and territorial rivalries were driving
local and metropolitan imperial ambitions.
Colonial interventions
Liberia and Sierra Leone had begun with similar aims and governmen-
tal support for their anti-slave trade activities. The changing nature of
their relationships with the metropolitan anti-slavery organizations
and their evolving identification with the anti-slavery mission con-
tributed to the tensions that emerged between the ACS and Buxton’s
Civilization Society. Growing suspicious of each other’s motives in
their attempts to suppress the slave trade, Sierra Leone and Liberia both
engaged in a period of military intervention that reflected their frus-
trations with metropolitan perceptions of their efficacy. The territories
they patrolled, however, were contested, and revealed the expansionist
undertones of their anti-slavery campaigns.
In the late 1830s and 1840s, the militia became a powerful force in
the campaign against the slave trade and the establishment of legitim-
ate trade with the Liberian interior. The new governor of the united
and confederated Liberian settlements Thomas Buchanan repeat-
edly reported in his dispatches to the ACS that he was encountering
opposition from owners of both slave and legitimate trade factories in
Liberia and adjacent territories. In the 1830s, the Dei, once the dom-
inant power in the Liberian hinterland, were losing influence in the
region as the Gola, led by Yenge, and the Condo confederation, led by
the Loma chief Gotola (often written Goterah) grew in strength. These
groups were involved in slave raiding and the ongoing wars to the col-
ony’s northwest hindered the trade in legitimate produce. In 1839, a
man named Getumbe (often written Gatoomba, Gah-toom-bah, or Gay
Toombay), of Vai and Gola parentage, allied himself with the Condo
against the Dei and Gola and the colony.45 Getumbe planned an attack
on Millsburg, a settlement in the interior along the St. Paul’s River. This
was forestalled by Buchanan, who called up the colonial militia and
destroyed Getumbe’s town, Suen, five miles north of Millsburg.
The result of the destruction of Suen was an increase in the perceived
strength of the colony, with Dei leaders agreeing to an expansion in the
colony’s territory north of the St. Paul River to the Po River along the
Atlantic coast.46 Kings Brister, Bromley, Peter, Willey, and Mama Ketzie
of the Dei also agreed to provisions banning the slave trade in their
jurisdiction as well as any ‘intercourse with those engaged in the Slave
Trade’, allowing free trade with the colonists, and agreeing that ‘neither
shelter nor protection shall be given to Gay Toombay, who is now at war
with the Colony’.47 Despite the treaty, Getembe’s alliance with Gotola
and the Condo resulted in several threats to the colony’s settlements in
Millsburg and Heddington in 1840.
Sion Harris, a settler in Heddington, wrote to Samuel Wilkeson of the
ACS describing the battle. His narrative reveals the isolated nature of
some of these settlements, the confusion about with whom the settlers
were currently at war, and the settlers’ attitudes towards the sporadic
warfare with their indigenous neighbours. Harris wrote that ‘after vari-
ous threatening from Goterah & Gatoomba the town of Heddington
was attacked by 3 or 4 hundred warriors Composed of Botswains,
Mambo, Veys & Deys, headed by Goterah and 4 other warriors’.48 Harris
was successful in leading the townspeople in an impromptu defence
of the town, and even took credit for killing the Loma leader, Gotola.
He described the confrontation with Gotola, who appeared ‘shaking,
growling, bellowing, calling his men to come up, [claiming] the town
was his’.49 An ACS resolution praised ‘the conduct of the volunteer
Liberia militia, in their recent march against the fierce and treacherous
Chieftain Go-toom-bah, and their assault and capture of his well for-
tified town’, stating that it ‘was marked by extraordinary coolness and
courage, worthy of true and brave men, prepared to offer up even their
lives in a just defence of their rights, family and country’.50
Although the American government had provided ships to combat
the slave trade, there were not enough to be effective on their own and
the Americans’ distaste for British interference in their affairs precluded
the British anti-slavery squadron’s capture of ships using the American
flag. Increasingly frustrated with the American squadron’s ineffective-
ness and freed by the British government to pursue a stronger anti-slav-
ery intervention, Jeremie’s government encouraged Captain Denman
of the anti-slavery squadron to pursue slavers in the disputed Gallinas,
Bassa Cove, and Cape Mount areas.51 In November 1840, Commander
Denman destroyed the slave factories at the Gallinas, citing the rescue
of Mrs. Troy Norman, a Sierra Leonean washerwoman, as his reason
for initiating hostilities.52 In December, Lieutenant Seagram destroyed
the factories at New Cestos.53 They successfully captured the infam-
ous slave trader Canot and brought him to Monrovia to be tried by
Liberian Governor Thomas Buchanan, who was eager to participate in
anti-slavery campaigns. The British anti-slavery squadron was finally
given free rein to conduct the campaigns it had been seeking, increasing
its annual captures from twenty-five before 1838, to roughly sixty-six
annually between 1838 and 1840.54 W.P. Jayne, a missionary in Liberia,

reported, ‘There are now five vessels in our harbor – all English; one
of them a man-of-war. They are now all from New Cestus, and have
brought with them Capt. Canot – the notorious slaver – and all his
goods. He has given up his traffic in human souls, and is going to turn
his attention to legitimate commerce’.55
Governors Doherty, Jeremie, and Fergusson, who led Sierra Leone dur-
ing this period, pursued a Sierra Leonean-driven intervention policy.
Colonel Richard Doherty (1837–40) oversaw reforms in the Liberated
African department, a revival of CMS involvement in the colony, and
a general expansion of the colony’s influence in the region.56 John
Jeremie (1840–1) was a longstanding anti-slavery activist and friend of
Buxton. He had acted as a justice in St. Lucia and as the advocate general
of Mauritius, promoting anti-slavery actions in both places, and even
publishing Four Essays on Colonial Slavery.57 As governor of Sierra Leone,
Jeremie pursued a strongly interventionist anti-slavery policy, ordering
the destruction of slave factories along the coast. Jeremie’s successors –
John Carr (1841) and William Fergusson (1841–2, 1844–5) – were both
Afro-West Indians, representing a shift toward the Africanization of the
civil service during this period.
Jeremie proposed in 1840 that, with the anticipated success of the Niger
expedition, another British anti-slavery colony made up of West Indian
former slaves who could introduce plantation farming should be estab-
lished: ‘It would be the South Australian scheme, except that our colo-
nists, adapted to the climate, would have black faces’. Where would this
settlement colony be? Buxton argued for Fernando Po; Jeremie wrote in
support of ‘any station between Acra [sic] and Loando (indeed I conceive
we should have two, one near the Congo)’. He went as far as to imagine the
entire west coast of Africa under British control, ‘connecting the southern
extremity with Ascension, the northern with St. Jago; and thus placing
the whole in direct communication with the line of all our outward-
bound Indian trade by the latter port, and our homeward-bound by the
former’.58 Jeremie argued that ‘the only way to suppress slaving ... would
be for Sierra Leone to establish and to man “stockades” in the Rio Nunez,
the Gallinas and Liberia ... Sierra Leone, that is, should expand’.59
Military suppression of the slave trade – either through naval attacks
on slave ships, or shows of force to reluctant indigenous leaders – was
a favourite method of the Colonial Government during this period, in
contrast to the commercial interventions that dominated the 1830s.
Military intervention usually concluded with a treaty that condemned
the continuance of slavery and promised protection and aid for leaders
who renounced it. Buxton explained in The Slave Trade and Its Remedy
that in the expansion of anti-slavery influence on the continent, ‘I look
forward to the employment, almost exclusively, of the African race. A
few Europeans may be required in some leading departments, but the
great body of our agents must have African blood in their veins, and of
course to the entire exclusion of our troops’.60 Governor Doherty had
also seen an expanded role for the Sierra Leoneans in the military sup-
pression of the slave trade, writing in 1838 that, ‘in my opinion the slave
trade from the Gambia to the Gallinhas might be kept in check, and
finally almost entirely suppressed, by employing to cruise in the Rivers
small steam vessels ... navigated by Africans: and an officer attachment
from the African Corps might be placed on board with advantage, to
act as marines’.61 Buxton and Doherty both articulated the hope that
the use of military intervention in ending the West African slave trade
would rely on Sierra Leonean participation almost exclusively.
Service in the military had offered Sierra Leoneans the opportunity
to earn a pension and in some cases receive land for their families. The
pensions were considered to be generous, and in 1828, at least 1000
former soldiers were receiving nearly £12,000 annually.62 Petitions from
family members of deceased servicemen are well-represented in the let-
ters received by the Colonial Governor. For example, Jane Streeter peti-
tioned the Colonial Government writing ‘That in the late war with the
Natives in the River Gambia, your petitioner has lost her son, her last and
only support, B.C. Leigh’, and asking for a pension in her old age, since
her son was her only means of support.63 Lieutenant Governor Findlay
had responded to her petition positively, commenting that her son had
served selflessly. Although the government often sought to delay pen-
sions, or deny them outright, it was clear to both the militia officers and
their families that these were a right and that following the appropri-
ate channels of petitioning the governor, council, and ultimately, the
British Government, would help them establish their claims.
These sources indicate that the involvement of Sierra Leoneans in
anti-slavery military intervention was not merely an idle wish on the
part of Buxton and the British humanitarians but had been part of the
Sierra Leonean culture since at least the 1820s. While there is little to
indicate whether participation in this anti-slavery campaign occurred
because it was paid work with a guaranteed pension, or because of ideo-
logical commitment to the suppression of the slave trade, involvement
in the military suppression of the slave trade did offer Sierra Leoneans
a chance both to demonstrate their commitment to British middle class
values and to pursue common anti-slavery goals. David Killingray high-
lights the role that military service played in establishing the British
identity of many Britons of African descent and writes that ‘in 1823
an Act of Parliament legitimised the position of black seamen to be “as
much British seamen as a white man would be” ’.64 Their involvement
in military interventions along the Gambia and Niger Rivers helped to
establish intercourse with the local populations and also set up trade
links in the areas newly ‘liberated’ from the slave trade.
The militia also provided ambitious Sierra Leoneans with the abil-
ity to gain status and local prominence as officers. Just as many black
soldiers and sailors in the British armed forces experienced full parity
with their white cohorts, membership in the militia provided a space
where race was generally disregarded. In the index to correspondence
for 1831, one entry describes a ‘dinner given by the Garrison to the
Militia. All party distinctions as to Colour dispensed with’.65 Gaining
a commission in the militia went hand-in-hand with gaining influ-
ence in the settler community: prominent merchants and government
employees used militia service to augment their claims to equality with
white British merchants and government officials. Their participation
in militia activities, particularly in defence of property, in pursuit of
legitimate trade alliances, and in combating the slave trade, tied mem-
bers of the militia into the civilizing project of modernity.66
The government also frequently suspended troublesome settlers from
their commissions as a form of censure. In 1835, Lieutenant Governor
Campbell suspended John Hamilton, a merchant, from his position as
Lieutenant Colonel of the Sierra Leone Militia. His reasons included
the fact that Hamilton was negligent in his militia duties and he ‘was
one of the Merchants who had, for a length of time, sold spirits with-
out a License, and neglected conforming to other Local Laws imposing
Taxes’.67 However, just as with the pensions, these suspensions could be
revoked, as in the case of Hamilton, who petitioned London and was
reinstated in his post. Membership in the militia was important to the
social standing of its officers, and many of those who achieved high
rank came into conflict with the colonial government because they
wanted a more prominent role in determining colonial policies.
The government was reliant on these militia members, though, for their
role in the ongoing military campaigns against the slave trade. The slave
trade was so rampant by the end of the 1830s, and the role of American
inaction or ineffectiveness was so obvious that Palmerston reported in
1839 that ‘the number of vessels bearing the American flag, which have
been found pursuing that abominable trade, has of late been so great
as to make it evident, that the slave traders now believe that to hoist
American colours gives them the fairest chance of escaping’.68 Although
the American government had intermittently provided ships to combat
the slave trade, there were not enough to be effective on their own and the
Americans’ distaste for British interference in their affairs precluded the
British anti-slavery squadron’s capture of ships using the American flag.69
This contributed significantly to Liberia’s poor reputation in both
Sierra Leone and America. Gurley wrote to The Morning Post in December
1840 complaining that the Times, which refused to publish Gurley’s let-
ter, was misrepresenting the existence of the slave trade off of Liberia.
Gurley pointed out that Buchanan’s assessment of the situation was
that if there had been any slave trading, it was finished now, and that
the penalty of death for slave trading in the colony was a likely cause for
this.70 The US Navy did try to deal with this problem by coming to an
agreement in 1840, on the ground, with the commander of the British
anti-slavery squadron, William Tucker. The agreement stated that the
British squadron would detain ships with the American flag until the
American anti-slavery ship arrived to search.71 However, the Secretary
of the Navy received word of the new agreement and told Lieutenant
Payne of the US force to withdraw from the agreement. Interference
with American ships by British squadrons would not be tolerated.
Although successive Sierra Leone governments had criticized the
Liberian ability to suppress the slave trade, Buchanan’s active anti-
slavery policy seems to be what caused the most tension. When the
Niger Expedition stopped off in Monrovia on its way from Freetown
to the mouth of the Niger, Buchanan lamented that ‘they could not
remain long enough here to enable them to visit the several settlements
of the colony and acquire some knowledge of the practical results of our
schemes, as I am certain they would have found abundant reason to rec-
ommend to the African Civilization Society the adoption of some parts
if not the whole of it’.72 He suggested that Captain Trotter and the mem-
bers of the expedition had been pleased with the state of the country.
While the expedition used indigenous Kru, Sierra Leonean and Liberian
settlers as members of the expedition, the African Civilization Society
continued to disapprove of the colony at Liberia, in part because of
the negative reports they were receiving from Sierra Leone’s governors.
Military excursions aimed at securing Liberian territory and trade while
reducing the slave trade were perceived as threats by the Sierra Leone
government and Sierra Leonean and British traders in the region.
Meanwhile the British Navy and Sierra Leone government argued
that Liberian settlement of these slave trading regions would be insuf-
ficient to prevent the resumption of slaving activities. In fact, given
that Denman and the British squadron were doing much of the actual
work in securing the New Cestos, Bassa Cove, and Gallinas areas, it is
unsurprising that the Sierra Leone and British governments would be

taken aback by Buchanan’s subsequent insistence that these were now
Liberian territories. After the British squadron captured Canot from
his factory in New Cestos and brought him to Monrovia for justice,
Buchanan remarked that ‘New Cesters ... might be obtained with very
little difficulty, as Canot, it is said, intends leaving the coast for England
in the spring’.73 Buchanan was particularly anxious to secure this ter-
ritory because he had inside information that ‘Canot has received a
letter from the new Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir John Jeremie, and has
hoisted the British flag at his door. I suspect negotiations are in progress
to connect him with a great London trading house, and to make New
Cesters the headquarters of English trade on the coast’.74
In 1841, the government of Liberia tried a British trader named Jackson
for violating its laws regarding foreign trade and for operating a factory on
what Buchanan deemed to be Liberian territory. Buchanan believed that
the disregard shown by British and Sierra Leonean traders for Liberian
laws encouraged the continuation of the slave trade. In the proceedings of
the case, ‘the judge ... went on to prove that according to the British laws,
and those of the United States, that any state possessing territory, coast-
wise, had maritime powers in common with any other nation or state, to
make laws regulating their commerce with foreign countries’.75 Although
the judge admitted that Liberia was not a state, but a government, he still
regarded it as having sufficient powers of jurisdiction over the coast. The
defendant received support from Palmerston and claimed that he would
take up the issue with parliament. He was also supported in the press
by the Africa’s Luminary, which defended the rights of British traders as
necessary to a broader civilizing mission.76 Commander Andrew Foote
commented that ‘Governor Buchanan’s zeal therefore sometimes outran
his discretion, in the outcry he made against the English Government, for
resisting his interferences with their subjects, when these men were act-
ing on practices of very venerable antiquity, or making arrangements with
the natives identical with those which he, as the Agent of the American
Colonization Society, was making’.77 This dispute raised the complex
issues that were to haunt Liberia as its traders gained commercial influ-
ence and Sierra Leonean government, traders, and the British Navy con-
tested its growth and the position of America on the African coast.
* * *
Trading rights, territorial sovereignty, and anti-slavery activity were

tied together in both Sierra Leone and Liberia.78 Both colonies learned
in the early 1840s that they could not effectively abolish the slave trade
without a combination of effective strategies. This included the ability
and right to use both trade and military strength in support of that
goal. When the Niger Expedition did not achieve its goals, Buxton was
quickly diminished in both anti-slavery stature and health. The failure
of the model farm was the last blow to the project of white settlement in
Africa. However, it spurred on even greater interest in Sierra Leonean-led
anti-slavery ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’. With Governor
Jeremie’s death in 1841, William Fergusson, the West Indian lieutenant
governor, took over the post. Many in both England and West Africa
noted that despite the high fatalities of the expedition, almost no West
African resident died. The Liberia Herald commented that
We learn that the two young men who joined the Albert at this place
were on board and that not one of the coloured men attached to the
expedition died of fever – showing that had the first design been pur-
sued of employing experienced merchant captains, and intelligent
coloured men from Sierra Leone and the other colonies along the
coast – the enterprise would not have failed from the same causes.79
In addition to a backlash against radical politics in the 1840s and the

drying up of abolitionist feeling, the Niger Expedition’s death toll ended
any idea that European intervention and expansion in Africa would
solve the problems of slavery once and for all.
After the perceived failure of the Niger Expedition, Buxton’s sub-
sequent decline in power, and the deaths of Thomas Buchanan and
John Jeremie, the anti-slavery aspects of the rivalry receded and were
replaced by commercial rivalries of the US and British governments
and the expanding independent power of the settlers in both Sierra
Leone and Liberia. With the signing of the Webster-Ashburton treaty in
1843, joint cruising by the British and American anti-slavery squadrons
began in earnest. This treaty did not signal the end of commercial rival-
ries in the region, but rather a strategy for avoiding British disruption of
American trading vessels.80
On Sturge’s visit to America in 1841, he noted that ‘the abolitionists of
Europe, with few exceptions, have seen the error of their former course
of action, and are now striking directly at the root, instead of lopping
at the branches of slavery’.81 What arose in Buxton’s place was a fer-
vent desire by Sierra Leoneans to carry on the mission of Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity themselves. The merchants and traders, as
well as the missionaries, who came into conflict with Liberia during the
governorships of Jeremie and Buchanan continued to clash throughout

the 1840s, contributing to a period of imperial tensions between Britain
and America.
The revival of interest in the military anti-slave trade campaigns in
Sierra Leone and Liberia as a result of the negative public perception of
their efficacy had interesting ramifications for the relationship between
British and American anti-slavery colonization movements. The new
Liberian constitution and the start of Governor Thomas Buchanan’s
term reflected a new anti-slavery zeal and expansionist energy in
Liberia, which mirrored the growing interest in expansion within
America. Sierra Leone’s campaign against the slave trade was a result
of the arrival of a new, proactive governor, a willing naval commander,
and a growing class of Sierra Leoneans interested in promoting the col-
ony. Both colonies were drawn to intervention in part as a reaction to
the negative publicity they had faced in the 1820s and 1830s.
Metropolitan developments reflected these colonial tensions. British
and American anti-slavery activists debated the most effective means of
abolishing the trade and the institution and although there was cooper-
ation in this period, there was also growing conflict over the methods
and goals of the various organizations. While immediatists turned their
attention to America and the post-emancipation West Indies with the
new British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Thomas Fowell Buxton
gained the national stage once again as an anti-slavery figure promot-
ing action against the slave trade and renewing national interest in
Africa with his own African Civilization Society. Buxton’s plan, and his
rejection of the ACS offer of help and friendship, revealed the military
and imperial implications of an aggressive anti-slave trade campaign.
This led to a schism in the British anti-slavery movement as well.
Differences in Liberian and Sierra Leonean identification with the
metropoles and their developing relationships with one another con-
tributed to a period of tension in the late 1830s and 1840s. Increasingly
suspicious of each other’s motives in their attempts to suppress the
slave trade through military, commercial, or expansionist means, Sierra
Leone and Liberia began to come into direct conflict with one another.
Metropolitan perceptions of this conflict was in turn coloured by long-
standing distrust, stemming from the original colonization plans.
Although this all bubbled up to the surface in the period leading up to
the Niger Expedition, the ensuing decades would reveal the full impli-
cations of these tensions for the success of anti-slavery colonization.
6
Commercial Rivalry and
Liberian Independence
After the collapse of the Niger Expedition and Buxton’s retreat from
the anti-slavery field, anti-slavery sentiment in Britain became less radi-
cal and expansionist. Combined with the general reaction in the mid-
1840s against radical politics after the failure of the Chartist Movement
and the rising fortunes of the British middle class, Sierra Leoneans were
left to explore, colonize, and evangelize West Africa pursuing the ideol-
ogy of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’. A Colonial Office
minute on the West African settlements recommended that ‘neither the
Gambia nor the Gold Coast are worth retaining – or that, if retained,
they should be placed exclusively in the hands of the Mulattoes or
Negroes from the West Indies, and left to maintain themselves like the
American Settlements of Liberia’.1
However, the BFASS retreat from West Africa and the West Indies was
not mirrored in a retreat from American concerns. The Texas question,
occurring simultaneously with the commercial rivalries in West Africa,
loomed large as both an issue of commercial and territorial expan-
sion for Britain and America, and as a continued point of contention
between the British and American anti-slavery societies. As the annex-
ation debate heated up, so did the rivalry between Sierra Leonean and
British traders and the Liberian government.
The commercial rivalry that emerged looked far more threatening to
the Liberian colonial government than the anti-slavery rivalry of the
beginning of the decade. The commitment of both groups of settlers
to an expansionist ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ doctrine
put the Sierra Leone government, and by extension the British govern-
ment, in conflict with the Liberian government and ACS authorities.
The domestication of Sierra Leonean and Liberian politics in this period
led to continuing conflict at the colonial level, even as metropolitan
128
Commercial Rivalry and Liberian Independence 129
rivalries turned their attention elsewhere. The period after the collapse
of the Niger Expedition was marked by a growth in settler autonomy in
Sierra Leone and Liberia. After the deaths of John Jeremie and Thomas
Buchanan, subsequent Governors of Sierra Leone and Liberia retained
interest in territorial and commercial expansion, but reduced the vig-
our of their persecution of the slave trade. Representative of the new
metropolitan attitude toward these colonies, both received their first
black governors in this period. William Fergusson, governor of Sierra
Leone from 1844–5, was an immigrant from the West Indies. He had
acted as governor from 1841 to 1842 after the death of Jeremie and the
appointment of his acting successor, another West African, John Carr as
Chief Justice. After the governorship of George Macdonald from 1842 to
1844, Fergusson resumed his second tenure as governor. Joseph Jenkins
Roberts, a wealthy Liberian merchant who emigrated from Virginia,
began his tenure as governor in 1841 after Buchanan’s death and later
served as Liberia’s first president. Both represented not only the transfer
of white power to the emerging black elite in each country, but also the
shifting role of these colonies in the anti-slavery arguments back in the
metropoles.
The expansionist, territorial approach to spreading Liberian civiliza-
tion, anti-slavery, and, especially, legitimate commerce, which emerged
as a result of the evolving nature of the colony’s relationship with the
metropolitan public, led the colony into repeated conflicts with Sierra
Leone in the 1840s and 1850s. Developments in settler identification –
both with America and with their African surroundings – had slowly
changed the nature of Liberian settler society. Struggles with local
African groups frequently rested on issues of territorial, commercial, or
Christian expansion. Liberians satisfied neither the expectations of the
anti-slavery activists nor the missionaries, but saw themselves as super-
ior to their African neighbours. The social differences that had separated
Liberian settlers from African Americans now developed into political
differences as the Liberians began to rule themselves with increasing
autonomy. Liberian expansion, relations with indigenous groups, and
missionary work further separated them from their American experi-
ences. Settlers who had emigrated in the 1830s and had reported back
with negative impressions began, by this period, to change their opin-
ions of the colony. Diana Skipwith, daughter of Peyton Skipwith and
former slave of John Hartwell Cocke in Virginia, wrote back to her
former master in 1843. After years of complaining that she wanted to
return to America, she wrote that ‘though I have express a great dissatis-
faction with regard to this place since I have bin [sic] out heare but now
I can truly say that I thank god & you too that I am heare my mind are
perfecly [sic] at ease & I wish to make africa my home’.2 Although trade
networks and census data reveal a society still very much defined by its
American-ness, it is clear that by this period, a strong enough elite com-
munity had emerged to take charge of its own affairs, no longer reliant
on the support of former masters, but increasingly dependent on the
ability to trade with American and foreign merchants.
Anti-slavery policy responded to realities in the African settlements,
but the new metropolitan focus on North American expansion and on
issues of free trade also directed the growth of rivalry in the two settle-
ments. The complications of anti-slavery agitation on the Texas ques-
tion and the strained cooperation on West African slave trade patrolling
had weakened American abolitionists’ reverence for their British col-
leagues. Although they still sought British involvement, particularly for
fundraising efforts, the imperial tensions between the two countries –
particularly in the form of commercial rivalries – had been revealed in
the anti-slavery rivalries of the 1830s and early 1840s, and there was a
level of distrust present even in moments of cooperation. The trading
rivalries that emerged as a result of the growth of legitimate commerce
in West Africa in the 1840s and 1850s revealed the impact of on-the-
ground trade disputes in determining colonial policies. Concurrent
developments in commercial imperial relationships, anti- and pro-slav-
ery expansionist arguments, Anglo-American diplomatic networks, and
West African commercial rivalries contributed to Liberia’s independ-
ence in 1847 and a changing US attitude toward the new Republic – and
its relationship to Britain – in the 1850s.
Metropolitan expansionism
Increasing imperial rivalries between Britain and America in this period –

in China and North America – were reflected in continuing commercial
and territorial conflicts in West Africa, and the anti-slavery coloniza-
tion argument lost even more footing with the outbreak of the Mexican
War in 1846. The most vocal annexationist, Mississippi Senator Robert
Walker, gathered support for annexation in the North by appealing to
racial phobia and the belief that the two races could never live together
harmoniously, a longstanding colonizationist argument.3 Walker was
hugely influential in the expansionist movement, the free trade move-
ment, and the ensuing Anglo-American rivalries of this period. Of most
direct concern to Liberians, Walker’s tariff bill of 1846 increased the
rates for much of the imported produce from West Africa. He was not
only an expansionist; he was also an ardent Anglophobe, and feared

that if the United States did not annex Texas, Britain would, and would
also set about freeing the slaves.
The Texas question built upon the Liberian experience in a number of
ways. First, the rhetoric used by pro- and anti-slavery sides in America
reflected the same pro- and anti-colonizationist arguments made in the
preceding decades with regard to Liberia. This reveals the continuity
of the imperial project among different American groups, as well as
American expansionism’s continued relationship with the issue of slav-
ery. The rise of political anti-slavery in this period may have been dir-
ectly related to the imperial ambitions of the Tyler administration.
President Tyler and his Secretary of State Abel Upshur were both
active in the Virginia Colonization Society in the 1830s. Many of the
expansionist arguments used by the ACS became standard rhetoric in
the Texas debates. As with the rhetoric of the Colonization School in
Britain, territorial expansion promised to solve all manner of domestic
concerns, from slavery, to a mixed race society, to poverty, to Malthusian
overpopulation. At the same time that, as Alan Lester has described
the settlement process in South Africa, ‘ministers were giving official
encouragement to private schemes removing people from the western
Highlands of Scotland, Ireland and the English counties and relocating
them in colonial sites such as the St. Lawrence River Valley’, Democrats
across the country, according to Thomas Hietala, ‘embraced annexation
as a means of easing the tension over slavery while simultaneously pro-
viding a method for the ultimate removal of the entire black population
from the United States’.4
Second, Texas was the next in a series of antebellum confrontations
between the expanding British and American commercial empires.
Apart from the divided anti-slavery movements, aligning with different
transatlantic groups, this was a period of heightened diplomatic tension
between the United States and Britain. Aside from the West African
tensions, the early 1840s witnessed expansion in North America, the
Indian Ocean, and the Pacific by both countries.5 Anglo-American dip-
lomatic tensions were prominent in the same period in China, with
American trade outpacing British trade in the lead up to the First Opium
War (1838–42).6 Although both countries had longstanding commer-
cial interests in China, neither was particularly keen to enforce trade
policy with diplomatic or military support.
All this changed with the First Opium War between Britain and
China. Keliher describes America’s shift in China policy as stemming
from Anglophobia. Unlike Texas and Liberia, the Anglo-American
confrontations in China were not the result of slavery; however, the

commercial threat is present in all three. Although Keliher relates
China to a continuous vision ‘of expansion westward to the markets of
East Asia’, it seems clear that simply defining American commercial and
territorial expansion in terms of ‘westward’ movements neglects the
strong commercial connections with Europe and Africa, not to men-
tion South America in this period. While ‘westward expansion’ neatly,
and ahistorically, describes the settlement of the continent, at no point
in the nineteenth century was American imperial ambition limited to
a continental vision of commercial expansion; the slavery question did
not rule out settlement expansion until after the start of the Civil War.
In this period, there was growing concern amongst American lead-
ers that Britain’s humanitarian interests masked commercial policies.
Tyler’s advisor, Duff Green, asserted that there was little humanitar-
ian purpose behind British anti-slavery; rather ‘he emphasized to Tyler,
the real purpose of British policy was to make the products of the East
Indies more competitive in the world market and to obtain a monopoly
over vital raw materials’.7 Given both parliament’s and the anti-slavery
movements’ divide over sugar duties, this assessment may not have
been completely groundless.
British abolitionists not only pressed for a treaty (with an abolition
clause) with Texas. An 1843 publication on anti-slavery colonization
began with correspondence between Britain and America regarding the
use of the Union flag by ‘pirates’ trafficking in slaves in Cuba and South
America. The BFASS debated the appointment of the American consul
to Cuba (Mr. Trist) who the British accused of assisting in the trafficking
of slaves. Combined with real or rhetorical Anglophobia drawn from
historical and popular impressions of the British Empire and British
abolitionism, the Texas, China, and Liberian controversies of the mid-
1840s all reveal a wider picture of imperial confrontation.
Finally, and of most relevance, the concurrent issues of Texas annex-
ation and Liberian governance reveal the final stages of the coloniza-
tionist–imperialist conflict in the transatlantic anti-slavery movement.
Turning to their allies across the Atlantic, British abolitionists offered
their experience and their strategies, but did not recognize the polit-
ical and social differences that entrenched slavery in the American way
of life. Shocked and frustrated by slavery’s influence, British abolition-
ists sought another way to help combat American slavery: confronting
its westward expansion. With American continental expansion push-
ing slavery West, British abolitionists felt they could contribute to the
American anti-slavery cause by encouraging the British government to
negotiate recognition of the Republic of Texas. Holding out recogni-

tion in hopes of convincing Texas president Sam Houston to abolish
slavery or the slave trade seemed like a viable approach. However, as
Joshua Leavitt informed the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in
November 1843, ‘the question of Texas ... [has] worked up the slavehold-
ers to an agony, which has been, if possible, aggravated still more by a
report now rife in some papers, that General Houston, the President of
Texas, is actually negotiating to make it a British Colony, on condition
that he shall be Governor General for life’. He continued by urging the
British friends of abolition to bear in mind that ‘it should be deemed by
our government good cause of war, if Great Britain in any way interferes
with slavery on this continent’.8
It was clear that British attempts at interfering in slavery’s expan-
sion on the North American continent would be viewed as an act of
imperial aggression.9 With the Texas question rising to the forefront
of Anglo-American diplomatic relations in 1844, Secretary of State
John Calhoun, a Southern slaveholder, sent a letter to British minister
Richard Pakenham along with the treaty annexing Texas to the United
States. The letter explained in no uncertain terms that slavery was to
be protected by the American government and interference with the
institution within North America would not be tolerated. Although,
as is shown in the next chapter, anti-slavery colonization continued to
be a potent force on and off for the next decade at least, the mounting
imperial concerns of the various anti-slavery movements of Britain and
America came to a head in the mid-1840s.
The expansion of legitimate commerce
In 1846, a Joint Stock Company – the Chesapeake and Liberia Trading

Company – was formed in Maryland to build and operate a ship run-
ning between Baltimore and several of the Liberian settlements.10 The
Liberian Packet, which began operation in late 1846, was intended to
transport potential emigrants, trade goods, and post. It was given an
official charter by the state of Maryland and subscribed to by a num-
ber of white ACS members. Despite the lack of enthusiasm amongst
potential black investors in America, the ACS pointed out that ‘a very
liberal subscription has been made in advance by several prominent
citizens of Liberia’. The creation of the Joint Stock Company revealed
that although the federal government may have been turning its back
on Liberia, the state societies and prominent Liberians were still heavily
invested in the relationship, if primarily for economic interest.
Figure 6.1 Liberia Packet
Figure 6.2 Liberia Packet interior
The growth in trade was important to establishing an elite in Liberia:

Governor Roberts’ own trading house, Roberts, Colson and Company,
dominated the Liberian trade from the mid-1830s, and John Russwurm
(Governor of Maryland in Liberia) ran the lucrative Dailey and
Russwurm with a partner in New York.11 Liberian merchant houses pur-
chased African goods for export to companies such as the Boston-based
Twombly & Lamson, including ‘Drugs and Dye stuffs, Palm Oil, Ivory,
Hides, Gum Copal, Peppers, Ebony, Gold Dust, and other kinds of
African produce’.12 Merchants in Liberia also sold many of the products
available in the urban centres of the United States. Trading houses in
Salem, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore profited from the African
trade, and contracts with the US Navy, Coates & Austie, Twombly &
Lamson amongst others, kept Liberians reading, building and dressing
like Americans.
A major shift in colonial policy at the 1841 annual meeting of the
ACS enabled expanded commercial growth in the colony as well. In
that year, the government-run Colonial Store ended its retail business
and began to sell goods wholesale to Liberian merchants. The rationale
indicates the growing power of the merchant community in Monrovia,
since ‘when goods have been sold from the Colonial Store, it has of
course lessened the sales of the colored merchant: this has sometimes
been the cause of complaint, and for years has been regarded as an
infringement of their rights’.13 In 1845, the ACS Annual Report calcu-
lated total imports for the period 1843–5 at $157,829 and total exports
at $123,694.14 By the end of the decade, Gurley reported that there
had been a 50 per cent annual increase in trade over the latter part
of the decade, amounting to $100,000 in annual American commerce
in Liberia.15 Annual exports to America varied between $450,000 and
$650,000 for the period 1844–49, and by the end of the decade, the
value of exports was beginning to exceed the value of imports.16
Commercial expansion brought Liberians into conflict with long-
established British and Sierra Leonean merchant trading factories. In
1843, Governor Macdonald of Sierra Leone wrote to Lord Aberdeen in
the Foreign Office that the slave trade had expanded in the Gallinas.
He blamed both American and British slave traders for encouraging its
growth after the successful destruction of nine slaving factories in the
Gallinas River by 1842. Interestingly – especially for the Liberians –
Macdonald referred to slaves embarking at Sherbro Island ‘nearly adjoin-
ing this colony’. He explained that ‘the Volador had been chased 6 times
by Her Majesty’s brig Ferret, off the Gallinas, from which place her cargo
of slaves were marched overland to Sherbro, and there embarked’.17 This
gave an impression to the Colonial Secretary that the Gallinas, Sherbro,
and Freetown were all relatively close together, thereby underscoring
Macdonald’s concern about the proximity of slave trading, and the
general sense that this area should fall under Sierra Leone’s authority.
In fact, Sherbro was more than fifty miles by sea from Freetown, and
the Gallinas River was closer to Monrovia than to Freetown, another
roughly fifty miles from Sherbro. Although there were maps of the area
circulating freely (Dr. Madden’s report had released a map in 1842)
Macdonald, Sierra Leonean explorers and traders, and the British squad-
ron took advantage of the incomplete knowledge of West Africa to pro-
mote an imagined geography of Sierra Leonean and British influence in
the region. Liberian traders and settlers were deemed to be encroach-
ing on what had long been areas of British influence, even as some
despatches used the prevalence of American traders (particularly slave
traders) to undermine the ability of American squadrons and Liberian
settlers to quell slaving activities in these same regions.
Meanwhile, a letter to Prince Cain, a local leader, from Macdonald
articulated the sentiments of the anti-slavery settlement: ‘I trust that
in a very short time your exertions will have completely destroyed the
Slave Trade at Cape Mount and its vicinity; and that a good Trade will
be established between you and your people and the merchants of this
Colony instead’.18 Macdonald was hoping that by quelling slave trading
and promising legitimate trade to cooperative leaders, he could ensure
the growth of British and Sierra Leonean trade in an area that had cer-
tainly been claimed by the Liberian government to be within Liberian
territory since at least 1834.19
The commercial interests of the colony were paramount in large part
because of their connection to the anti-slavery mission. Legitimate
commerce was vital to the replacement of the slave trade, so Sierra
Leonean traders were supported by the government in their attempts
to make commercial treaties with interior tribes. The government was
frequently called upon to negotiate in trade wars that prevented the
free movement of the Sierra Leoneans. In 1847, Governor Norman
Macdonald wrote to Mohora Suru of Tambaka (on the northern border
with present-day Guinea) that ‘I feel obliged to you for the exertions
you have made to secure the roads being kept open ... And so long as
you continue to take an interest in the Trade of the Country and aid and
protect strangers and others resorting to the Colony with their produce
for the purpose of Trade, you will always be considered and treated as a
friend by this Colony’.20
Traders in the Niger Delta, aware of the increased metropolitan inter-
est in legitimate commerce, asked for help from the Foreign Office
and the naval squadron in protecting their trade along the coast.21
Throughout the 1840s, the British anti-slave trade naval squadron had
recommitted itself to both patrolling for slave ships and supporting
legitimate commerce. This was in response to the Admiralty’s instruc-
tions to its senior officers in the squadron, which allowed them to enter
into anti-slave trade treaties with Chiefs deemed to be involved with

the trade.22 Although they were prevented from taking ‘any step upon
[a Native Chief’s] territory for putting down the Slave Trade by force’
without ‘the signed consent in writing of a Native Chief’, there were
exceptions for when ‘by Engagement, Great Britain is entitled to adopt
coercive measures on shore for that purpose’.23 In a number of cases,
the Navy intervened on their behalf and despite a generally anti-expan-
sionist approach, anti-slavery treaties promoting legitimate commerce
were signed with a number of groups along the coast between Sierra
Leone and Lagos, including the Temne, Loko, ‘the Bey Sherbro King of
the North Bulloms, and Tombo Booboo, his chief advisor ... Mori Lahai,
Chief of Malagua ... Alimamee Ali, King of Fouricaria ... Mori Moosa,
Chief of Bareira’.24 The Fante, near Cape Coast in the Gold Coast, agreed
to prohibit the trade in slaves; and in 1847 negotiations with the King of
Dahomey began in Abomey.25
This was representative of the wider West African policy emerging
after the Niger Expedition. After Buxton’s influence in parliament
waned, no equivalent anti-slavery ‘insider’ emerged, though Palmerston
continued to promote anti-slave trade treaties. Sturge and his succes-
sors in the BFASS, rather than emulating the political pressure of the
AFASS, ‘were left seeking “influence” through wielding virtually only
the moral imperative’.26 While the anti-slavery movement in Britain
had long been divided over tactics, the urgency of the country’s moral
guilt had driven compromise. Now that emancipation was effected and
Buxton’s scheme rejected (for white anti-slavery colonists at least), con-
sensus within the group splintered into a number of competing factions
including anti-sugar tariff, pro-free trade, anti-coolie, pro-Garrisonian,
pro-enforcement, pacifist, and African enthusiasts. These controversies
divided the BFASS, weakening its ability to influence policy.
Trade, in particular, was a wedge issue in the humanitarian lobby.
The pro- and anti-tariff branches represented the emerging struggle
between protectionist and free trade branches of anti-slavery think-
ing.27 Sugar duties that protected West Indian (free) sugar were against
the free trade spirit; repeal of the sugar duties would surely doom the
West Indies, however, since slave produced sugar would be allowed to
compete. Many felt that free trade was the best route to the ending of
slavery, believing that true free trade would prove slavery uneconom-
ical. The result of the pressure on Liberia had seemingly eliminated the
largest rival to British free trade expansion in West Africa. Therefore,
under the reasoning of Palmerston and other like-minded humanitar-
ian free traders, British free trade, and the accompanying elements of
British civilization, anti-slavery, and Christian morality, could progress

unmolested in West Africa. Meanwhile, Sierra Leonean expansion and
the entry of white explorers such as Livingstone into other regions
of Africa rekindled interest in anti-slavery by the end of the decade.
However, even with this revived interest, Sierra Leone was no longer at
the centre of British interest in Africa, replaced by expansionist Sierra
Leonean settlements at Lagos and Abeokuta, and anti-slavery was no
longer at the centre of British interest in African expansion, replaced
by an interest in the overwhelming success of the legitimate commerce
that had replaced the slave trade – the palm oil trade.28
This commercial development represented a wider trend as the centre
of British influence in West Africa shifted from Freetown to Lagos. Since
the failure of the Fernando Po experiment in the early 1830s, the focus
of British political and anti-slavery activity in West Africa had returned
to Sierra Leone for much of the 1830s and early 1840s. However, in West
Africa itself, anti-slavery and economic policy had continued to shift to
the east throughout the 1840s. With the migration of large numbers of
Sierra Leoneans to the Gold Coast and the area around Lagos, mission-
ary organizations had also shifted their sights eastward. In 1845, dis-
cussion began to once again establish a point of contact for the British
in Fernando Po. Although an attempt to buy the island in 1839 as part
of the anti-slavery momentum of the Niger Expedition had failed in
1841, the new approach taken by Palmerston upon his resumption of
the Foreign Office in 1846 was that there should be a British Consul on
the island to take charge of protecting British legitimate commerce and
promoting anti-slavery activity in the Bights of Benin and Biafra. The
growing importance of West Africa’s legitimate trade – particularly palm
oil – was heightened by the emigration of Sierra Leoneans involved in
legitimate commerce, Christian mission, and the ‘civilizing’ mission to
these new areas.29
Although this policy took some time to initiate, by 1849, John
Beecroft, the former deputy at Fernando Po, was made Consul to the
region, expanding British political involvement in the region. This was
primarily due to the rise of legitimate commerce in the Bights – although
Sierra Leone was producing palm oil and other legitimate exports, its
timber industry was in decline by the late 1840s.30 Meanwhile, palm
oil exports from the Bights – particularly Lagos – were expanding rap-
idly in line with British demand. By the 1840s, however, palm oil was
beginning to overtake timber as Sierra Leone’s primary export and by
1843, it was the largest export by value. Previously of negligible import-
ance, palm oil became increasingly important to British industry in
this period. Notably, in recording palm oil imports in the 1830s, the
region of export was listed as Sierra Leone and ‘the area between the
River Gambia and Cape Mesurado’.31 This implies that the British con-
sidered their trading area in the region to extend down to Monrovia,
even though American settlers had established colonies northwest of
Monrovia.
In West Africa, the trade issue that had long dominated anti-slavery
ideology was legitimate commerce. It was consistently believed that find-
ing alternative sources of wealth for indigenous leaders would cause West
Africans to abandon the slave trade. Productive and civilized African
economies would buy manufactures from Britain and other parts of the
Empire. Lord Stanley wrote to Governor George MacDonald (1842–4) in
1842 emphasizing that a new treaty with the Temne was allowed to be
ratified by the British government only provided that ‘there ought to be
a clear understanding on that head, that no other duties be levied on
British goods imported into the Timmanee Country from Sierra Leone’.32
Legitimate commerce had been a powerful argument for the Sierra Leone
settlement and continued to provide a reason for investment in the col-
ony’s development and ‘native’ driven expansion. Now, with a new
focus on commercial expansion, trade in West Africa was to be opened
to British commerce without protectionist tariffs, a proposition that
brought Sierra Leone and Liberia into direct commercial conflict.
Sierra Leone’s government, despite its position of adherence to grow-
ing free trade principles amongst its anti-slavery supporters and its
objections to the lack of free trade in Liberia, also resented the grow-
ing foreign trade in the colony. In an attempt to raise the colony’s
revenue and discourage foreign trade, the colony had passed ‘no less
than thirteen Acts’ for the regulation of custom duties, including a
2 per cent duty on British imported manufactures and a 6 per cent duty
on ‘foreign’ produce or manufactures.33 These were disallowed by the
parliament because ‘the Treaties of Commercial reciprocity with some
Foreign States (Sweden and the South American Republics for example)
pledge this Kingdom to admit the Vessels of those Countries in all
British Colonies, on the same terms as British Vessels’.34 By the 1840s,
these disparities in customs collection had been rectified in favour of
free trade; however, it is striking to note that in the period when trad-
ing conflict began between Sierra Leone and Liberia, particularly in the
Bassa Cover region, the Sierra Leone government had only just relaxed
its own restrictions on foreign trade.
But not all commercial and territorial expansion was sanctioned by the
Sierra Leonean authorities or the British government. After an incident
involving several British subjects who had settled in the Sherbro region
and begun trading there, Governor Macdonald wrote to their represen-
tative Reverend Mr Raymond that ‘as regard the robbery and burden
of the Sierra Leone people who resort to the Sherbro in opposition to
the wishes of this Government as publicly notified to them, I can only
say that lamentable as it is to hear of such atrocities as are detailed in
your letter, still as these people go to and interfere in the affairs of the
Sherbro, with their eyes open, they must abide by the consequences’.35
This was in part due to the complaints of the naval squadron. Lord
Russell wrote to Governor Doherty in 1840 to explain why the commer-
cial expansion of the settlement could not be condoned by the British
government.36 Doherty had followed this strictly, but his successors
from Jeremie through to Norman William Macdonald (1845–52) con-
tinued to press for intervention beyond the borders of the colony.
Not only did the British government prevent Sierra Leone’s governors
from intervention on the behalf of its subjects, it even refused to grant
special dispensations for the furtherance of the colony’s legitimate
trade mission with the interior.37 In 1845, Governor Fergusson and the
Council of Sierra Leone ‘unanimously resolved that a mission should
be forthwith dispatched to the Chiefs of Mellicoorie and Fouricaria,
to make such arrangements with them by Treaty, as might secure to
British merchants the right to trade in those districts’ eliminating the
intermediary traders between the colony and the Mandingo Country.38
Lord Stanley replied that the treaty agreed to by all the parties was in
fact a violation of the Navigation Laws which ‘prohibits the import-
ation of Goods into any British Possession in Asia Africa or America in
any Foreign Ships unless they are the Ships of the Country of which
the Goods are the produce & from which the Goods are imported’.39
The absurdity of Stanley’s objection revealed the tensions between the
growing free trade argument in Britain and the lingering protectionist
laws and sentiments. This metropolitan struggle was similarly affecting
the relationship of Sierra Leonean traders to Liberia’s growing trade and
the changing relationship of Liberia to the United States.
Bassa Cove and the final break
In spite of Buxton’s declaration to Gurley that the only objective of

Sierra Leone was to ‘civilize’ solely through the abolition of the slave
trade, in the actual practice of slave trade abolition, when treaties
were signed with indigenous rulers, they included a clause support-
ing British commerce stating that they would ‘give no privilege to the
ships and traders of other countries, which they do not show to those
of England’.40 This encouraged commercial expansion into disputed ter-
ritories. Missionaries commented, ‘The profits of the African trade, are
indeed very great; and England is now straining every nerve to monop-
olize it. We mean, the English merchants’.41 Sierra Leoneans were rap-
idly expanding the foundations of their commercial interests in West
Africa.
The post-Niger period seemed to indicate a shift toward cooper-
ation amongst all the parties in 1843 and 1844. With the signing of
the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1843, the British and American
anti-slavery squadrons were finally patrolling together, reducing the
inter-colonial conflict over anti-slavery activities. However, cruising
cooperation between the anti-slavery squadrons was short-lived, and
soon the British squadron was receiving complaints from Sierra Leonean
and British traders along the coast.
A series of diplomatic exchanges between Secretary of State Abel
Upshur and Foreign Secretary Lord Aberdeen reveals the careful nego-
tiation taking place during this period. Between 1843 and 1844, letters
passed between them, as well as American statesman Daniel Webster
and the British Ambassador to the United States, Henry Fox which
reveal that while Aberdeen and US Ambassador to Britain, Edward
Everett, were able to agree about the benefits of Liberia and its right
to trade and make its own laws, Fox was aggressive in opposing the
rights of the Liberian government to claim territory and monopolize
trade. Fox wrote that ‘it appears that (during the last year, in particu-
lar) the authorities of Liberia have shown a disposition to enlarge very
considerably the limits of their territory, assuming, to all appearance
quite unjustifiably, the right of monopolizing the trade with the native
inhabitants along a considerable line of coast, where the trade had hith-
erto been free’.42 Fox challenged the United States government’s role
on the western coast of Africa and asked for a statement of their rela-
tionship with the colony. Upshur responded that the US government
had no official concern with the Liberian colony and that the colony’s
government was responsible for itself. However, he also pointed out that
‘as they are themselves nearly powerless, they must rely, for the protec-
tion of their own rights, on the justice and sympathy of other powers’,
clearly calling on the British authorities to treat the Liberian govern-
ment with respect.43
After a number of increasingly confrontational letters between
Everett, Upshur, and Webster, Aberdeen wrote in 1844 attempting
to calm the situation by stating that it was standard policy that ‘her
Majesty’s naval commanders, whose duty it is to extend a general pro-

tection to British trade on the western coast of Africa, to avoid involv-
ing themselves in contentions with the local authorities of the Liberia
settlements’. While this may have been intended as ameliorative, the
statement that follows this shows that the governments were at a cross
purpose, even when they appeared to be cooperating for the benefit of
their African settlements. Aberdeen stated that ‘in places to the posses-
sion of which British settlers have a legal title, by formal purchase or
cession from the rightful owners of the soil, no foreign authority has,
of course, any right to interfere’ and went on to argue that while the
Navy was enjoined to promote harmony with the Liberian authorities,
‘her Majesty’s naval commanders afford efficient protection to British
trade against improper assumption of power on the part of the Liberian
authorities’.44 In other words, Aberdeen argued that British traders who
established claim to the coast were ‘legitimate’, while the extension of
Liberian authority through similar treaties was ‘improper’ because they
blocked foreign trade.
Bassa Cove – located between Monrovia and Maryland in Liberia –
continued to be an important area for both Sierra Leonean and Liberian
colonial expansionists. Liberian settler Peyton Skipwith, in a letter
to his former master, wrote that a slave dealer in Little Bassa, acting
contrary to an agreement with the governor to end slave trading, was
subject to a raid by colonists who ‘broke up the factory and brought
away all the effects’.45 Settlements at Edina in Bassa Cove had been
established by the Pennsylvania and New York Colonization Societies
in the mid-1830s and incorporated into the Liberian Commonwealth
in 1839. In the early 1840s, members of the Baptist churches of Liberia
had convened for an annual meeting that commended the church at
Edina for preparing thirty missionaries to go into the Grand Bassa
interior.46
A Sierra Leonean merchant complained, however, to the Liberia Herald
in 1841 that ‘I have always known and understood Bassa Cove to be
an independent trading place, open to the Vessels of all nations, and
that it remained so, until the late Governor of Liberia, Mr. Buchanan,
in the year 1838 made an attempt to exclude from that part of the
Coast British and other vessels, & to confine the trade entirely with
the Americans’.47 Governor Fergusson’s sixty-nine page despatch on the
situation reveals that the Sierra Leonean authorities were taking this
matter very seriously, with the Governor complaining that ‘it appears
that the Colonists of Liberia lay claim to the whole coast from Grand
Cape Mount River (where a British Factory has been recently established
and where similar proposals from the Governor of Liberia were posi-
tively rejected) to New Cestos River both inclusive’.48
Buchanan described the clash with this Sierra Leonean merchant and
a London trading vessel at Bassa Cove in April 1841, arguing that not
only were these merchants not cooperating in paying anchorage duties
for landing their vessels, but, by June 1841, one ‘had hoisted the English
flag at Fish town [at Bassa Cove] and was exciting the natives to violate
the conditions of their treaty with us’.49 Buchanan argued that these
traders’ disregard for Liberian government authority in what he per-
ceived to be Liberian territory – it certainly was not contiguous to Sierra
Leonean or Gold Coast settlements – made it more difficult to con-
duct anti-slavery campaigns. In 1841, he wrote to the ACS that ‘while
the amount of commerce has greatly increased in the Colony, the busi-
ness done in our store this year has been very inconsiderable’ which
he attributed to ‘the increased competition of foreigners’.50 Buchanan
and the settlers viewed commercial sovereignty as an important tool
in the unification of the Liberian settlements against the slave trade,
alongside the other tools of territorial expansion, Christian mission,
and the destruction of slave factories in the Gallinas, Cape Mount, and
Bassa Cove.
The major conflict continued to be the issue of Bassa Cove in the later
1840s. Roberts, like Buchanan, was frequently faced with the British
traders’ refusal to recognize Liberia’s sovereignty. The conditions wors-
ened for Liberian traders and settlers in the region over the course
of the 1840s, as indigenous groups – already hostile to the American
settlers – took advantage of British trade to circumvent Liberian rule.
As the returns for the colony indicated, in both 1844 and 1845, rev-
enue from trade contributed to an increase in income which helped
the government to meet all of its costs for the year. In 1845, duties
on imports and anchorage and light duty charges alone covered over
80 per cent of the government’s annual costs.51 The issue of receiving
these import and anchorage duties, therefore, was not of minor concern
to the government.
Settler James Brown wrote to the ACS Corresponding Secretary,
Reverend Mr McLain, in 1846 complaining of Sierra Leonean and
British merchants’ activities in Liberian territory. He accused a British
Man of War of telling merchant vessels operating under the British flag
that they did not have to obey Liberian laws or pay custom duties in the
Grand Bassa region. When challenged, the Man of War retaliated by
seizing the ship of the Liberian settler Mr Benson and taking its palm
oil cargo to Sierra Leone. Brown implored McLain: ‘Permit me sir to ask
you the awful question what is to be the end of all this can it be possible
that a nation like Great Britain will stoop to take such advantage and
to oppress a helpless and feable [sic] people like us? Will the Great and
exalted British Lion condesend [sic] to even shown? From his home to
crush a worm?’52
Like a number of other settlers writing to former masters, ACS offi-
cials, and American newspapers at this time, Brown pleaded that if the
ACS and US government could not defend Liberia from Sierra Leonean
and British incursions, they should let Liberia become an independent
country. In 1846, settler Peyton Skipwith wrote to his former master
that independence was necessary because ‘we must be a people recog-
nised by foreign Nations ... for it has been already said by the British that
we hav [sic] no right to demand Anchorage Duties &c of them’.53
The complaints at the settler level were reflected higher up in interac-
tions between the two colonies throughout the 1840s. In his despatches
(republished in the African Repository in January 1843) Governor Roberts
complained to the ACS authorities that Bassa Cove was once again con-
tested. In 1845, Governor Roberts’ report to the Legislative Council
complained that ‘the position assumed by British Officers, in regard to
this question, is untenable’ because there was no record of the British
claimants to Grand Bassa ever having purchased the territory.54 Just a
few years before, Roberts had reported at great length that River Cess
was claimed by a British merchant called Captain Spence. He narrated
an account in which, ‘the natives, displeased with his conduct, ordered
him to quit the place’. When they forced him to leave, he returned with
a British Man of War ‘firing upon the town ... knocking down a number
of the native huts, and killing one man’. When Roberts asked for proof
that Spence was the owner of the territory, the locals showed him ‘an
instrument signed by Captain Spence, the exclusive right of trade, for
certain considerations on his part to be complied with, annually. Not a
word is said about the purchase of territory’.55
Clearly, the problem had continued to grow during the following two
years and in 1845, Roberts’ plea was eloquent, appealing to the found-
ing mission of the colony and its shared purpose with the British gov-
ernment: ‘for when it is remembered that the Colony of Liberia has
been established [for] the suppression of the African Slave Trade, the
civilization and Christianization of Africa, and the establishment of
a sovereign and independent government ... the position assumed by
British Officers, denying the right of this government to exercise pol-
itical power, and to maintain jurisdiction over the territory of Bassa
Cove, will not be sanctioned by the British government’.56 This raised
two important points. First, that Roberts, and presumably his audience,
accepted that separation from the United States and the ACS was inev-
itable and, in fact, part of the grand design of the colony. This was
an important view, since it contributed to growing calls for independ-
ence related to the debates over Liberia’s status. Second, this statement
reveals that Roberts was aware that the British traders and naval com-
manders in the area frequently acted on their own impetus. By appeal-
ing to the common anti-slavery and civilization goals of the British
(humanitarian) government and of Liberia, Roberts was attempting to
unify against the British West African trading interests.
Roberts went on to complain that Lieutenant Seagram of the British
squadron condoned continued trading in Bassa Cove in disregard of
Liberia’s trading laws. Captain Jones, commander of the British squad-
ron, wrote to Governor Roberts in Liberia in 1844 that ‘the complaints
of certain British subjects, who had, under agreement, and according
to the custom on the coast, formed settlements and acquired property,
have brought to the knowledge of the British government the unpleas-
ant fact, that the “Liberian settlers” have asserted rights over the British
subjects alluded to’ and that these rights, ‘those of imposing custom
duties, and limiting the trade of foreigners by restrictions, are sovereign
rights’, were available only to sovereign states, which he argued Liberia
was not.57
Finally, in 1847, Liberia declared independence from the ACS as a
result of the pressure from the British and Sierra Leonean governments
and the British squadron, combined with the growing irrelevance of the
ACS and the desire of Liberians to take control of their political futures.
Governor Macdonald of Sierra Leone argued in May of 1847, just before
the declaration of independence, that he considered the New Cestos
and Bassa Cove to be under the authority of Sierra Leone’s government,
going so far as to advise seeking emigrants for the West Indies from
these territories.58
The Liberian press indicated a growing feeling of separation from
America, including the US government’s refusal to claim Liberia, and
the increase in import duties on camwood and palm oil from Liberia
in 1847. In January 1847, the Liberia Herald reported that ‘the modified
tariff of the United States has by Act of Congress gone into operation.
This new regulation imposing a duty of ten per cent on camwood and
palm oil cannot fail to affect very extensively our trade with American
vessels’.59 Then Africa’s Luminary complained that the Liberia Packet – in
which a number of Liberians had invested – failed to arrive in the sum-
mer of 1847.60 In August 1847, just before independence was declared,
the Liberia Herald reported the ‘it would seem that Foreigners are deter-
mined we shall be independent, at least so far as supplies are concerned.
We have now been nearly four months without any considerable supply
from either Europe or America’.61 The grievances over British recogni-
tion of Liberia’s territorial sovereignty and US reluctance to intervene
formally on behalf of the ACS combined with the long diminishing
support for the ACS made the choice of independence clear for Liberia’s
leaders. On 26 July 1847, the Liberian government, in cooperation with
the ACS, established itself as a new, independent republic.
* * *
The 1840s marked a change in anti-slavery focus away from Africa and
towards North America. However, the debates facing the BFASS and
AFASS as well as the more radical factions of the abolition movement
were still influenced by the same expansionist issues that had informed
the growing anti-slavery rivalry in West Africa. With metropolitan
attention focused elsewhere, Sierra Leoneans and Liberians set out to
continue the project of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ in
West Africa with newly powerful leadership roles. The full develop-
ment of a commercial middle class, and a trading relationship with sur-
rounding indigenous groups gave both colonies stronger identification
locally. However, the continuing ties to Britain, not least through the
strong commercial-naval link, gave Sierra Leoneans an advantage over
their Liberian counterparts in pursuing territorial commercial expan-
sion. Despite rampant Anglophobia in the Tyler and Polk administra-
tions and the similar struggles occurring in Texas, Oregon, and China,
the slavery issue prevented the American government from fully aiding
the Liberian colony, thus contributing to Liberia’s early independence
and self-rule.
As the annexation debate heated up, so did the rivalry between Sierra
Leonean and British traders and the Liberian government. The prosper-
ous, thriving settler middle classes of both societies came into their own
in this period, when their sponsoring organizations in the metropoles
were preoccupied with rapid political changes. Although anti-slavery
societies’ interest in the colonies waned in this period, the anti-slavery
doctrine of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ had pervaded
both settler groups, informing their identities and fuelling their expan-
sion. The institutions, material culture, commerce, and networks that
had served to link Sierra Leone and Britain helped the settlers push for
regional dominance, while the lack of those continuous institutional
networks between Liberia and America finally led the Liberian set-
tlers to seek independence in order to protect their commercial and
territorial interests.
What had become clear over the course of the 1840s was that the
Sierra Leonean elite, in conjunction with the anti-slavery squadron and
Sierra Leone government, acted to promote their own interests, Sierra
Leone’s regional interests, and above all, what they interpreted to be
Britain’s imperial interest. Meanwhile, despite rapid expansion of trade
and a continuing stream of immigrants from America, Liberia had fewer
ties to American strategic interests. Though they were proud of their
American material culture and American political values, Liberians
were creating a new frontier culture that, unless bound to the United
States by the constitution, had no chance of uniting with the metropole
permanently. Unlike elite Sierra Leoneans whose attendance at British
schools and universities promoted an imperial connection, Liberians
were not always welcomed in the United States, where race relations
were much more complex and growing increasingly so. The anti-slavery
stance of the British government therefore helped it to preserve its hold
on West Africa even as it ostensibly reduced African expansion in the
1840s, while the arguably pro-slavery stance of the American govern-
ment prevented it from pursuing an anti-slavery expansion policy. Thus
Texas was added to the Union to thwart British imperial and anti-slav-
ery plans, and Liberia was encouraged to declare its independence.
Although the declaration of independence by Liberia was intended to
secure its sovereignty in issues of commercial treaties and the levy of
duties, its territorial expansion was still contested by Sierra Leonean and
British traders along the coast. Territories were still disputed and there
was significant pressure on Liberia to conform to Britain’s demands for
trading rights. Sierra Leonean traders continued to put pressure on their
government to protect their trading rights in and around Liberian terri-
tory. However, after the change in government in 1852, they no longer
had humanitarian allies in positions of power. As the British focus in
West Africa shifted toward Lagos, propelled by Sierra Leonean expan-
sionists and British traders, Liberian expansion towards Cape Mount
became of less concern to the authorities in Britain. They still objected
to Liberian interference with British and Sierra Leonean traders, but this
was dealt with on a local level by the governor and fleet commanders.
7
Arguments for Colonial Expansion
After declaring independence in 1847, Liberia faced a series of new

challenges in establishing itself as a sovereign nation, receiving dip-
lomatic recognition, promoting trade, and continuing to combat the
slave trade. Its separation from the ACS caused an unexpected boost in
popularity amongst free African Americans. Combined with worsening
conditions in the United States, emigration once again moved into the
realm of possibility for prominent black abolition leaders. The ACS con-
tinued to sponsor emigrants and send aid, but it no longer had a role in
the governance of the colony. Strangely, however, this coincided with
an expansion in its political influence in the United States in a period
when increasing interest in imperial expansion combined with a grow-
ing sentiment amongst conservative Northerners that if the abolition-
ists succeeded, African Americans would need to be separated from the
white population.
In Britain, 1846 had marked the beginning once again of a new govern-
ment, with John Russell as Prime Minister. The humanitarian-leaning
Earl Grey replaced Lord Stanley as Colonial Secretary, and Palmerston
was put in charge of the Foreign Office, ushering in one last period of
activist humanitarianism in parliament through 1852 and a brief resur-
gent interest in popular anti-slavery. Not only did African policy briefly
revive under this government, but anti-slave trade activity elsewhere in
the world demonstrated the strength of anti-slavery policy as a funda-
mental operating principle which would continue off-and-on through
the rest of the nineteenth century, even without a unified humanitar-
ian lobby.
For instance, in 1849 and 1850, Russell’s government pressed for Brazil
to rein in its slave traders. Unsatisfied with the Brazilian government’s
response, the British squadron, returning from the Rio de la Plata wars
148
Arguments for Colonial Expansion 149
in Argentina, resumed anti-slavery patrols along the Brazilian coast,

pursuing ships well into Brazilian water.1 This culminated in the bom-
bardment of a Brazilian fort near Rio de Janeiro in July 1850 and the
subsequent signing of strong anti-slave trade treaties that effectively
suppressed the South Atlantic slave trade.2 This more aggressive pol-
icy was indicative of the importance of slave trade suppression under
Russell, Aberdeen, and Palmerston’s governments. The change in gov-
ernment had probably helped the Sierra Leone administration to press
its case against Liberia, as the success of ‘legitimate commerce’ and
slave trade suppression were such important issues for parliamentary
humanitarians. Now that Liberia was an independent country seeking
diplomatic recognition, the humanitarian inclinations of the Russell
government were to play an important part in gaining recognition,
trading alliances, and military protection for the new Republic.3
The 1850s witnessed decreased anti-slavery activity in Britain, but
an extension of the earlier anti-slavery interventionism by civilian,
political, and naval powers in West Africa. The 1850s was a period of
Atlantic-wide shift to a more strongly articulated free trade anti-slavery
policy. While humanitarians had experienced periods of support in
both the British and American governments, commercial interests were
more persuasive in this post-Niger, post-independence period. Britain’s
growing interest in areas to the East, as a result of Sierra Leonean settle-
ment in Abeokuta, Lagos, Badagry, and Accra, distracted it from the
ongoing, but ultimately petty, disputes with Liberia. Although Liberian
trade may have presented a growing threat to Sierra Leonean trade, the
diversification of British interest in Africa over the course of the 1850s
made Sierra Leonean demands less important to Britain. Meanwhile,
Britain’s growing influence in other parts of Africa made Liberia more
important to American commercial interests in Africa. Combined with
a changing anti-slavery climate in America, this gave the ACS a period
of ascendant power as a humanitarian and free trade alternative to abo-
litionist or pro-slavery arguments.
Differences in the populations of Sierra Leone and Liberia and the
integration strategies they undertook led to different paths towards
anti-slavery expansion. The expansionist projects begun by Sierra
Leoneans at the height of British interest – expansion into Nigeria, the
Gold Coast, and the Gambia, as well as the interior of Sierra Leone –
continued virtually unabated, despite the general impression amongst
historians that this was a period of retrenchment in the empire.4 This
filtered back to metropolitan attitudes and the development of an argu-
ment for ‘informal’ economic imperialism by America, rather than
the territorial, ideological expansion in Africa that was increasingly

embraced by Britain on behalf of her Sierra Leonean expansionists.
An independent, expansionist Liberia
Although newly elected President Joseph Jenkins Roberts did his best to
promote the idea of Liberian independence as analogous to American
independence, the letters from the settlers back to America show lit-
tle interest in the change. Most Liberians continued to write back to
patrons, friends, and family in the United States requesting items and
money, expressing their wishes to visit, and explaining how the ‘col-
ony’ was progressing. However, a few did write about the state of the
new country, indicating that the changes did mean something for the
settlers, even if they were more symbolic than real. Monrovia settler
Nelson Sanders’ letter to his ‘Dear Friend and Benefactor’ Susan Fishback
was one of the few letters that did describe independence. He wrote that
‘the 24 August was the beautiful, happy, Grand, and Memorable day, on
which this declaration was Celebrated’.5 Sion Harris, based in Caldwell,
wrote about the meeting of the new legislature day to Reverend William
McClain of the Maryland ACS, noting that ‘If But Slow, we are climeing
[sic]. For is It possible that a Collard man can Say he is free in America
when these things that I see & enjoy and pertake he cannot talk about?’6
Although letters were still filled with news of the hardships of Liberian
settler life – deaths, impoverishment, a lack of basic resources – the
hopeful comments about the state of education, missionary enterprise,
and potential for economic improvement were now linked to this larger
story of independent, representative self-government.
One of the results of independence was the growing interest in emi-
gration from African Americans. Increasing numbers of free black
Southerners and emancipated slaves were migrating to both Liberia and
Maryland in Liberia, coinciding with the growth of hostility toward free
black Southerners in the United States during these years. Emigration
rose from 1,891 in the period 1834–47 to 5,888 for the period 1848–60.7
With the option of moving North or immigrating to Liberia, most still
chose the North. However, growing numbers were choosing Liberia,
contributing to a growing population drawn from those already free,
and changing some of the perceptions of Liberia through their con-
nections to America. The colony continued to attract those who could
see no possibility of improvement in their social, political, or economic
situations in America. While for the freed slaves who were sent out,
the creation of institutional identities was in direct opposition to their
6000
5000
4000 Africans
Free Blacks
3000 Manumittees
Purchased
2000 Total
1000
0
1820–1833 1834–1847 1848–1860
Figure 7.1 Immigration sponsored by the ACS

Source: Derived from Eric Burin, The Peculiar Solution, Tables. Reprinted with permission of
the University Press of Florida.
former lives, and thereby a declaration of personal emancipation, for

free African Americans choosing to emigrate, institutional identities
provided an enhancement of the lives they had in America and allowed
them to fulfil ambition to leadership.
The change in African American leaders’ opinions of emigration was
noted in the Liberia Herald as early as 1849. Quoting an article from the
Journal of Commerce, it reported that ‘the free colored men of the United
States, and even their white Abolition brethren after abusing the Colony
without mercy for many years, are beginning to look upon it with a con-
siderable degree of favor, and will probably become in due time its fast
friends’.8 And although Taylor’s government refused to recognise the
Republic of Liberia, as did all subsequent governments into the Civil War,
in 1849 and 1850, Congress debated the creation of a naval fleet of mail
ships (which could be converted to war steamers) to travel between Liberia
and several US ports and regular travel between the countries began.
Increasing numbers of emigrants meant an increasing need for
territory on which to set up homes, farms, schools, and churches.
Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity were frequently cited as the
inspiration for annexation. The Liberia Herald alerted readers to the
acquisition of new territories: ‘The entire territories of Grand Cape
Mount, Sugaree and Manna, on the north west, and the territory of
Grand Cess on the south east, are now integral parts of the Republic
of Liberia’. The Herald was quick to point out that Liberia now claimed
‘with the single exception of a small tract of country in the Kroo dis-
trict ... all the intermediate points of coast lying between this place and
our extreme jurisdiction on the south east’. The purpose of this expan-
sion was, as ever, commerce, Christianity, and anti-slavery intervention.
The Herald assured its readers that ‘now the whole power and influence
of the government may be successfully exerted in introducing among
them the blessings of civilization and Christianity [and] ... affectually
abolishing the slave trade’.9
American and Liberian missionaries were also expanding further
into the interior. In 1851, Russell, Payne and Williams reported to the
Methodist Missionary Society on the successful expansion of their mis-
sion into Grand Cape Mount. They stated that ‘Sugary, Manna Rock,
Gallinas, once the stronghold of the slave, are all anxiously begging
for missionaries’.10 In 1850, President Roberts was able to report to the
ACS that ‘we have at length succeeded in securing the famed territory
of Gallinas to this Government, including all the territories between
Cape Mount and Shebar’.11 This purchase cost the new country $9,500,
a significant sum. However, this was seen as an investment crucial to
the mission of the settlement, since Roberts commented that ‘Had I
not deemed it absolutely important to secure the Gallinas to prevent
the revival of the slave trade there, I would not have paid the price
demanded’. The acquisition of the Gallinas, long believed by the Sierra
Leone government to be within their jurisdiction, was a major coup for
the Liberian government. Securing this territory to the new country not
only increased its dimensions, but also aided in the new government’s
attempts to depict itself as continuing to aggressively pursue an anti-
slave trade policy. Roberts boasted that ‘this purchase makes the coast
of Liberia 700 miles in length, along the whole course of which the
Slave trade was formerly carried on to a great extent’.12
However, in spite of the new Republic’s success in expanding and
attracting interest from more African American emigrants, Liberians still
faced Sierra Leonean trade disputes. In 1851, a war at Trade Town precipi-
tated a debate between Roberts and Sierra Leone’s Governor Macdonald.
The incident was reported by Matilda Lomax (née Skipwith) in a letter
to her former master John Hartwell Cocke. She commented that ‘the
native forces said to have amount to 1500 men well armed & equipped.
The war is supposed to have been excited by british [sic] traders on the
Coast’.13 President Roberts attempted to blockade the coast after this
series of attacks and slave raids by the Chiefs of Tabacconee, New Cess,
and Trade Town – triggered, settlers believed, by Sierra Leonean and
British arm sales. Roberts issued an edict prohibiting ‘every species of
intercourse whatever with any person or persons residing between the

points above-mentioned’ in order to prevent these indigenous groups
acquiring arms from unscrupulous traders.14
The Sierra Leone government received this proclamation with out-
rage. Governor Macdonald gave a number of objections to the proc-
lamation, including the fact that it did not explicitly state ‘as it should
do, whether the part of the coast placed under Blockade is, or is not, a
portion of the assumed Territory of Liberia’.15 Primarily, the objections
concerned the language – it did not conform to ‘international stand-
ards’ or follow the traditional legal requirements of proclamations of
this kind – and the exact extent of Liberian territory. The governor of
Sierra Leone demanded that ‘it should be set at rest at once, and for ever,
by an Official Declaration on the part of the Liberian Government, of
the real and true limits Coastwise, as well as inland, of its Territorial
possessions’.16
As in the previous decade, Liberia’s authority to act as a sovereign
country was called into question. However, now rather than dealing
with the ACS, which had always harboured hopes of cooperation with
Britain, the Sierra Leone government came into conflict with Roberts,
a man with his own expansionist ambitions. To Macdonald’s objection
that the territory to be blockaded was not defined as Liberian territory,
Roberts countered that he did not believe that definition was required,
citing the blockade of Lagos as proof: ‘if such be fact, Commodore
Bruce, Commander in Chief &c. &c. in his notification of Blockade now
before me ... of all Ports and Places (except Badagry) situated in the Bight
of Benin, has fallen into the same fatal error’.17 Despite Roberts’ well-
argued defence of his blockade, Macdonald’s objections were seconded
by Commodore Bruce, who informed Roberts that he had commanded
‘Her Majesty’s Ships under my orders to see that no British Subjects suf-
fer any inconvenience from it’.18 In addition to Macdonald’s original
objections, Bruce added the additional complaint that ‘a Blockade, to
affect Neutrals, must be maintained by a competent Naval Force’.19
In other words, Liberia could not secure her coastal borders from
access by British traders because she did not have a Navy. This not-so-
subtle message was intended to put Liberia and President Roberts in
their place: West Africa was to be open to Britain’s free trade, regard-
less of Liberia’s sovereignty. The issue was raised again in 1852, when
Bruce wrote to Roberts complaining on behalf of the British and Sierra
Leonean merchants who were compelled by Liberian law to pay a duty
in order to trade on the Liberian coast. Bruce pointed out that in the
treaty of 1848 Liberia had agreed that ‘there shall be reciprocal freedom
of Commerce between the British Dominions and the Republic of

Liberia’.20
Whereas once the Liberian government would have been pressured
into conceding the right to tax traders or claim land, the disputes
between Macdonald and Roberts petered out when the new gover-
nor, Kennedy, took office, and Roberts’ anti-slave trade blockade was
eventually printed as a notice from the Colonial Secretary’s office in
1852.21 Despite the support of many of these governors for the expan-
sion of Sierra Leone trade and mission throughout West Africa, the
frequent changes of personnel and personality were reflected in the
declining influence of the colony in Britain and the disruption of rela-
tions with Liberia. Territorial expansion had played an important role
in the decision to become independent, as Buchanan and Roberts had
come into conflict with Sierra Leonean and British merchants and the
Sierra Leone bureaucracy. The difference now was that British and Sierra
Leonean commercial interests had largely shifted to Lagos’s palm oil
trade. While territorial disputes continued between Liberia and Sierra
Leone, the weakened humanitarian lobby in London and the newfound
strength of the ACS in American politics saw a shift in metropolitan
interests as American contributions to the project of settling Liberia
reached $75,000 in 1859.22 This allowed Liberia to grow as a commercial
and political power in the 1850s.
A new argument for colonization
Despite the end of ACS involvement in the running of Liberia, President

Roberts and his country relied heavily on the Colonization Society’s
continued influence in commercial, military, and political corridors in
the United States. Continued British and Sierra Leonean pressure on
Liberia frustrated the commercial ambitions of the ACS, as well as that
of Liberia, who, as one pamphlet argued, ‘prefers to be most closely
allied to the United States. Such a preference exists and has been avowed
on the part of that Government’.23 Colonization advocate Benjamin
Coates was equally excited about the prospect of a commercial outpost
in Africa. In 1851, he wrote to Frederick Douglass in support of Liberia,
writing that one day it would make up part of the ‘United States of
Africa ... considered as one of the most enlightened and distinguished
nations of Christendom’.24
By the 1850s commerce was portrayed as the predominant reason for
engagement with Liberia. James K. Straw took out a notice in the Liberia
Herald in 1851 declaring his interest in promoting cotton production in
Liberia and promising an ‘award as a premium the sum of fifty dollars

to the person who produces the finest five acre plot of cotton; and that
he further pledges himself to pay the most liberal price for the proceeds
of the same’.25 The ACS, determined to win support for its ongoing
Liberian emigration schemes, saw in the commercial argument a new
avenue to a moderate anti-slavery constituency, and finding avenues
for non-slave cotton production became increasingly important over
the decade.
Colonization supporters in the United States increasingly turned to
the Liberians themselves for arguments, and were drawn back repeat-
edly to the ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ argument. In
resolutions delivered during the annual ACS meeting in 1849, it was
declared that the independence of Liberia had succeeded in ‘founding a
new republican empire on the shores of Africa, introducing there civil-
ization and Christianity’.26 ACS agent David Christy’s speech in support
of Liberia before the House of Representatives, published as the Lecture
on African Colonization in 1849, once again publicized the ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’ argument in America. The lecture argued
that ‘immense commercial advantages will result to the United States, by
the establishment of colonies of blacks from our country on the coast of
Africa’.27 The commercial advantages of the continued settlement and
establishment of trade networks with Africa were further highlighted.
The pamphlet fits into the growing (Northern) movement of free labour
and free trade promoters who saw slavery as hindering America’s indus-
trialization. They were not predominantly humanitarians and many
of them were confirmed racists, but they saw the system of slavery as
corrupting America’s commercial potential and some turned to colon-
ization as a potential solution.
This influence was combined with a growing mercantilist Anglo-
phobia. The US government would not recognize Liberia’s independ-
ence, but there was some feeling in Congress that the Navy should be
aiding American and Liberian commerce to ensure that British influ-
ence in the region was not unchecked. The ACS used trade figures to
demonstrate the need to intervene further in Liberia, arguing that
British trade with West Africa was dominant, but Liberian–US trading
connections could be promoted to the Americans’ advantage. The colo-
nizationists sought to argue that the British advantage in West African
commerce was unfair (because it relied on the re-export of American
cotton, American tobacco, and American alcohol) and that ‘it behooves
the United States to look after so valuable a trade, and not needlessly
give England a still greater advantage by throwing away the sympathies
of the only settlement of American origin existing on this coast’.28 For

the years 1844–9, the ACS reported that exports to Africa as a whole
from the United States had amounted to over $4 million, 58 per cent of
which was in products that were intended for barter – tobacco, cotton,
and alcohol.
This implied that while consumption was growing amongst Liberian
settlers, many of their imports, as well as products used elsewhere in
Africa were still intended for trade with indigenous groups for export
commodities. And since their export trade was dominated by Britain,
the American trade seemed to be fuelling the Liberians’ connection
to Britain, rather than their connection to America. The Liberians’
use of British products and identification through material goods to
the imperial project tied Sierra Leoneans into a network of exchange.
Although the export value of Sierra Leone diminished relative to other
British African ports over the course of the century, its value as a hub
for British consumer culture in the continent, and its overwhelming
ability to spread middle class Victorian consumption within West
Africa, remained valuable assets. Liberian traders, while experiencing
more immediate benefits from their connections to American trading
houses, felt gradually shut out of the American market by the introduc-
tion of tariffs that affected their produce.29
After independence, despite ongoing trade with America and appeals
to their supporters for new terms of trade, they turned to the British
and wider European market instead. Mid-century British commercial
imperialism saw Sierra Leone as a hub for the sale (however limited) of
British manufactures in West Africa – their material culture connections
brought them into a network of imperial trade and finance. Liberians,
despite connections with American trading houses and the ongoing
purchase of consumer goods from America, were never tied into a net-
work of trade, despite the growing American preference for mercantil-
ism in dealing with Liberia. While Sierra Leoneans participated in the
full range of imperial activities, Liberians were limited to selling their
exports through partners associated with the American Colonization
Society or interested African American individuals or companies.
There was a suggestion within the ACS that establishment of direct
trade links between the two countries would increase American exports
and reduce British monopoly in Africa. The ACS commerce report’s
author argued essentially that the negative balance of payments facing
Liberia (and other African trading partners) was a boon to manufactur-
ers and producers in the United States. The trade balance between the
United States and Africa as a whole favoured the United States, with
a net profit of $906,252 for the period 1844–9. This argument repre-
sented a shift in approach, presenting a different angle of the commer-
cial argument to that previously used by either the ACS or the British
colonizationists. Rather than arguing that legitimate trade would make
the settlements self-sustaining producers for export, this report argued
that the value of America’s ties to Liberia lay in the ability to export
to the new country. Although the US government continued to refuse
recognition of Liberia, the returns for 1859 reveal that while Britain
contributed to the commerce of Liberia, the United States still domi-
nated Liberia’s trade well into its independence, as Liberians continued
to demand US products and use their links to America for commerce.30
A pamphlet dedicated to this theme was published in 1851 and
included extracts from newspapers citing the creeping British influence.
As the New York Colonization Journal put it, ‘unless suitable encourage-
ment is afforded by Congress to the cause of African colonization ... our
free colored people will be induced by the British Government to assist
in building up a powerful confederacy in the West Indies, full of hostil-
ity to our Government’.31 The Boston Post similarly evoked the ‘British
menace’: ‘England is penetrating every sea and ocean, from New Orleans
to Canton, from London to the Cape of Good Hope, until her steam
marine amounts to more than one hundred and fifteen large ships’.32
The Liberian government was equally attempting to foster a stronger
commercial relationship with America. In a letter to the Secretary of
State in 1849, Liberian Secretary of the Treasury Lewis emphasized the
existing trade relationship between the countries. He wrote that the
Liberian contribution to American imports ‘may be fairly stated at five
hundred thousand dollars in African commodities ... and our imports
from the United States may be estimated at one hundred and fifty thou-
sand dollars’.33 The report complained that the primary items required
for trade in Liberia – tobacco and cotton textiles – were all coming from
Europe, even though they could be coming from America.
This language revealed an underlying apprehension about America’s
inability to catch up to British imperial strength. In 1850, Congress
considered a Bill to establish a fleet of war vessels off of the coast of
Africa. The proposal, put forward by the Naval Committee, argued for
the establishment of the fleet ‘for the suppression of the slave-trade, and
the promotion of commerce and colonization’.34 This was not going
to be the same impotent fleet that had patrolled since the beginning
of the century: ‘Each of said ships, if required by the Secretary, shall
receive two guns of heavy caliber, and the men from the United States
Navy necessary to serve them, who shall be provided for as aforesaid’.35
The fleet was to operate as a defence of American and Liberian trade,

carry mail around the Atlantic, and promote the colonization efforts of
the ACS. The bill stipulated that ‘The said contracts shall further agree
to carry to Liberia so many emigrants being free persons of color and
not exceeding twenty-five hundred for each voyage, as the American
Colonization Society may require’.36
In the supporting documents, the role of commerce was emphasized
equally with the tendency of colonization to ameliorate the tensions
between pro- and anti-slavery forces in America. Commerce was not
only discussed as a benefit of the colony, but as a zero-sum game that
Britain was already winning. The report stated that ‘The belief is now
confidently entertained in Great Britain, that an immense commerce
may be opened up with that continent, by putting an end to the slave
trade’.37 The report promoted the potentials of Liberian commerce
for the United States. It cited the growing demand for palm oil: ‘the
demand for it, both in Europe and America, is daily increasing. The
average import into Liverpool of palm oil for some years past has been
at least 15,000 tons, valued at £400,000 sterling’.38 Again, the challenge
of British commerce was invoked, but the Report helpfully pointed out
that ‘Liberia is adjacent to the “Gold Coast” ’.39
Despite strong gains in commercial trading in the 1830s and again in
the 1840s, as of 1853 there were only two Liberian local trading craft in
the St. John River engaged in palm oil trade.40 These were the ‘Benson’
and the ‘Susannah’ weighing in at ten and thirty tons respectively and
owned by then-vice president Benson. ACS testimony was considered
in the report, and Governor Wright of Indiana submitted a letter to
the ACS stating that ‘the interest of colonization requires that we foster
Liberia, and not impoverish her ... So plan the scheme that it will be the
interest of the free man of color to go to Africa, and this can be best
accomplished by making Liberia a wealthy commercial nation’.41
The government agreed to made provision for ships and entered into
contracts with the Liberian government to provide naval and commer-
cial support and put pressure on British traders in the region. In add-
ition, the presence of American consuls in Liberia from 1852 and Sierra
Leone from 1853 was intended to help secure American commercial
interests in the country and region.42
While American pro- and anti-slavery rhetoric – and physical violence
– reached new heights in the 1850s, the ACS had found a convincing
new argument for garnering congressional support for Liberia. By play-
ing on both parties’ Anglophobia and commercial jealousy, influen-
tial ACS members followed the lead of Liberians themselves, who had
witnessed an increase in ACS interest and support during a period of

British–Liberian tension between 1839 and 1842. They continued to
write about the possibilities for trade and the interference of the British
throughout the 1840s and 1850s, influencing the ACS’s (and therefore
Congress’s) perception of the situation. This shift in focus distracted
from the accusations over whether the ACS was a pro- or anti-slavery
organization, giving moderates common cause.43 The best way to make
an argument for humanitarian intervention, then, was to couch it in
economic and foreign policy terms.
The expansion of Sierra Leone
The general British lack of interest in anti-slavery in the period between

1852 and 1857 and the weakened ties between Sierra Leonean settlers
and a particular anti-slavery lobby in parliament meant that the British
authorities were slower to act than they had been in the past. The dis-
traction of the Crimean War (1853–56) contributed to a weakening of
British naval presence.44 Legitimate trade was the primary concern of
British interests in West Africa, and figures from the 1850s show that
while Sierra Leone was actively participating in the expanding palm oil
and palm kernel trade and the value of its palm product exports made
up a significant portion of its income, it was far outstripped in terms of
contribution to British palm imports by Lagos. During the growth in
palm oil trade, ‘Sierra Leone remain[ed] of fairly minor importance –
although its export of casks quadruples, its percentage of the total
remains around 2 per cent’.45 This allowed American commerce to blos-
som in West Africa.
Despite the lack of interest in continued anti-slavery intervention by
the metropolitan public, Sierra Leone itself was thriving and interven-
tion by Sierra Leoneans continued unabated. The population of Sierra
Leone was fairly stable at 4,000 people throughout the period from the
1830s to the 1850s. In the 1850s this dropped slightly.46 This was in
part a result of emigration from the colony to the hinterland, the Gold
Coast, the Gambia, Lagos and Abeokuta, and the West Indies. Sierra
Leoneans, enthusiastic about Buxton and the anti-slavery establish-
ment’s interest in West Africa, started their own auxiliary of the African
Civilization Society.47 The apparent British lack of interest in the post-
Niger Expedition period promoted Sierra Leonean traders’ and colonists’
practically unchecked expansionist impulses, particularly in the fields
of anti-slavery intervention, commercial activity, and missionary work.
Sierra Leonean settlers also had frequent commercial wars during trips
up river for trade. With an increasing professional class and a continu-

ing British-based administration of the colony, Sierra Leonean settlers
were forced to seek positions of prestige in the further reaches of West
Africa.
The slow development of education and religious instruction over
the course of the preceding twenty years had produced a stable Afro-
Victorian middle class, intent on replicating all of the values of the
British metropole. The colony’s wealth had been fairly steady in the
1830s and 1840s, but by the 1850s, per capita income from exports
began to increase, dipping briefly in 1859 before regaining strength in
1860. Elites had capital to invest in property, new business ventures,
education for their children, and a British lifestyle. Now, finally, in the
wake of West Indian emancipation, they found themselves lauded for
these achievements. The African Colonizer reported that men of African
descent were achieving positions as missionaries and colonial offi-
cials, and ‘the friends of Africa could not do a worthier, nor a wiser
thing than to obtain Colonial appointments of this class for all similar
candidates’.48
The increasingly wealthy and educated Sierra Leonean middle class
was not fully represented politically. For those who remained in the
colony, the period 1848–60 saw an increase in demands for recognition
by Sierra Leoneans – in the form of petitions for legislative represen-
tation, ecclesiastical representation, and mobility within the Empire.
These demands seem to have been spurred by increasing levels of
self-government amongst other British colonies and in Liberia itself:
4 Per Capita Exports 1831–61
0
18 1
18 3
18 5
18 7
18 9
18 1
18 3
18 5
18 7
18 9
18 1
18 3
18 6
58
3
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
18
Figure 7.2 Sierra Leone’s per capita export growth, 1831–61

Gambia and the Gold Coast both gained legislative assemblies represent-
ing the commercial interests of the colonies, and after 1847, Liberia too
was represented by elective government. In 1847, in fact, the Colonial
Office had dealt with the question of whether or not to make the Sierra
Leone Council – established in 1821 to promote harmony between the
governor and the Sierra Leonean community – a Legislative Assembly
with the power to make laws. Their conclusion was that attempting to
set straight whether the body should or should not be legislative would
be more difficult than imagined since ‘it wd. be necessary to apply to
Parliamt. & to tell a story better kept out of sight’ in case other colonies
demanded representation.49 With colonial government correspondence
regularly chastising indigenous peoples for interfering with the ‘British
subjects’ of Sierra Leone and the CMS and other missionary schools
providing a high level of education to all Sierra Leonean children, it is
not surprising that a thriving political community developed within
the society, demanding government support even as they were denied a
representative government. Despite these changes to the status both of
Liberated Africans within the colony and those who chose to do busi-
ness outside of the colony’s jurisdiction, Sierra Leoneans did not receive
a corresponding change in the autocratic nature of their governance.
Like other settler colonies, Sierra Leone believed that British political
life should be democratic, even though the modest demands of the
Chartists in the previous decade had failed.50
However, a thriving press and education-focused culture did provide
a way for Sierra Leoneans to voice their concerns with the running of
the colony.51 Limited representation in the governor’s council and the
legislative council also demonstrated that, where it was available to
them, Sierra Leoneans were able and willing to participate. Ezzidio had
become the first mayor of Freetown in 1845 and the increasing pres-
ence of Afro-West Indians meant that Africans and African descendents
were increasingly well-represented in government service. Over the
course of the 1850s, the position of Army Staff Surgeon was gradually
turned over to Sierra Leoneans trained in London; in 1859, another
West Indian emigrant, Alexander Fitzjames, became acting governor;
and also in 1859, George William Nicol, son of a Nova Scotian woman,
became the first Colonial Secretary from the colony, gaining a seat on
the Governor’s Council.52 In particular, ‘in Freetown, the civil and mer-
cantile communities, predominantly African, were strong advocates of
the acquisition of political control, and the pressure they were able to
exert on the local colonial administration did much to circumvent the
official directives from Whitehall’.53 In this respect, the anti-slavery
allies of Sierra Leone – primarily the Aborigines’ Protection Society and

some of the less orthodox members of the BFASS – continued to prove
useful for the Sierra Leone settlers.
In 1854, several disgruntled Sierra Leoneans formed the Sierra Leone
Native Association ‘To maintain mutual friendship among its mem-
bers and inhabitants generally. To raise a fund and therefrom relieve
its members in times of oppression. To procure and secure for them
those privileges due them as inhabitants of this Colony’.54 In 1858 the
organization petitioned Henry Labouchere, Secretary of State for the
Colonies, arguing that they were not being permitted to climb the pro-
fessional ladder in Freetown.55 They also submitted the constitution
of the organization to J.R. Dailey, an African American shopkeeper in
Freetown, who they hoped would forward it to his contacts amongst the
Aborigines’ Protection Society and BFASS in order to apply pressure to
the Colonial Secretary and other government officials. Dailey, recently
made famous amongst humanitarian circles in Britain as representing
the arbitrary and oppressive Colonial Government in Sierra Leone for
a case of supposed false imprisonment, responded that ‘having read
the Constitution of your Association and being honored with the per-
sonal acquaintance of nearly all its members, which comprises the most
respectable among the inhabitants of this Colony, I have only to say
that I most cordially approve of its objects and aims’ and sent the con-
stitution and letter along to the BFASS.56
In 1858, Sierra Leoneans petitioned unsuccessfully for elective gov-
ernment.57 This campaign was led, once again, by the Mercantile
Association. The group agitated for Legislative government in the model
of the Canadian or West Indian settlements, once again highlighting
their connections to the rest of the Empire and their continued hope to
be recognized as equals. Governor Stephan Hill (1854–5, 1855–9, and
1860–1) rejected their petition on the grounds that it represented the
desires of only a small minority – the 194 Sierra Leoneans who would
be eligible to vote under the English £10 property franchise.58 In these
circumstances, with no prospects of self-government forthcoming, the
creation of associations and maintenance of links to allies in Britain
remained important tools for furthering Sierra Leonean interests in the
face of recalcitrant governors.
Within West Africa, one way that Sierra Leoneans pushed for
anti-slavery activity, commercial expansion, and more subject privi-
leges was to take the initiative themselves, with or without initial gov-
ernment support. Some governors in this period promoted anti-slavery
treaties and settler expansion; others who did not were simply ignored
by a settler population seeking to convert Africa to their religion and

their British imports. Several ongoing wars amongst various indigenous
groups in the region – particularly in Sherbro – presented a constant
headache for Freetown’s governors. In a number of instances between
1848 and 1853, Stephen Caulker of Sherbro and King Canreba of Bonthe
(adjacent to Sherbro) destroyed the property of Sierra Leone traders in
their territory. In nearly every case, the traders’ rights were defended
through strongly worded letters from the governor, sanctions on trad-
ing with these groups, and even the use of a British Man of War to
punish the perpetrators. The persistence of Sierra Leonean traders in
operating in these dangerous, war-torn areas testified to the attitude of
the Sierra Leone government in promoting and protecting trade expan-
sion outside of Freetown.
In 1848, Acting Governor B.C. Pine was presented with a number
of settler complaints. Venturing out into the interior to conduct trade,
they were frequently attacked and robbed. Pine wrote to Canreba to
complain that ‘some of your people have robbed and beaten William
Thomas and William Meheul belonging to this Colony, and that they
at the same time grossly insulted the Flag of England by tearing it to
pieces’.59 Pine had already sent a letter to Canreba stating that ‘I must
tell you that I will not permit the property of any of the Sierra Leone
people to be taken from them or their trade up the Sherbro to be inter-
fered with, unless it can be clearly proved that they have been guilty of
bad conduct’.60 When Canreba did not respond, Pine wrote to an ally in
the region, ‘Tom Coubak and other people of Carrybak [sic] have been
robbing the canoes belonging to the Colony, and have been beating
our people and tho’ I have written to Carrybak about all this, he has
refused to give us any satisfaction, and so we have been obliged to des-
troy the places where these wrongs were done’.61 In the same month,
Pine directed two ambassadors to seek an audience with Stephen
Caulker, of Sherbro Island, to reprimand him for plundering ‘a large
amount of property belonging to the following Sierra Leone people, viz.
Isaac George, Richard Johnson, Jim Macaulay, John Johnson, Richard
Quashie, and Jack Repeyarn’. Pine requested that ‘he will for the future
carefully abstain, and cause his people to abstain from interfering with
Sierra Leone Subjects, whilst pursuing their lawful trade’ under threat
of severe punishment if he did not comply.62
By 1851, Colonial Secretary Earl Grey wrote to Governor Macdonald
authorizing his treaties that recognized the jurisdiction of the British
government over British subjects outside of the colony.63 By manipu-
lating willing governors, Sierra Leonean expansionists were able to
promote their interests, despite a lack of representation in popular gov-

ernment. In 1853, after over a decade of uncertainty with regard to Sierra
Leoneans’ status as British subjects, a parliamentary act was passed to
declare that ‘all liberated Africans domiciled or resident, or who here-
after may be domiciled or resident, in the colony of Sierra Leone or its
dependencies, shall be deemed to be and to have been for all purposes
as, from the date of their being brought into or of their arrival in said
colony, natural-born subjects of Her Majesty’.64
Educated Sierra Leone settlers also sought new roles in other British
African settlements, immigrating to the West Indies, or becoming the
trade representatives for Freetown or London-based merchants. An
American report on education in Liberia pointed out that while mis-
sionaries had been in charge of education in Liberia, they were primar-
ily focused on civilizing Africans, not educating African Americans,
whereas in Sierra Leone missionaries were often responsible to the gov-
ernment and had goals that were aligned with the political aims of
the colony. This hints at the difference between a strongly centralized,
metropolitan run Sierra Leonean system and the more diffuse, colony-
run Liberia, where the missionaries were not responsible to the govern-
ment and therefore could leave the confines of the colony and do what
they wanted to do. The author referred to the success of the British mis-
sionary labours in West Africa: ‘Here, the native population, living under
British law and in some degree civilized, is estimated at 10,000; and one
of them has lately been appointed British Consul at Monrovia’.65
Even though most Sierra Leoneans were now a generation removed
from their African homelands and most attended some form of school
or Sunday school, their involvement with the British aspects of the col-
ony did not undermine their allegiance to their ethnic group or their
participation in customary rituals and associations. The Aku, Ibo, and
Nupe all had their own associations and societies, and the Aku were still
‘ruled’ by King John Macaulay, who, until the 1850s, was recognized
as the head of the group by the Colonial Government.66 The societies
were heavily involved in petitioning and bringing suits, and seemed
to be successful in their demands from the government. A number of
recaptives had established themselves in prominent positions in soci-
ety, as ordained preachers, merchants, lawyers, and government clerks.
In 1855, for instance, the Colonial Secretary instructed the Sheriff that
in response to ‘a statement of persons who have disputed their Tax for
the year 1855 on the ground that no notice was furnished to them by
the Assessor of the increase in their rating’ the government agreed ‘to
reduce the Assessors’ rate to the same as it was last year’.67
Recaptives were actively involved in political and social life within

the colony, petitioning their parish commissioners for improvements
to the towns and infrastructure development and raising money for
new churches.68 The focus of much of the drive for ‘civilization’ was in
architecture and community organizations. In 1856, for instance, the
manager of Waterloo wrote to the Colonial Surveyor on behalf of his
town, requesting funds for the building of a new market as the exist-
ing one had outgrown its structure and ‘when we take into consider-
ation what is being done to promote civilization among the people I am
inclined to believe that to further that view, nothing ought to be more
conducive to it, than the improving of towns in this way’.69
However, after the early 1840s, some particularly petitioned to return
to their Yoruba or Ibo homelands in order to bring the Word to their fam-
ilies there. The burial societies and community associations sponsored
by the Liberated Africans were now predominantly Christian organiza-
tions. It is possible that attachment to these ethnic groups fostered the
desire, particularly amongst the Ibo, to ‘return’ to their ancestral home-
lands and spread the Gospel message. A group of merchants seeking
to establish a colony at Badagry petitioned Governor Doherty in 1839
declaring that their object consisted of ‘abating the slave trade in that
part of Africa’ while more petitions followed in the 1840s requesting
permission to explore the interior for commercial potential or Christian
conversion.70
As the debates between Buxton and Gurley took place in Britain
and America, it is clear that the colonial expansionist ambitions for
‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ that drove apart the African
Civilization Society and American Colonization Society had deep ideo-
logical roots in the settlers themselves. Expansionist anti-slavery cam-
paigners as well as members of government sought to apply the settlers’
interest in further colonization. Russell’s secretary replied to Governor
Doherty’s request in 1840, writing that Russell sought Doherty’s ‘opinion
as to the practicability of furthering the views of the petitioners in com-
bination with the objects of the proposed Expedition to the Niger’.71
Although the settlers were denied official support in their establish-
ment of a settlement in Yoruba territory, they went anyway, chartering
their own ship. A true ‘Afro-Victorian’ middle class had been estab-
lished, as was clear not only in the Sierra Leoneans’ choice of dress, reli-
gion, buying habits, architecture, and choice of professions, but also in
their desire to spread the message of British civilization. Sierra Leonean
settlers themselves took on the responsibilities of British anti-slavery
expansion.
These petitioners and others who sought to pursue their own policy
of commercial, Christian, anti-slavery expansion looked to the east and
beyond Liberia, to Nigeria and the Gold Coast. They argued for expan-
sionist policy ‘so that the Gospel of Christ can be preached through out
that land’.72 The Aku in Sierra Leone raised money to support their own
missionaries’ endeavours, and four boats were purchased by Liberated
Africans – the Queen Victoria, the Wilberforce, the Free Grace, and the
Wonderful – in order to bring emigrants from Sierra Leone to Yoruba
territory.73 Aku congregations back in Sierra Leone supported them by
fundraising in 1841 and 1842 to provide school books, bibles, and slates
for the new settlement.74 Numerous petitions expressing the desire to
open up communications with the interior demonstrate the interest
in participating in expansion within Africa and soon sixty-one Sierra
Leoneans with official passports had established a new centre in Badagry
(present-day Nigeria), where they were known locally as Saro.75
Many more left without government sanction and by 1844, roughly
800 had arrived in Yoruba territory, predominantly in Abeokuta, Lagos,
and Badagry.76 They were, reportedly, encouraged by the Wesleyan mis-
sionaries, who disliked the prospect of losing much of the civilized West
African population to the West Indies.77 Governor Fergusson agreed
with their assessment, writing that ‘Transatlantic Emigration from
Sierra Leone if successful would necessarily withdraw from Africa and
transfer to the West Indies a large portion of that people upon whose
agency the missionaries had calculated in their endeavour to accom-
plish the great ends of Missionary labour’ in West Africa.78 This seemed
to be borne out by the example of the settlement in Badagry and by the
1850s, there was a significant eastward migration from the colony as
several thousand Sierra Leoneans left for the Niger region.
The Sierra Leoneans who had internalized the Christian mission
approach to anti-slavery sought to put it into practice by promoting
further colonial expansion on their own terms. Samuel Ajayi Crowther
had been ordained by the CMS in 1843 and sent as their representative
to Abeokuta. The CMS wrote approvingly to Sierra Leonean mission-
ary W.M.T. Harding, based in the Banana Islands, that ‘Sierra Leone
has become a [country] from which we expect to see ambassadors for
Christ going out into the dark places of Africa’.79 They explicitly laid
out to John Attarra of Charlotte, Sierra Leone, that they wanted his
‘Countrymen to carry the glad tidings ... into distant lands, as in the
Yoruba Country ... this is the great object of our Missionary Societies in
England’.80 The Wesleyan Missionary Society and Church Missionary
Society had established missions in Badagry in 1842 and 1845,
respectively. Abeokuta was the next point of missionary expansion,

and by the late 1840s, Sierra Leonean emigrants and missionaries and
their British counterparts had begun building schools and missionary
churches.
The receptivity of Egba leaders to Christian conversion prompted
Palmerston’s interest in the new settlements. The Egba, meanwhile,
saw in the missionaries and Saro settlers a new ally in defeating their
regional rival, the kingdom of Dahomey.81 The CMS reported to
Palmerston via their communication with the Sierra Leonean settlers
that the King of Dahomey, Ghezo, regularly disrupted Yoruba trade
with the port at Lagos by conducting slave raids in the region and there-
fore, ‘the Slave Trade being carried on at Lagos with great activity, the
Yoruba people have been obliged to use the port of Badagry, between
which and Abbeokuta [sic] communications are carried on by a difficult
road by land’.82 In the period between 1840 and 1851, over 51,000 slaves
had been embarked in the region of the Bight of Benin, with over half
these embarkations taking place at Lagos.83 It was clear that the naval
patrols were entirely ineffective in stemming this flow, and pressure
from Sierra Leonean missionaries and settlers in the region was begin-
ning to make this public in Britain. In 1851, Samuel Crowther travelled
to Britain and spoke to various assemblies in London – including an
audience with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – urging military inter-
vention to put down the slave trading kingdom of Dahomey in support
of the settler missions in Abeokuta.84
Palmerston instructed newly appointed Consul, John Beecroft, to con-
duct a mission on behalf of the Yoruba and Sierra Leoneans to secure
the allegiance of coastal traders to their legitimate commerce. He was
instructed to visit Ghezo and inform him that ‘there are dwelling among
those tribes many liberated Africans and British-born subjects whom
Her Majesty’s Government are bound to protect from injury’.85 After
six weeks in the capital, Abomey, Beecroft entered into negotiations
with Ghezo. Talks broke down over the apparent British favouritism
for Abeokuta and the kidnap of Sierra Leonean settler John McCarthy
and his wife by Ghezo’s men.86 When the king refused to enter into an
anti-slavery treaty with Beecroft, and ‘expressed an intention of mak-
ing war on the Chiefs of Abbeokuta [sic]’ the Secretary of the Admiralty
was instructed to follow ‘measures similar to those which were enforced
against Gallinas’.87
The CMS missionaries in Abeokuta also supported action, though
they focused on removing the oba of Lagos, Kosoko, in favour of their
ally in Abeokuta, Akitoye. When a treaty promoting British legitimate
trade and forsaking the slave trade was rejected by Kosoko, the local
naval squadron commander, T.G. Forbes, decided to bombard the
city in retaliation. This action was in part prompted by Palmerston’s
encouraging letter to Beecroft, suggesting that ‘Lawful Commerce is
more advantageous to the nations of Africa than Slave Trade and that
therefore the British Govt in putting down Slave Trade and in encour-
aging Lawful Commerce is conferring a Benefit upon the People &
Chiefs of Africa’, a benefit that Palmerston reminded dissenters was
enforceable through the power of the ‘Cannon of England’.88 The fail-
ure of the bombardment led to subsequent attacks on Lagos, ultim-
ately resulting in British occupation of Lagos in 1851 which finally
effectively ended the slave trade from that port, as well as opening
up trade treaties promoting Sierra Leonean and British trade and
protecting missionaries in the territory.89 The expansion of Sierra
Leone’s merchants, traders, missionaries, and settlers into Lagos and
Abeokuta had effectively led to the annexation of a new colony by
shifting the centre of British West African trade, mission, and anti-
slavery activity.
The British naval intervention in Lagos in 1850–51 may have been
related to the disruption of the palm oil trade caused by unrest in the
region between Abeokuta and Lagos attributed to slave raiding by the
Kingdom of Dahomey. The subsequent explosion of the trade hints at
the role Sierra Leone settlement and naval presence contributed to the
opening of a free port at Lagos even as Sierra Leonean exports remained
marginal.90 Between 1850 and 1855, imports into Liverpool grew from
£45,000.00
£40,000.00
£35,000.00
£30,000.00
£25,000.00
£20,000.00
£15,000.00
£10,000.00
£5,000.00
£0.00
1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 1836 1838 1840 1842 1844 1846 1848 1850 1852 1854
Figure 7.3 Sierra Leone palm oil exports to all ports, 1824–54
30,833 casks of palm oil to 59,151; imports into London grew from
6,605 casks to 11,898; and imports into Bristol grew from 7,537 casks to
12,121.91 British West African trade continued to grow over the 1850s.
Lagos in particular became increasingly important in the growing palm
oil trade, which reached a peak in 1854–61. The arrival of steam ships
for the palm oil trade in 1853 contributed to the development of the
export industry.
The continued growth and expansion of British trade in West Africa
contributed to the improved image of Sierra Leone in British public
opinion, but also diverted the public’s attention away from that ori-
ginal settlement to the potential of other African areas for commercial
development. As Lagos increased as a palm oil exporter, Sierra Leone
was eclipsed as a commercial entrepot in the region. However, Sierra
Leone retained value as a location for the spread of British export trade.
The trade with the west coast of Africa, dominated by the trade in and
around Sierra Leone, the Bights, and the Gold Coast, clearly provided
the greatest profit for British manufacturers in their export trade to
Africa. Trade with West Africa represented nearly 33 per cent of the
value of British exports to Africa.92 British and Sierra Leonean traders, as
well as foreign traders from America, benefited from the lack of restric-
tions or tariffs on their exports.
Throughout the 1850s, the CMS expanded its operations in the Niger
region, particularly relying on Crowther’s work as he moved farther
North and engaged with new territories. Crowther’s growing influence
in the CMS culminated when he was made Bishop of Nigeria in 1864,
but before that his role in developing a Yoruba Anglican mission was cru-
cial. The ongoing connections between Sierra Leone, Abeokuta, Lagos,
and metropolitan Britain tied the missionary expansion of these Sierra
Leoneans into a wider imperial humanitarian project. Sierra Leonean
missionaries – among them not only Crowther, but his son and son-
in-law – were important parts of the church hierarchy and the connec-
tion of the Nigerian Anglican Church to the British imperial project.
Their experience of the CMS institutions in Sierra Leone’s parish system
was replicated in part in the expanding Saro communities in Lagos,
Abeokuta, and Badagry, but also where CMS missionaries expanded
into Nigeria’s frontiers. Although Henry Venn, the head of the CMS
in Britain, declared that he favoured a policy whereby missionaries
would establish self-running ‘native’ churches and then move on – the
so-called euthanasia of the mission – the nature of the Anglican church
and its relationship to the British state kept these ‘native’ churches
within a network of British influence. It is not surprising that two years
before Crowther came to London to make the argument for British

intervention on behalf of the missionary cause in Abeokuta, the CMS
Intelligencer promoted the idea that the strength of the British empire
was its missionaries.93 Despite the strength of these ties, however, it
seems clear that it was only in combination with the anti-slavery argu-
ment that missionary and commercial appeals led to the establishment
of formal colonies.
By 1861, Commodore Edmonstone reported that the slave trade had
resumed in the Nunez, Pongas, Debruka, Sherbro, and Gallinas.94 Instead
of focusing on the region around Sierra Leone (and Liberia), the anti-
slavery imperative had once again shifted east, to the Bights. In 1859
Palmerston’s new Liberal government looked again to Africa. Expansion
in the region was encouraged for the ‘extension of our trade’ and from
this Palmerston reasoned that ‘I believe the occupation of Lagos would
be a very useful and important step for the suppression of Slave Trade
& for the promotion of Legitimate Commerce’.95 Palmerston’s govern-
ment supported the annexation of Lagos in 1861 in order to ‘complete
the suppression of the slave trade in the Bight of Benin, support the
development of lawful commerce, and check the aggressive spirit of the
king of Dahomey’.96 This, despite the fact that the trade seemed to be
increasing elsewhere.
Anti-slavery intervention was couched in terms of ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’, and, taking a cue from the expansionist
Sierra Leoneans, there was a renewed emphasis on the role of commerce
in this anti-slavery formula. Palmerston, Russell (in the Foreign Office),
and the British consul for Lagos pressed for annexation and on 6 August
1861 were successful. The commercial importance of Lagos was obvi-
ously crucial to this change in policy but the anti-slavery argument was
equally important for the metropolitan justification for colonial expan-
sion. Commodore Edmonstone, while bemoaning the lack of anti-slave
trade enforcement in Sierra Leone, did pride himself on the extinction
of the slave trade in the Brass River and the Bight of Biafra. He credited
the legitimate commerce of palm oil and stated that ‘it is to be hoped
that our new position at Lagos will have the wholesome effect in time
of checking the Slave Trade in Dahomey’s country, which I can con-
fidently assert is the only part of the Coast in this Division where it
prevails to any serious extent’.97
The commercial and evangelical importance of Lagos was obviously
crucial to this expansionist policy but the anti-slavery argument was
equally important for the justification. The expansion of Sierra Leone’s
merchants, traders, missionaries, and settlers into Lagos and Abeokuta
had effectively led to the annexation of a new colony by shifting the

centre of British West African trade, mission, and anti-slavery activity.
* * *
Even without the political representation they sought, Sierra Leoneans

were able to direct much of the policy of the colony through their
own expansionist initiatives. Working with the idea of spreading
‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ in order to combat the slave
trade, Sierra Leoneans were successful in establishing trade, missions,
and settlements along the West African coast. In 1861, despite the shift
in attention along the coast to the newly annexed Lagos, annexations
continued in Sierra Leone with the Bendu and Bulama territories as a
result of requests from Sierra Leoneans. The Colonial Office correspond-
ence regarding this annexation reports that, ‘as these several cessions
are to stop the slave trade and to establish legitimate trade and will cost
this Country nothing I suppose they may be approved’ although the
Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Newcastle, commented that ‘I see no
help for it & this must be done, but the “suppression of the Slave Trade”
is leading us into serious Territorial complications, on the whole W.
Coast of Africa’.98
Sierra Leoneans mediated the tools and doctrines of the anti-slav-
ery mission, spreading Christianity throughout West Africa, using
the language of British ‘civilization’ to negotiate power with the gov-
ernors, and urging commercial expansion against the wishes of the
metropolitan government, all in the name of anti-slavery ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’. Sierra Leoneans participated in military,
commercial, and Christian imperial anti-slavery campaigns, repeatedly
articulating ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ as the defin-
ition of their role in West Africa and within the British Empire. While
frequently cooperating with British anti-slavery goals, just as often
Sierra Leoneans used ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ for
their own ends, which shaped the development of anti-slavery inter-
vention over the course of the century. By the 1850s and 1860s, ter-
ritorial expansion in West Africa and requests for intervention – in
support of legitimate commerce, in support of Christian converts, and
in opposition to slavery – began to shape the way that the British Navy,
parliament, and anti-slavery societies expected to deal with the slave
trade in Africa.
American intervention, meanwhile, had taken a different turn after
Liberia’s independence. Although Liberians continued to pursue a range
of Christian missions and territorial annexations in the name of civil-

ization, it was through their commercial expansion that they were best
able to engage the interest of moderate Americans. A shift in American
anti-slavery politics was equally connected to developments in West
Africa. The British and Sierra Leonean traders’ pressure was communi-
cated to ACS merchant allies such as Benjamin Coates by the unhappy
Liberian traders.
The ACS used its new prestige as a moderate anti-slavery and com-
mercial group to manipulate a burgeoning imperial attitude and long-
standing Anglophobia to finally receive important concessions from
Congress. It is possible too that the establishment of the commercial
relationship with China in this same period allowed American mer-
chants to see that informal commercial empire could be just as effect-
ive as formal territorial dominion in promoting their trade. Therefore,
there was little reason to lobby for a change in colonial recognition by
the US government.
For both Sierra Leone and Liberia, by the 1850s, trade and the poten-
tial for trade dominated metropolitan debate, writing, and policy for-
mation. Although the two societies began to diverge in their political
destinies at this point, their reliance on export markets in Europe and
the United States, and their reliance on imports from these countries to
maintain their modern lifestyles, continued to bring Sierra Leoneans and
Liberians into contact and conflict. Territorial and commercial expan-
sion, driven by ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’, opened
new opportunities for the West African settlers. In the face of constant
challenges, both domestic and international, both Sierra Leoneans and
Liberians adapted and reformulated their institutions and identities to
claim their political voices and sovereignty.
Epilogue: 1861 and Beyond
In 1860, the election of Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, pre-

cipitated a series of secession conventions throughout the Southern
states. When war broke out in April 1861, Britain did not immediately
take a side in the struggle. The reluctance of Britain’s government to
involve itself with the US Civil War was not matched by a reluctance
to get involved with Liberia. After years of deriding the country and
its leadership and its ability to suppress the slave trade – both before
and after independence – in 1862, the BFASS hosted Liberian President
Stephen Benson. In a speech after the banquet, abolition luminary
Lord Brougham praised the Liberian project.1 Brougham was one of the
few anti-slavery activists who did not resolve his differences with the
American branches of abolitionism upon the outbreak of war, question-
ing the sincerity of the Union claim to anti-slavery status.2 Most other
anti-slavery activists in Britain and America put aside their differences,
and by 1862 had formed a united front that included colonizationists,
immediatists, and political abolitionists.
By the end of 1862, Lincoln had granted diplomatic recognition
to Liberia and Haiti. Palmerston resisted pressure to recognize the
Confederacy, due to, as Fladeland characterizes it, ‘his long dedica-
tion to the fight to end the slave trade and by the willingness of the
Lincoln government to negotiate a new treaty based on mutual search’.3
However, despite the shared anti-slavery values of the two governments
and the reunification of the various branches of the transatlantic anti-
slavery movement, diplomatic relations between the two governments
remained cool throughout the war, with moments of crisis arising from
the Trent and Alabama cases.4
Given British anti-slavery credentials, this may have surprised some
abolitionists. However, given the nature of the anti-slavery rivalries of
173
the preceding decades, it should not have surprised members of the

ACS. After briefly placating British demands in the 1850s, ‘England’s
policy changed and, in 1860, she began to call in question Liberia’s pos-
session, dominion, and sovereignty in and over the Mannah, Solymah,
and Gallinas territories’.5
Although Liberia received a steady stream of immigrants in the
1850s, the outbreak of Civil War in 1861 did not lead to the influx
of emigrants from Southern states that the country had hoped would
boost its population. America’s recent growing interest in the commer-
cial success of Liberia was diverted by the war. The removal of American
interests in Liberia allowed the British and Sierra Leonean authorities
to once again question Liberia’s sovereignty and trading rights. After
a decade of resurgent interest, the ACS once again found its coloniza-
tion project overwhelmed by the abolitionist and pro-slavery radicals.
New relationships in Africa, however, raised questions about the role
of domestic slavery in the creation of ‘legitimate’ commerce. With the
rise of social Darwinism, many in colonial administration questioned
whether the humanitarian ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’
campaign would ever be truly successful.
After the changes which began in 1860, new challenges arose for both
colonies. As the century progressed, Liberian society continued to be
infused with influences from America through the steady stream of
emigrants. However, the cultural differences between emigrants from
North and South contributed to tension with the black emancipation
movement in America. The ACS’s position as a conservative anti-slavery
organization left it vulnerable to attacks on both sides of the debate,
and the distrust of African Americans particularly contributed to its
vilification by immediate abolitionists in both Britain and America.
In the 1860s and 1870s, the society looked poised to accept the antici-
pated refugees from the American Civil War. In the immediate wake of
the war, there was some migration. Slowly, however, Liberians came to
realize that the majority of those who escaped during the war or who
were freed in its aftermath preferred to stay in America. The hope of
the Reconstruction Era contributed to the gradual decline in emigra-
tion to Liberia. Without the necessary settler population, relationships
with indigenous Liberians became increasingly tense and restrictive in
the latter half of the century as the small Americo-Liberian population
tried to combat their numerical disadvantage with political and eco-
nomic privilege.
Britain became increasingly involved with America’s African interests –
both in Liberia and in Eastern Africa – while the United States was
distracted with its own Civil War. Although Liberia continued to grow
and remain nominally independent, financial obligations to England
and the outcome of the Civil War prevented the spectacular growth
they had anticipated. Competing with other colonial powers in Africa
also cast Liberia upon the financial mercy of Britain, ultimately to the
detriment of its industrialization and independent growth.
In both Sierra Leone and Liberia, colonial dependence and the rise of
scientific racism eroded the humanitarian connections the settlers had
formed with England and America. By the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, both countries had some form of nascent Pan-African movement
that had its origins in the circulation of ideas of African citizenship
around the nineteenth century Atlantic World. By the late nineteenth
century, flows of migrants of African descent began to develop into a
broader Pan-African discourse.
Throughout the century, people from both colonies had travelled
around the Atlantic and within West Africa. Groups from Liberia and
Sierra Leone petitioned the Sierra Leone government to be allowed to go
to the West Indies and participate in the new free economy there and
were encouraged by the Freetown government. A petition from some
Sierra Leonean Maroon settlers requested in May 1841 that they be sent
back to Barbados and Jamaica.6 With emancipation creating a scarcity
of cheap labour in the West Indies, recruiters arrived in West Africa to
encourage emigration by indigenous and returnee inhabitants. British
colonial policy encouraged the Governor to support this emigration,
and some Liberated Africans were moved to Demerara. Kru from Liberia
were also recruited, particularly those who had been reached by mis-
sionaries and the ‘civilizing’ influence of Liberia and would not disturb
the civilization of the West Indies. Sierra Leoneans and Liberians were
migrating, expanding, and having significant influence on the polit-
ical, economic, and intellectual development not only of West Africa,
but even of the post-emancipation West Indies.
There is a wealth of literature on the Pan-African movement – par-
ticularly the contributions of Sierra Leoneans James Africanus Horton,
and Edward Wilmot Blyden, who moved between Sierra Leone and
Liberia.7 Horton, for instance, who had served as a medical officer in
the Gold Coast, the Gambia, and Lagos, as well as spending time in
England itself, began a writing campaign for West African self-govern-
ment. He promoted the foundation of the University of West Africa in
Sierra Leone to transcend colonial boundaries and advance the interests
of Africans in the colonies.8 Blyden, another founding father of Pan-
Africanism, also travelled within this transnational world: he was born
in the West Indies, attended university in the United States, moved to

Liberia, and worked in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. Blyden viewed
Liberia as ‘the Land of Promise to Free Colored Men’, but also acted as
the representative on Islam for the British Sierra Leonean government,
and inspired interest in Islam amongst African American nationalists.9
Even those Sierra Leoneans who did not engage in the Pan-African
project, mirroring other British settler societies, frequently petitioned
for representation in the colonial government, publicizing their role
in African society through the African Aid Society’s African Times
newspaper in London. At the height of their eminence in the 1860s
and 1870s, the elite of the expanding Sierra Leone Diaspora included
such notables as Sir Samuel Lewis and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther.
However, even as they were increasing their influence over the West
African coast, the development of scientific racism and the advent of
‘new imperialism’ in the 1870s and 1880s saw a crisis of Creole power
throughout the Empire. The subsequent ‘betrayal of the Creole elites’
led to the abandonment of any imminent plan for settler self-rule as
regional headmen were given prominence in the expanded Sierra Leone
and throughout the empire.10
This study opens the possibility of examining the continued links –
commercial, ideological, and anti-slavery – between Liberia and America
in the later imperial periods to contrast earlier attitudes toward British
commercial competition and to examine how American intervention-
ist rhetoric changed in the wake of the Civil War. Liberia’s contribution
to post-Civil War American anti-slavery dialogue has never been fully
examined, as historians continue to privilege the abolitionist narra-
tive over a story of colonialist (and colonizationist) inspiration for the
Reconstruction project in the former Confederate states. Many whites,
from the North and South, feared that slavery had corrupted the souls
of the former slaves, who needed to be moulded into model citizens
with the values of civilization and Christianity, and resettled on new
land where they could contribute to legitimate agricultural develop-
ment. Reconstruction projects were supported by missionaries from
the major churches, the Baptist Missionary Society, and the American
Missionary Association.11 These teachers included white Northerners,
as well as African Americans from all regions, most from religious back-
grounds.12 In the post-emancipation optimism, both black and white
anti-slavery activists promoted the idea that newly freed slaves would
not have to indefinitely rely on white government help because educa-
tion and the civilizing benefits of Christian conversion had revealed
that ‘opportunity will induce development’ of black society.13 Given the
similar ‘betrayal’ of African Americans after the end of Reconstruction

in 1877, it would be an important future study that compared experi-
ences across the African Diaspora in the 1880s.
Conclusions
Despite the British and American anti-slavery organizations’ simi-

lar goals, they were frequently unable to cooperate or share resources,
particularly in slave trade suppression, or in support of West African
anti-slavery colonization. From the very beginning of the idea of anti-
slavery colonies, Britain and America could not agree about the best
way to proceed, or, importantly, about who would be in charge. Over
the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, the shifting nature
of domestic political opinions toward slave trade suppression brought
presidents, prime ministers, foreign secretaries and ambassadors in
the two countries into conflict. It was not until the 1862 Lyon-Seward
Treaty that true cooperation on anti-slave trade patrols in West Africa
actually ended the slave trade by allowing British ships to search every
ship leaving the coast.
This was due in part to commercial, territorial, and anti-slavery sub-
imperial expansion by Sierra Leonean and Liberian settlers. The two
colonies – propelled by the very ideals that had led to their founding –
took the anti-slavery mission of promoting ‘Civilization, Commerce,
and Christianity’ to heart. Located in the same region of West Africa,
the promotion of these expansionist ideals by both colonies necessitated
either cooperation or conflict. The rise of a commercial middle class,
the impetus of activist governors such as Turner, Buchanan, Roberts
and Jeremie, and the lack of cooperation between the American and
British anti-slavery naval squadrons added to the inter-colonial rivalry.
The universalist intentions inherent in anti-slavery ideology brought
these two settlements into ongoing disputes and contributed to the
fracturing of anti-slavery consensus in the metropolitan organizations.
Both countries had strains of anti-slavery interventionism that
drove expansionist, imperialist policies in West Africa. Humanitarian
intervention by Sierra Leoneans and Liberians acting in the mould
of ‘Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity’ gave some British and
American observers hope that there could be an ‘Empire of Liberia’, a
‘United States of Africa’, or a British humanitarian rule over the whole
western coast of Africa from the Gambia to Cape Town.
As Robinson and Gallagher have pointed out, the mid-nineteenth
century is often mistakenly thought of as a ‘low’ period of imperialism
in Britain. Similarly, as outlined in the introduction to this study, even

those American imperial historians who recognize imperial activity
before the 1890s see the early humanitarian intervention and expan-
sionism in West Africa as ‘not imperialist’.14 However, settlers in these
colonies advanced a particular anti-slavery ideology that disrupted
local economies, power structures, ideologies, and religions in much
the same way that settlers in Australia or North America overcame the
aboriginal peoples. While not all Liberians or Sierra Leoneans engaged
in overt humanitarian interventions, a significant portion of the
settlers – male and female – were involved in some aspect of agricul-
tural expansion, colonization, trade, militias, and mission, not to men-
tion apprenticeship and education of indigenous groups. The nature
of settler–indigenous power relationships in all of these interventions
varied, but most ultimately resulted in a coercive engagement whereby
the settlers were able to extract what they wanted either by their own
initiative or through the help of the metropolitan power. The mixed
response of the American abolitionists to British anti-slavery involve-
ment in the Texas question reveals that this humanitarian intervention
was not appreciated ‘at home’, even by those trying to reform American
society, because it was recognized to be ‘imperialist’.
Often treated as exceptions (if treated at all in imperial literature)
both Sierra Leone and Liberia in fact displayed classic tendencies of
settler colonies, while at the same time engaging in the anti-slavery
project. This complicates the traditional division of ‘white settler’ and
‘black indigenous’ Africa, and divisions between settler, government,
and humanitarian priorities. It also helps to illuminate both broader
themes of identity, culture, and network creation in imperial contexts,
and the specific role of Sierra Leone and Liberia in the development
of anti-slavery thinking in the metropole. The institutional and infor-
mal factors that made up Sierra Leonean or Liberian daily life – how
they dressed, what products they used, what they read, how they
socialized, and where and how they lived – show that Sierra Leoneans
and Liberians adapted the mechanisms of British and American bour-
geois life primarily in response to the indigenous societies and peoples
around them. Through these different aspects of social identification,
Sierra Leonean and Liberian settlers defined the boundaries of their
society, creating links (real or imagined) with the metropole and inte-
grating new arrivals.
The nature of settler society in Sierra Leone and Liberia – the creation
of social identities, cultural institutions, and commercial and political
networks – as well as the settlers’ interpretations of their role in these
countries and relationships with the metropole shaped the develop-

ment of imperial tensions between American and British anti-slavery
movements in West Africa. Sierra Leoneans were incorporated into an
imperial identity through the parish plan. This gave them a voice in
British imperial discourse even as they were denied full political rights,
and ultimately helped them to push for an expansionist doctrine of
anti-slavery. Liberians, by participating in the full spectrum of modern
American middle class values, separated themselves from the American
abolition struggle. Their own efforts at African anti-slavery interven-
tions were only half-heartedly supported in Washington. However,
until the Civil War, Liberian commercial expansion was championed
in Congress and by the ACS, a position that revealed the benefits that
could come from economic imperialism and undermined any argument
for territorial colonization. Even those interested in the humanitarian
project underway in Liberia were aware that the best case in its support
was the economic. Although important changes in American domestic
and foreign relations took place in the intervening years, it is unsurpris-
ing that with this legacy of intervention Liberia did not act as a territor-
ial foothold for an American ‘Scramble for Africa’, but instead came to
represent American commercial dominance in the twentieth century
through the monopoly of the Firestone Tire Rubber Plantations.
By improving understanding of American and British humanitarian
intervention and settler sub-imperial intervention in the mid-nine-
teenth century, it is hoped that a more nuanced image of ‘imperialism’
emerges, challenging the flawed – and politically dangerous – view that
imperialism was always a state-driven, military expansion. By exam-
ining the motivations of anti-slavery activists in the metropole and in
West Africa, it becomes abundantly clear that the Victorian humanitar-
ian impulse that drove anti-slavery intervention has a lasting legacy in
the interventions of today. These questions are even more important
because the links between imperialism and humanitarianism are sig-
nificantly under-examined in the modern context. However, if they are
under-examined for the British Empire, they are conspicuously absent
in the American historiography. This is a dangerous gap given modern
humanitarian aid work and the rise of American intervention.
In particular, this study raises questions about the relationship
between humanitarian projects and national interest; the competition
for humanitarian campaign funding and territorial access; and the rela-
tionships between the humanitarian interests ‘on the ground’, the local
populations, and the home offices. While the literature on missionar-
ies and empire tends to acknowledge the historical links between the
development of missionary organizations and modern non-governmen-

tal aid organizations, missionaries have a contested place within imper-
ial memory as it is. This same acknowledgement with human rights
issues would benefit modern organizations not only in understanding
the techniques of the past and applying them, but in understanding
continuities in argument, discourse, and practice, particularly in areas
that have continually been beyond the reach of these organizations.
The argument of this study is not that humanitarian intervention
was an ‘excuse’ for imperialism. The purpose has been to illustrate
through comparison that ‘humanitarian’ organizations and actors were
just as likely as commercial, military, agricultural, or political actors to
have strands that favoured what could be defined as imperialistic inter-
ventions. This book has tried to challenge several assumptions about
imperial history and the anti-slavery movement. Looking at American
and British colonization efforts in comparison and in connection can
reveal more than the history of the predecessors to the abolition cru-
sade; more than the history of racism in American society; more than
the ‘foothold’ for British imperialism; more than the history of a ‘failed’
and a ‘successful’ attempt to establish anti-slavery colonies. Comparison
can also illuminate the relationship of diaspora colonial populations
to the metropolitan societies in ways that extend beyond race to the
cultures of modernity that were exported and invented in colonial set-
tings. The interactions between the colonies can help to explain the
connected histories of the anti-slavery movements of the nineteenth
century Atlantic and the ideological, nationalistic, and practical forces
that precluded international cooperation.
Notes
Introduction
1. Benjamin Coates to Frederick Douglass, 16 January 1851, in Emma J.
Lapansky-Werner and Margaret Hope Bacon, eds., Back to Africa: Benjamin
Coates and the Colonization Movement in America 1848–1880 (University Park,
Pennsylvania, 2005).
2. Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the
Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols. (London,
1808); Reginald Coupland, The British Anti-Slavery Movement (London, 1933);
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944); Seymour Drescher,
Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977); David Eltis,
Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1987);
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823
(Ithaca, 1975); Richard West, Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and
Liberia (London, 1970), 79–81; Joe A.D. Alie, A New History of Sierra Leone
(London, 1990), 65; Mavis C. Campbell and George Ross, Back to Africa:
George Ross and the Maroons: From Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone (Trenton, NJ,
1993), viii.
3. This is an important distinction, as, while slavery was banned in both Sierra
Leone and Liberia, their primary anti-slavery purposes were in hindering the
slave trade. Slavery continued in the ever expanding territory of British Sierra
Leone well into the twentieth century. Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in
Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 2000), 251–61.
4. A.G. Hopkins, ‘Economic Imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880–92’,
Economic History Review, 21 (1968), 580–606; A.G. Hopkins, An Economic
History of West Africa (London, 1973), 124–66.
5. Robin Law, ed., From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial
Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cambridge, 2002), 23–6.
6. While there are numerous and ongoing debates about terminology in Sierra
Leone studies, I will be using ‘Sierra Leonean’ throughout to refer to Nova
Scotians, Maroons, ‘Black Poor’, Liberated Africans, and their descend-
ents. This book’s scope does not extend into the post-partition period
and therefore there should be no confusion about whether I am referring
to the groups mentioned above or the indigenous groups integrated into
the Sierra Leone protectorate. The same will apply for ‘Liberian’. The dis-
cussion of the difference between ‘Creole’, ‘Krio’, and ‘Sierra Leonean’ has
frequently been contentious: See David Skinner and Barbara E. Harrell-
Bond, ‘Misunderstandings Arising from the Use of the Term “Creole” in
the Literature on Sierra Leone’, Africa: Journal of the International African
Institute 47, 3 (1977), 305–20; Akintola J.G. Wyse, ‘On Misunderstandings
Arising from the Use of the Term ‘Creole’ in the Literature on Sierra Leone:
A Rejoinder’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 49, 4 (1979),
408–17; Christopher Fyfe, ‘The Term “Creole”: A Footnote to a Footnote’
181
182 Notes
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 50, 4 (1980), 422; David
Skinner and Barbara E. Harrell-Bond, ‘Creoles: A Final Comment’, Africa:
Journal of the International African Institute 51, 3 (1981), 787; Odile George,
‘Sierra Leonais, Creoles, Krio: La Dialectique De L’identité’, Africa: Journal of
the International African Institute 65, 1 (1995), 114–32. For more on other West
African creole societies, see Philip Havik, Creole Societies in the Portuguese
Colonial Empire (Lusophone Studies 6, July 2007), 41–63 and 127–53.
7. Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa, 151–3; Martin Lynn, Commerce and
Economic Change in West Africa (Cambridge, 1997), 23.
8. Humanitarians will be defined here as a loose group of missionaries, anti-
slavery activists, and social reformers who frequently referred to their
own motives as ‘humanitarian’. The rise of this ‘humanitarian’ ethos is
described in Alan Lester, ‘Obtaining the “Due Observance of Justice”:
The Geographies of Colonial Humanitarianism’, Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space, 20 (2002), 278–9; Andrew Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-
Slavery, and Humanitarianism’, in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History
of the British Empire, Volume III (Oxford, 1999), 198–220; Boyd Hilton, The
Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic
Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988); Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital:
Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, 2006), 26–7.
9. Law, From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce, 23; Howard Temperley,
White Dreams, Black Africa: The Anti-slavery Expedition to the River Niger
1841–1842 (New Haven, 1991), 141; Michael J. Turner, ‘The Limits of
Abolition: Government, Saints and the “African Question”, C. 1780–1820’,
The English Historical Review, 112, 446 (1997), 334–5; Hopkins, ‘Britain’s
First Development Plan for Africa’ in Law, From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate
Commerce’, 246.
10. Suzanne Schwarz, Zachary Macaulay and the Development of the Sierra Leone
Company, c. 1793–4, Parts I &II (Leipzig, 2000; 2002); Brown, Moral Capital,
chapter five.
11. The notable exception being Philip D. Curtin’s The Image of Africa: British
Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison, WI, 1964); Betty Fladeland, Men and
Brothers: Anglo-American Anti-slavery Cooperation (Urbana, 1972); Howard
Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, 1833–1870 (Charleston, SC, 1972).
12. Arthur Porter, Creoledom: A Study in the Development of Freetown Society
(London, 1963), 53.
13. Gustav Kashope Deveneaux, ‘Public Opinion and Colonial Policy in
Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone’, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies 9, 1 (1976), 45–67.
14. Charles Henry Huberich, Political and Legislative History of Liberia (New York,
1947); Tom W. Schick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American
Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1980).
15. Historians who have examined Liberia from the perspective of the ACS
include P.J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865
(New York, 1961); James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and
American Slavery (New York, 1996), 30–67; Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom:
The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community 1720–1840 (Cambridge,
MA, 1988), 227–46; Marie Tyler-McGraw, An African Republic: Black and
White Virginians in the Making of Liberia (Chapel Hill, 2007); James Sidbury,
Notes 183
Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic
(Oxford, 2007).
16. Leslie Alexander, African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in
New York City, 1784–1861 (Chicago, 2008), 77; Nikki Taylor, ‘Reconsidering
the “Forced” Exodus of 1829: Free Black Emigration from Cincinnati, Ohio
to Wilberforce, Canada’, The Journal of African American History 87 (2002),
283–302.
17. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 173–86. The Missouri Crisis
resulted from the dilemma over whether slavery should be extended into
new states entering the Union. It was resolved in 1820 with the Missouri
Compromise, allowing Missouri to enter as a slave state, Maine as a free
state, and for 36°30’ to represent the border between new slave and free ter-
ritories entering the Union.
18. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 173.
19. Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting
Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, 2002), 115.
20. A notable exception is Carl Patrick Burrowes, ‘Carl Patrick Burrowes, ‘Black
Christian Republicanism: A Southern Ideology in Early Liberia, 1822 to
1847’, The Journal of Negro History 86, 1 (2001), 30–44; Shick, Behold the
Promised Land, 30–44, which argues that the development of a coherent
African American worldview in the South helped advance colonization and
shaped Liberian society.
21. Bruce L. Mouser, ‘The Baltimore/Pongo Connection: American Entre-
preneurism, Colonial Expansionism, or African Opportunism?’ The
International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, 2 (2000), 313–33; M.B.
Akpan, ‘Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over the African Peoples
of Liberia, 1841–1964’, Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne
des Études Africaines 7, 2 (1973), 218–9; Monday B. Abasiattai, ‘The Search for
Independence: New World Blacks in Sierra Leone and Liberia, 1787–1847’,
Journal of Black Studies 23, 1 (1992), 107–16; Bruce L. Mouser, ‘Continuing
British Interest in Coastal Guinea-Conakry and Fuuta Jaloo Hightlands (1750
to 1850)’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 43, 172 (2003), 761–90; Bruce L. Mouser,
‘Landlords-Strangers: A Process of Accommodation and Assimilation’, The
International Journal of African Historical Studies 8, 3 (1975), 425–40. John
Hargreaves, ‘African Colonization in the Nineteenth Century: Liberia and
Sierra Leone’, in Jeffrey Butler, ed., Boston University Papers in African History
(Boston, 1964), 73; Amos J. Beyan, African American Settlements in West
Africa: John Brown Russwurm and the American Civilizing Efforts (Basingstoke,
2005), 29; Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 53; Lamin O. Sanneh, Abolitionists
Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa (Cambridge,
MA, 1999), 238, 242.
22. A notable exception is Fladeland, Men and Brothers. Much of the focus of
transnational histories of slavery and anti-slavery is on the eighteenth cen-
tury, with a recent trend toward the study of the black loyalists who fought
for the British in the American Revolution and were eventually relocated to
Freetown: see Brown, Moral Capital; Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain,
the Slaves, and the American Revolution (New York, 2006); Mary Louise
Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution
(Jefferson, NC, 1999); James Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a
184 Notes
Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 (Toronto, 1992);
Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976).
23. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 212–17.
24. Both Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad, 237, and Tyler-McGraw, African Republic,
182, have explained Liberia as a ‘failed’ experiment.
25. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 278.
26. Specifically with reference to Sierra Leone, Robin Law’s recent essay states
that ‘the view that British policy toward Africa in the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury was not imperialist rests on a narrow (and old-fashioned) understanding
of imperialism as territorial annexation’. Robert Zevin, ‘An Interpretation
of American Imperialism’, The Journal of Economic History 32, 1 (1972),
319; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History
(Berkeley, 2005), 27; Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists (Oxford,
2004), 7–13; John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British
World System 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009), 3; Robin Law, ‘Abolition and
Imperialism: International Law and the British Suppression of the Atlantic
Slave Trade’, in Derek R. Peterson, ed., Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain,
Africa, and the Atlantic (Athens, Ohio, 2010), 170 n.3.
27. West, Back to Africa, 160.
28. Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad, 127.
29. John Gallagher, ‘Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy, 1838–1842’,
The Cambridge Historical Journal, 10, 1 (1950), 58.
30. Zevin, ‘An Interpretation of American Imperialism’, 324.
31. See Jay Sexton’s historiographical review of recent ‘ “Global Histories” of the
United States: “The Global View of the United States” ’, The Historical Journal
48, 1 (2005), 261–76.
32. Samuel Watson, ‘An Uncertain Road to Manifest Destiny: Army Officers
and the Course of American Territorial Expansionism 1815–1846’, in Sam
Haynes and Christopher Morris, ed., Manifest Destiny and Empire (College
Station, Texas, 1997), 69.
33. Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South
Africa and Britain (London, 2001), 4–5.
34. C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2007), 10–11.
35. Cooper with Brubaker, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History
(Berkeley, 2005), 59–90.
36. Catherine Hall, ‘Culture and Identity in Imperial Britain’, in Sarah Stockwell,
ed., The British Empire (Oxford, 2008), 203; Gil J. Stein, ed., The Archaeology
of Colonial Encounters (Santa Fe, 2005), 17.
37. Cooper with Brubaker, Colonialism in Question, 71.
1 Transatlantic Anti-Slavery Networks

1. Mary Louise Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists after the
American Revolution (Jefferson, NC, 1999), 76–79; Cassandra Pybus, ‘ “A Less
Favourable Specimen”: The Abolitionist Response to Self-Emancipated Slaves
in Sierra Leone, 1793–1808’, Parliamentary History, 26, S1, (2007), 98–9.
2. Ibid.; Anna Maria Falconbridge, Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during
the Years, 1791–1792–1793 (London, 1794), Christopher Fyfe, ed. Our Children
Free and Happy: Letters from Sierra Leone in the 1790s (Edinburgh, 1991), 19.
Notes 185
3. Suzanne Schwarz, ‘Commerce, Civilization and Christianity: The

Development of the Sierra Leone Company’, in David Richardson, Suzanne
Schwarz and Anthony Tibbles, eds., Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery
(Liverpool, 2007), 257; Suzanne Schwarz, ‘ “Apostolick Warfare”: The Reverend
Melvill Horne and the Development of Missions in the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Century’, The Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library
of Manchester, 85, 1 (Spring 2003), 65–93.
4. Substance of the Report of the Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company,
19th October 1791 (London, 1792), 12; Suzanne Schwarz, Zachary Macaulay
and the Development of the Sierra Leone Company, c. 1793–4, Parts I &II
(Leipzig, 2000; 2002); Christopher L. Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of
British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), chapter five.
5. David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
(Oxford, 1987), 105; Michael J. Turner, ‘The Limits of Abolition: Government,
Saints and the ‘African Question’, c. 1780–1820’, The English Historical Review,
112, 446 (1997), 331–3; John Peterson, Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra
Leone, 1787–1870 (London, 1969), 45–54; Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers:
Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (Urbana, 1972), 196.
6. T.P. Thompson to Nancy Barker, 23 July 1808, in, Turner, ‘Limits of
Abolition’, 335.
7. Macaulay to Ludlum, 1 May, 4 November 1807, in Turner, ‘Limits of
Abolition’, 339.
8. Second Report of the Committee of the African Institution (London, 1808), 6.
9. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://slavevoyages.org/tast//data-
base/search.faces?yearFrom=1808&yearTo=1833&fate2=3
10. Ibid.
11. CMS Archives CAI E5, MacCarthy to Pratt, 15 June 1816.
12. Prince de Joinville, Vieux Souvenirs (1894 [Middlesex, 2009]), 146.
13. P.J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York,
1961), 4–5.
14. Ibid., 6–8; 253.
15. ‘Memoir of Paul Cuffee’, The Philanthropist, 2, 5 (London, 1812), 32–40;
Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution
(New York, 2006).
16. Claude Andrew Clegg, The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making
of Liberia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), 24.
17. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 29.
18. Bell Irvin Wiley, ed., Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia 1833–1869
(Lexington, 1980), 1.
19. Susan M. Ryan, ‘Errand into Africa: Colonization and Nation Building in
Sarah J. Hale’s Liberia’, The New England Quarterly 68, 4 (1995), 565.
20. Lamin O. Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of
Modern West Africa (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 192.
21. Reverend Finley, Thoughts on the Colonization of Free Blacks, reprinted in
African Repository, January 1834.
22. Nicholas Guyatt, ‘ “The Outskirts of Our Happiness”: Race and the Lure of
Colonization in the Early Republic’, The Journal of American History, March
2009, <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/95.4/guyatt.html>
(11 June 2009), par. 31.
186 Notes
23. Emphasis mine. A Citizen of New England, Remarks on African Colonization

and The Abolition of Slavery, in Two Parts (1833), 30.
24. Ibid., 18.
25. James Sidbury, Becoming African in America (Oxford, 2007), 172–3.
26. Daniel Coker, Baltimore, 3 June 1817, Coker letters, Maryland Diocesan
Archives, Baltimore, Maryland. Photocopied and sent by Mary O. Klein,
archivist. I am immensely grateful to James Sidbury for his help with the
Burgess and Coker papers.
27. Sidbury, Becoming African in America, 173.
28. Ibid., 174.
29. Coker to Right Rev. Bishop Kemp, Hastings [Sierra Leone], n.d. (ca. 1825),
Coker letters.
30. Lawrence Howard, ‘American Involvement in Africa South of the Sahara,
1800–1860.’ Unpub. Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1956, 212–24.
31. LCP, ACS Series Letters, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, William
Holanger to Commander R.T. Spence, 12 March 1823.
32. The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 8 February 1823, 23.
33. Ibid., 21–2.
34. Sidbury, Becoming African in America, 175.
35. John Kizell to Ebenezer Burgess, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 17 August 182[3
or 1], John Kizell’s Apology in two Letters to Daniel Coker, 5–6, Ebenezer
Burgess Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
36. LOC, Diary of Daniel Coker, 3 May 1821, frame 330, 6–7 Peter Force
Collection; Series 8D, Items 17–24; Item 23.
37. Huntington Library, Macaulay Journal, MSS MY 418 Folder 28, 1 November
1798.
38. Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), Ebenezer Burgess Papers, Samuel
Swan Jr to Ebenezer Burgess, Belvedere, Furrah Bay, 31 March 1818.
39. Substance of the Report of the Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company,
19th October 1791 (London, 1792), 12.
40. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865.
41. Ibid., 42.
42. Bruce L. Mouser, ‘The Baltimore/Pongo Connection: American Entrepre-
neurism, Colonial Expansionism, or African Opportunism?’, The
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 33, 2 (2000), 313.
43. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962), 132.
2 An African Middle Class

1. Chris Gosden, Archaeology and Colonialism: Culture Contact from 5000 BC to
the Present (Cambridge, 2004), 87.
2. Susan Lawrence, ed., Archaeologies of the British (London, 2003), 4.
3. Timothy H. Parsons, ‘African Participation in the British Empire’, in Philip
D. Morgan and Sean Hawkins, eds., Black Experience and the Empire (Oxford,
2004), 258.
4. Donal Lowry ‘The Crown, Empire Loyalism and the Assimilation of Non-
British White Subjects in the British World: An Argument against “Ethnic
Determinism” ’, in Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, eds., The British World:
Diaspora, Culture and Identity (London, 2003), 99.
Notes 187
5. CMS Archives CA1, M2 1822–24, 376, Coker to the Secretary, 20 April

1823.
6. TNA, CO 267/123, 10 June 1834.
7. Extracts from the Journal of William Davies, 1st, when a missionary at Sierra
Leone (Llanidloes, 1835), 53.
8. Stiv Jakobsson, Am I Not a Man and a Brother? British Missions and the Abolition
of the Slave Trade and Slavery in West Africa and the West Indies 1786–1838
(Lund, 1972), 210–27.
9. CMS Archives, CAI 059. Journal of the Rev. Frederick Bultman.
10. PP, 1826, XXII (389), Governor Turner to Earl Bathurst, 26 January 1826,
4–5.
11. TNA, CO 267/119, 2 March 1833.
12. Abstract of a Journal of E. Bacon, Assistant Agent of the United States to Africa:
with an appendix, containing interesting accounts of the effects of the Gospel
among the Native Africans (Philadelphia, 1822), 7–8.
13. Samuel Ajayi Crowther, The African Slave Boy: A Memoir of the Rev. Samuel
Crowther (London, 1852), 7.
14. For more on Christian marriage in West Africa, see Kristin Mann, Marrying
Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial
Lagos (Cambridge, 1985).
15. TNA, CO 267/118, 5 October 1832.
16. SLA, Colonial Secretary’s Letter book, 1835–36, 24 September 1836, 326.
17. Addresses, Petitions, &c. from the Kings and Chiefs of Sudan (Africa) and
the Inhabitants of Sierra Leone, to his Late Majesty, King William the Fourth
(1838), 9.
18. Ibid., 14.
19. John Herskovits Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The ‘Sierra Leonians’ in
Yoruba, 1830–1890 (Madison, WI, 1965), 21–2.
20. Ibid., 37.
21. TNA, CO 267/204, 27 October 1848.
22. Ibid. See also Ausine Jalloh and David E. Skinner, eds., Islam and Trade in
Sierra Leone (Trenton and Asmara, 1997), 5–14, 28–9.
23. TNA, CO 267/119, 2 March 1833.
24. TNA, CO 267/154, 4 December 1839.
25. TNA, CO 267/119, 2 March 1833.
26. Journals of the Rev. James Frederick Schöon and Mr. Samuel Crowther, who with
the sanction of Her Majesty’s Government, Accompanied the Expedition up the
Niger in 1841 in behalf of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1842), 285.
27. TNA, CO 267/204, 27 October 1848.
Modern West Africa (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 156–8.
29. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English
Imagination 1830–1867 (Chicago, 2006), 332.
30. Addresses, Petitions, &c., 15.
31. CMS Archives CA 1 M6 Mission Book 1831–34, Report of Mission, for the
Year 1833, J.G. Wilhelm Chr., 432.
32. Silke Strickrodt, ‘African Girls’ Samplers from Missionary Schools in Sierra
Leone (1820s to 1840s)’, History in Africa, 37 (2010), 189–245.
33. Addresses, Petitions, &c., 25–26.
188 Notes
34. TNA, CO 272/13, Sierra Leone Blue Book, 1836.

35. TNA, CO 272/7, Sierra Leone Blue Book, 1830.
36. TNA CO 267/99, 30 January 1830; Return showing the trades and occupa-
tions of the sixteen persons who have signed the memorial.
38. Ibid., 142; TNA, CO 267/99 Return of Coloured Settlers; TNA, CO 267/132,
4 July 1836.
39. Robert Allen, Jean-Pascal Bassino, Debin Ma, Christine Moll-Murata, and
Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Wages, Prices, and Living Standards in China,
1738–1925: In Comparison with Europe, Japan, and India’, The Economic
History Review, 64, S1 (2011), 8–38; Pim de Zwart, ‘South African Real Wages
in Global Perspective, 1835–1910’, unpublished paper presented at the
Economic and Social History Graduate Seminar, Nuffield College, Oxford.
In terms of the wages themselves, there were five different categories of
wage recorded by the Colonial Government for the metropole. Four are
articulated in the Blue Books: domestic labour, predial labour, trade, and
timber loading. The first three were activities undertaken by either settlers
or recaptives; the fourth was done by Kru labourers. The fifth wage category,
taken from the Blue Books as well, is based on those in ‘professions’. Since
this was a regular route for settlers after a few generations and participation
in education both within and outside of the colony, it seemed important
to include it as a wage category. It was calculated as an average wage over
the period studied using a combination of data on the salaries of teachers,
church ministers, colonial writers, clerks, those involved with the police
force, and those employed as supervisors or managers for the Liberated
African Department and its districts. This average does not include those
employed in the private sector as lawyers or doctors. In all cases, the daily
wage was calculated assuming a twenty-five-day working month in order to
take account of holidays, festivals, and Sundays.
40. These staples were chosen to match roughly with those chosen by Allen
et al. in order to allow for further comparison. Conversion to grams of sil-
ver were determined using Peter Lindert’s silver value conversions in order
to make the comparisons to other world economies (available from http://
gpih.ucdavis.edu/Datafilelist.htm#Europe).
41. TNA, CO 267/129, Lt. Gov. Campbell, 10 November 1835.
42. TNA, CO 267/118, 10 February 1833.
43. TNA, CO 267/119, 25 April 1833.
44. TNA CO 267/133, 2 September 1836.
45. Kopytoff, Preface to Modern Nigeria, 33.
46. Ibid.
47. PP, 1843, XXXIII (622), Sierra Leone and the Gambia, A Return of the total
income of the settlements of Sierra Leone and the Gambia in each of the
Years 1839, 1840, and 1841 and how expended.
48. PP, 1842, (551) Report from the Select Committee on the West Coast of
Africa, 336.
49. Letter from William Fergusson to Thomas Fowell Buxton in Thomas Fowell
Buxton, The Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), 371–3.
50. PP, 1842, (551) Report from the Select Committee on the West Coast of
Africa, 338.
Notes 189
51. TNA, CO 267/172, Commissioner Dr. Madden’s Report, 1841.

52. Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and
Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester, 2004), 98–9.
53. Freetown was not the only place that this kind of inculturation was occur-
ring; it was also prevalent in the Gold Coast, where trading Fanti and Creole
families established a new elite. See Margaret Priestley, West African Trade
and Coast Society: A Family Study (London, 1969), 121–7.
54. CMS Archives CA1 M2 1822–24 Report of Freetown schools, 26 June 1823.
55. Jakobsson, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, 229.
56. TNA, CO 267/43, 12 April 1824.
57. CMS Archive CA1 IL, L1-L2 1820–73, CMS House to Schön, October 1834,
472–5.
58. TNA, CO 267/133, 4 August 1836.
59. TNA, CO 267/140, Petition to Governor Campbell, 12 January 1837.
60. TNA, CO 267/119, 5 March 1833.
61. TNA, CO 267/133, 2 September 1836.
62. TNA, CO 267/99, Received 29 January 1830.
63. Emphasis mine. For a return of the Europeans working in government, see
Appendix 4.
64. TNA, CO 267/102, 22 April 1830.
65. TNA, CO 267/99, Findlay, 29 January 1830, Return of Colored Settlers,
Inhabitants of Sierra Leone, holding appointments under the Governor of
that Colony.
66. CMS archives, CAI 012 (b).
3 Americans in Africa
2. Marie Tyler-McGraw’s study of white and black Virginians involved in the
colonization movement shows the roots of the Americo-Liberian elitism
that would emerge in the twentieth century. Wiley’s edited collection of
letters from Southern emigrants highlights these struggles and also the per-
sistence of master–slave relationships that helped to shape Liberia’s national
character. Marie Tyler-Mcgraw, An African Republic: Black & White Virginians
in the Making of Liberia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 171–82; Bell Irvin Wiley, ed.,
Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia 1833–1869 (Lexington, 1980), 8–9; Carl
Patrick Burrowes, ‘Black Christian Republicanism: A Southern Ideology in
Early Liberia, 1822 to 1847’, The Journal of Negro History 86, 1 (2001), 30–44;
Tom W. Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler
Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1980), 32.
3. Roughly 3,700 Virginians went to Liberia between 1822 and 1865 and
another roughly 2,000 were sent by the Maryland Colonization Society
out of a rough total of between 13,000 and 20,000; Tyler-McGraw, African
Republic, 128; M. Teah Wulah, Back to Africa: A Liberian Tragedy (Bloomington,
IN, 2009), 297; African Repository, XLII (1866), 222–3.
4. Schick, Behold the Promised Land, 45–6.
5. Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad, 221.
190 Notes
6. J.H.T. McPherson, History of Liberia (Baltimore, 1891), 32.

7. HSP, New York Colonization Society (1834), 16.
8. Liberia Herald, 24 May 1833.
9. Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 53.
10. SNM, Alexander Hance to William McKenney, 30 August 1835.
11. SNM, Alexander Hance to J.H.B. Latrobe, 7 April 1838.
12. Liberia Herald, February 1838.
13. Charles Henry Huberich, ed., The Political and Legislative History of Liberia
(New York, 1947), 654.
14. ‘Extracts from an Address of the Colonists to the Free People of Colour in the
United States’, in Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, On Negro Emancipation and American
Colonization (1832). Dr. Thomas Hodgkin was a prominent British supporter
of the ACS and general proponent of gradualist measures in dealing with anti-
slavery, missionary expansion, and indigenous protection (he was the founder
of the Aborigines’ Protection Society). His publications on the ACS were part
of the promotional literature used by the society in both the United States and
Britain. For more, see Zoe Laidlaw, ‘Heathens, Slaves and Aborigines: Thomas
Hodgkin’s Critique of Missions and Anti-Slavery’, History Workshop Journal 64
(2007), 133–61; Amalie Kass and Edward Kass, Perfecting the World: The Life and
Times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) (London, 1981).
15. Letters on the Colonization Society and on Its Probable Results ... .To which is
prefixed the Important Information Collected by Joseph Jones, A Coloured Man,
Lately sent to Liberia, by the Kentucky Colonization Society, To ascertain the true
state of the country – its productions, trade, and commerce – and the situation and
prospects of the colonists (Philadelphia, 1835), 2–4.
16. ‘News from Africa’ A collection of facts, relating to the colony in Liberia, for the
information of the free people of colour in Maryland (Baltimore, 1832), 4–5.
17. Samuel Wilkeson, A Concise History of the Commencement, Progress, and
Present Condition of The American Colonies of Liberia (Washington, 1839), 51.
18. HSP, Examination of Mr. Thomas C. Brown, a free coloured citizen of S. Carolina,
as to the actual state of things in Liberia in the years 1833 and 1834 (New York,
9 May 1834).
19. HSP, (Phi) 490, Series II, Letter to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 20
March 1834.
20. UVA, Samson Ceasar to Henry F. Westfall, 2 June 1834.
21. Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad, 74–6.
22. ‘News from Africa’, 16–17.
23. Gloster Simpson and Archy Moore, 27 September 1832, On Negro Emancipation
and American Colonization, 39.
24. Nash, Forging Freedom, 230–1.
25. Ibid., 232.
26. HSP, Minutes of the Liberia Providence Baptist Association, (Monrovia,
December, 1840).
27. ‘News from Africa’, 21–2.
28. UVA, Samson Ceasar to Henry F. Westfall, 1 April 1834.
29. ‘Sentiments of the Free Persons of Color in Charleston, S.C’. in ‘News from
Africa’, 24.
30. Elizabeth Winder, 13 April 1833, On Negro Emancipation and American
Colonization, 42.
Notes 191
31. Colton, Colonization and Abolition Contrasted, 1.

32. Svend Holsoe, ‘A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples
in Western Liberia, 1821–1847’, African Historical Studies 4, 2 (1971), 347–9.
33. Colton, Colonization and Abolition Contrasted, 15.
34. Rev. Richard Allen, Address to the Free People of Colour of These United States
(Philadelphia, 1830), 11.
35. Samuel Cornish and Theodore Wright, The Colonization Scheme Considered in
its Rejection by the Colored People – In its tendency to uphold caste – in its unfit-
ness for Christianizing and Civilizing the Aborigines of Africa, and for putting a
stop to the African Slave Trade: In a letter to the Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen and
the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler (Newark, 1840), 6.
36. Liberia Herald cited in Wilkeson, A Concise History of ... Liberia, 53.
37. Wilkeson, A Concise History of ... Liberia, 51.
38. SNM, James C. Minor to John Minor, 11 February 1833.
39. DM, Peyton Skipwith, 27 June 1846.
40. DM, Peyton Skipwith, 29 September 1844.
41. HSP, Minutes of the Liberia Providence Baptist Association, 6.
42. George M. Erskine, 9 March 1833 in Hodgkin, On Negro Emancipation and
American Colonization, 41.
43. LCP, Testimony of Commodore Perry, 4 June 1844, A Historical Examination of
the State of Society in Western Africa as formed by Paganism and Muhammedanism,
Slavery, the Slave Trade and Piracy, and of the Remedial Influence of Colonization
and Missions, 40.
44. Holsoe, ‘Settler-Indigenous Relations’, 341.
45. LCP, Shick, ‘The 1843 Liberian Census’, 7.
46. Liberia Herald, 24 January 1844.
48. DM, Peyton Skipwith, 22 April 1840.
49. UVA, Samson Ceasar to Henry Westfall, 1 April 1834.
50. For example, in the period between 1822 and 1850, 37 per cent of emigrants
were born free, while roughly 60 per cent were emancipated on the condi-
tion that they emigrate to Liberia, Wulah, Back to Africa, 297.
51. Liberia Herald, 10 April 1833, in African Repository, July 1833.
52. DM, Peyton Skipwith, 30 January 1838; 11 November 1839.
53. DM, Peyton Skipwith, 22 April 1840.
54. Samuel Wilkeson, A Concise History of the Commencement, Progress,
and Present Condition of The American Colonies of Liberia (Washington,
1839), 73.
56. Liberia Herald quoted in African Repository, IX (1834), 18.
57. George M. Erskine, 9 March 1833 in Hodgkin, On Negro Emancipation and
American Colonization, 41.
59. Ibid.
60. LCP, Annual Reports of the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the American Colonization
Society (Philadelphia, 1833–1837).
61. DM, Diana Skipwith, 24 August 1837.
62. LCP, Shick, ‘The 1843 Liberian Census’.
63. Liberia Herald, 19 March 1847.
192 Notes
64. Ibid.
65. UK, G.W. McElroy for Lucy Russell to Mary Owen Todd Russell Wickliffe, 20
September 1835.
66. SNM, Alexander Hance to William McKenney, 19 March 1835.
67. Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 158.
68. LA, Last Will and Testament, Catherine Jacobs, 11 August 1843, 265.
69. See Dalila Scruggs, ‘Colonization Pictures as Primary Document: Virginians’
Contributions’ Virginia Emigrants to Liberia Project, http://www.vcdh.virginia.
edu/liberia/pages/scruggs.html.
70. Reuben Moss to Benjamin Moss, 1 March 1833 in Kennedy Report, 1843.
71. African Repository, November 1832, 280–2.
72. LA, Last Will and Testament, Isaac Dean, 3 June 1854.
73. LA, 30 August 1847, 416.
74. Amos J. Beyan, African American Settlements in West Africa: John Brown
Russwurm and the American Civilizing Efforts (Basingstoke, 2005), 29–34.
75. Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 45–6.
76. ‘Examination’ in Letters on the Colonization Society and on Its Probable
Results.
77. LA, Indenture by John Brown of Rogers & Co., 3 July 1843. See also Bruce
L. Mouser, ‘The Baltimore/Pongo Connection: American Entrepreneurism,
Colonial Expansionism, or African Opportunism?’ The International Journal
of African Historical Studies, 33, 2 (2000), 313–33.
78. Letter from Sinou, West Coast of Africa, 2 December 1841 in Kennedy Report,
1843, 845–6.
79. ACSP, reel 156, Elizabeth Clarke, 23 February 1853.
80. Liberia Herald¸ 23 November 1848.
81. Kennedy Report, 1843, 823.
82. Kennedy Report, 1843, 845.
83. Richard West, Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia (London,
1970), 135.
84. Svend E. Holsoe, ‘A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous
Peoples in Western Liberia, 1821–1847’, African Historical Studies 4, 2 (1971),
331–62.
85. Claude Andrew Clegg, The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making
of Liberia (Chapel Hill, 2004), 95.
4 The Abolitionist Propaganda War

1. Abstract of a Journal of E. Bacon, Assistant Agent of the United States to Africa:
with an appendix, containing interesting accounts of the effects of the Gospel
among the Native Africans (Philadelphia, 1822), 5.
2. A Citizen of New England, Remarks on African Colonization and The Abolition
of Slavery, in Two Parts (1833), 17.
3. P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York,
1961), 217–19.
4. PP, 1826 (379) Papers relating to the slave trade, Extract of a Letter from
Commodore Bullen to J.W.Croker, Esq. 18 June 1825. Adam Jones, From
Slaves to Palm Kernals: A History of the Galinhas Country (West Africa)
1730–1890 (Weisbaden, 1983).
Notes 193
5. RHO, MSS British Empire S444 Vol. 36 (Papers of Buxton), 123 (extract from
Sierra Leone Gazette, 29 January 1825).
6. Ibid.
7. TNA, CO 268/26, Bathurst to Governor Sir Neil Campbell, 25 October
1826.
8. PP, 1828 (366) Papers relating to the slave trade, Enclosure in No. 5, Campbell
to Bathurst, 27 October 1826, 30.
9. TNA ADM 3/212, 13 November 1826.
10. TNA, CO 714/144, 2 October 1830.
11. TNA, CO 714/144, 28 June 1831; 3 August 1831.
12. TNA, CO 714/144, 3 October 1831. The Purrah is described as ‘a sort of Ban
interdicting trade’.
13. TNA, CO 714/144, 16 February 1833.
14. Ibid.
15. Richard West, Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia (London,
1970), 161; John Herskovits Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The ‘Sierra
Leonians’ in Yoruba, 1830–1890 (Madison, WI, 1965), 25.
16. TNA, CO 267/129 Campbell to Lord Glenelg, 9 November 1835; CO 267/132
Campbell to Lord Glenelg, 2 May 1836.
17. TNA, CO 267/132 Campbell to Lord Glenelg, 2 May 1836.
1800–1860.’ Unpub. Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1956, 239.
19. West, Back to Africa, 139.
20. James Macqueen, The Colonial Controversy, Containing a Refutation of the
Calumnies of the Anticolonists; the state of Hayti, Sierra Leone, India, China,
Cochin China, Java, &c. &c.; The Production of Sugar, &c. and the state of the
Free and Slave Labourers in those Countries fully considered, in a series of letters
addressed to The Earl of Liverpool; with a supplementary letter to Mr. Macaulay
(Glasgow, 1825), 88–9.
21. Ibid., 103.
22. The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 24 July 1824, 323.
23. The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 31 December 1825, 622–3.
24. TNA, ADM 1/4242, Croker to Hay, 29 January 1827.
25. Robert T. Brown, ‘Fernando Po and the Anti-Sierra Leonean Campaign:
1826–1834’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, 2
(1973), 252–3; see also David Lambert, ‘Sierra Leone and Other Sites in
the War of Representation over Slavery’, History Workshop Journal, 64
(2007), 103–32 .
26. Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa (Cambridge,
1997), 3.
27. PP, 1827, VII (312), Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry, Liberated
Africans 29 June 1827, 45–7.
28. The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 3 August 1822, 123–4.
29. Brown, ‘Fernando Po’, 254.
30. TNA, CO 267/102, 25 January 1830.
31. Ibid.
32. Brown, ‘Fernando Po’, 263–4.
33. Constitution of the American Society of Free Persons of Color and an Address
(Philadelphia, 1831), 10.
194 Notes
34. For example, the 1830 creation of the ‘Association of Young Men for the
Gratuitous Instruction of Coloured Persons school’ by the Pennsylvania
Abolition Society. HSP, (Phi) 490, Series II.
35. African Colonization – Slave Trade – Commerce Report of Mr. Kennedy, of
Maryland, from the Committee on Commerce of the House of Representatives
of the United States (Washington, 1843), 968. Henceforth, Kennedy Report,
1843.
36. Reverend Richard Allen, Freedom’s Journal, 2 November 1827; For more on the
education of African Americans, see Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught:
African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill, 2005), 7–44.
38. James Sidbury, Becoming African in America (Oxford, 2007), 190.
39. ‘Address of the Colonists to the Free People of Colour in the U.S.’, Thirteenth
Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of
the United States (Washington, D.C., 1829), 30.
40. Ibid., 31.
41. Ibid.
42. James Forten and the free people of color of Philadelphia, ‘To the humane
and benevolent Inhabitants of the city and county of Philadelphia’ January
1817, quoted by William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization: or
An Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes or the American
Colonization Society. Together with the Resolutions, Addresses and Remonstrances
of the Free People of Color (Boston, 1832), Sentiments of the People of Color, 12.
This speech and the surrounding movement are explored in detail in Gary
B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community,
1720–1840 (Cambridge, 1988), 235–9.
43. ‘News from Africa’ A collection of facts, relating to the colony in Liberia, for the
information of the free people of colour in Maryland (Baltimore, 1832), 1.
44. HSP, Rawle Family Papers, Legal Writings on Abolition 1823–33. Circular
on the formation of an anti-slavery society received by William Rawle
(President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society).
45. HSP, Examination of Mr. Thomas C. Brown.
46. DM, Peyton Skipwith to John Hartwell Cocke, 10 February 1834.
47. HSP, Examination of Mr. Thomas C. Brown.
48. UK, G.W. McElroy for Lucy Russell to Mary Owen Todd Russell Wickliffe,
20 September 1835.
49. SNM, James C. Minor to John Minor, 11 February 1833.
50. UVA, Samson Ceasar to Henry F. Westfall, 2 June 1834.
51. Liberia Herald, 13 August 1834.
52. Liberia Herald, 24 December 1833.
53. WM, Abolitionist Papers, Theodore Dwight Weld to Elizur Wright Jr.
Corresponding Secretary of the American anti-Slavery Society, 24 January
1834.
54. HSP, Fruits of Colonizationism! (1833), 1.
55. Richard H. Colfax, Evidence against the views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of
Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes (New York,
1833), 24–6.
Notes 195
56. David Walker, Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the
Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of
the United States of America (Boston, 1829), 58.
57. ‘A letter to Thomas Clarkson by James Cropper, Liverpool, 10th month,
2d, 1832’ in British Opinions of the American Colonization Society (Boston,
1833).
58. Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation
(Urbana, 1972), 195.
59. Howard Temperley, White Dreams, Black Africa: The Antislavery Expedition to
the River Niger 1841–1842 (New Haven, 1991), 19–29.
60. RHO, C.R. Johnson Rare Book Collections, Altrincham, Cheshire. Sir Thomas
Fowell Buxton and the Abolition of British Colonial Slavery. Item 200, Priscilla
Buxton to S.M. Buxton, 24 June 1833.
61. Not all interested in anti-slavery immediately joined the American cause.
Some favoured Aboriginal Protection, others Indian slavery, or Eastern
African slavery.
62. HSP, (Phi) 490, Series II, Loose Correspondence, Pennsylvania Society
for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1820–1849, From James Cropper,
Liverpool, 17 May 1834.
63. RHO, MSS British Empire S22 G33/A (Liberia), Elliot Cresson to Dr. Hodgkin,
2 February 1834.
64. RHO, MSS British Empire S22 G/33A (Liberia), John Stuart and James
Mindenhall to Josiah Forster, 13 May 1835.
65. RHO, MSS British Empire S22 G33/A (Liberia) to E.D.? from B.G., 6 November
1834.
66. Remarks on African Colonization, 46.
67. The Eleventh Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People
of Colour of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1828), 10.
68. Thomas Hodgkin, On Negro Emancipation and American Colonization (1832), 57.
69. Ibid., 13.
70. TNA, CO 714/144, 20 June 1830.
71. Samuel Cornish and Theodore Wright. The Colonization Scheme Considered in
the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler (Newark, 1840), 22–3.
72. TNA, CO 267/119, 5 March 1833.
73. TNA, CO 267/123, 14 March 1834, enclosure dated 16 February 1834.
74. Ibid.
75. Twenty-Second Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free
People of Colour of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1838), 14.
76. Tables Showing the Number of Emigrants and Recaptured Africans Sent to the
Colony of Liberia by the Government of the United States (Washington, 1845).
77. Holsoe, ‘Settler-Indigenous Relations’, 344.
78. Liberia Herald, VI (1835), 14.
79. Ralph Gurley, Life of Jehudi Ashmun (Washington, 1835), 265.
80. Svend E. Holsoe, ‘A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples
in Western Liberia, 1821–1847,’ African Historical Studies, 4, 2 (1971), 343.
196 Notes
81. Twenty-First Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People
of Colour of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1837), 31.
82. Howard, ‘American Involvement in Africa South of the Sahara’, 230, 236.
83. Ibid., 45.
84. PP, 1822, II (105) Further papers relating to the slave trade, viz. copy of the
report of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, 5.
5 Slave Trade Interventionism

1. Commander Andrew H. Foote, Africa and the American Flag (New York,
1854/1862), 151–2.
2. Although this organization has the same initials as the American
Colonization Society, I will continue to refer to the latter as the ACS and the
former by its full name.
3. RHO, MSS British Empire s444 vol. 40, Extract from Revered Edmund Eliot
late Archdeacon of Barbados to T.F.B., 27 September 1838.
4. Thomas Fowell Buxton, The Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), 6.
5. Ronald Hyam, Britian’s Imperial Century, 1815–1914, Third Edition (Hampshire,
2002), 94.
6. Christopher Brown outlines the intellectual origins of the ‘Civilization,
Commerce, and Christianity’ remedy, demonstrating that it emerged
from myriad discrete sources, including the Royal Africa Company and
Malachy Postlethwayt, Olaudah Equiano, and the preacher John Marrant
among others. Christopher L. Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British
Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 269–83.
7. Thomas Fowell Buxton, The Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), 487.
8. Ibid., 365.
9. Charles Buxton, ed., Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Baronet. With
Selections from His Correspondence (London, 1848), 448.
10. Rev. R.R. Gurley, Mission to England, in behalf of the American Colonization
Society (1841), 4–5.
11. Rev. R.R. Gurley, Address at the Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Colonization
Society, November 11, 1839 (Philadelphia, 1839), 8, 30.
12. RHO, Buxton Papers, MSS British Empire s444, Buxton to Gurley, ‘The
African Civilization Society and the American Colonization Society’ The
Patriot, 9 October 1840.
13. Rev. R.R. Gurley, Letter to the Hon. Henry Clay, President of the American
Colonization Society, and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1841), 11.
14. ‘The Times and the American Colonization Society’, The Morning Post,
2 December 1840.
15. Gurley to Buxton, 3 September 1840, in Letter, 49.
16. RHO Buxton Papers, MSS British Empire s444 Buxton to Russell, 7 August
1840.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. TNA, CO 325/37, Russell Memorandum of Slave Trade, 23 September 1839.
20. RHO Buxton Papers, MSS British Empire s444, Russell to Buxton,
20 August 1840; John Gallagher, ‘Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy,
1838–1842’, The Cambridge Historical Journal 10, 1 (1950), 51.
Notes 197
21. HSP, (Phi) 490, Series II, Loose Correspondence, Pennsylvania Society for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1820–1849, 26 November 1839.
22. Samuel Cornish and Theodore Wright, The Colonization Scheme Considered in
the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler (Newark, 1840), 13.
23. Ibid., 22.
(Urbana, 1972), 269.
25. For more on the disputes between the American Anti-Slavery Society and the
Convention, see Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaign
1780–1870 (London, 1992), 158–67; Howard Temperley, British Anti-Slavery
1833–1870 (Charleston, South Carolina, 1972), 85–93.
26. RHO MSS British Empire s22 G84 US, James Gibbons, Chairman of the Exec
Committee of the AASS, 25 September 1840.
27. Rev. R.R. Gurley, Mission to England, in behalf of the American Colonization
Society (1841), 15.
28. For more, see, Zoe Laidlaw, ‘Heathens, Slaves and Aborigines: Thomas
Hodgkin’s Critique of Missions and Anti-slavery,’ History Workshop Journal
64, 1 (2007), 152–3.
29. RHO, Anti-Slavery Society Letters from Government Offices MSS British
Empire s18 C161/7, 14 December 1840.
30. Ibid.
31. Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London, 1842), 166.
32. PP 1843 (129) Slave Trade Suppression (Texas).
33. Parliamentary Debates, LXV, 10 August 1842, 1251–2.
34. Steven Heath Mitton, ‘ “The Ashburton Capitulation”: The Convention of
London, British Defeat, and the Americanization of the Atlantic, c. 1842’
(Unpub. Paper, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, 7 January
2010); Steven Heath Mitton, ‘The Free World Confronted: The Problem of
Slavery and Progress in American Foreign Relations, 1833–1844’, Unpub.
Ph.D. Diss., Louisiana State University, 2005, 95; Hyam, Britain’s Imperial
Century, 64.
35. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 329–32.
36. Ibid., 324–9.
37. TNA, CO 267/ 26 March 1841.
38. TNA, CO 267/ 23 October 1841.
39. TNA, CO 267/ 18 March 1842.
40. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962), 222–3.
41. Gurley, Mission to England, 10–11.
42. Ibid., 95.
43. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 278.
44. See Chapter 1.
45. Svend E. Holsoe, ‘A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous
Peoples in Western Liberia, 1821–1847’, African Historical Studies 4, 2 (1971),
350.
46. Ibid., 351 and 356.
47. African Repository, XVI (1840), 215–16.
198 Notes
48. SNM, Sion Harris to Samuel Wilkeson, 16 April 1840.

49. Ibid.
50. Liberia Herald, August 1840, report of ACS Meeting, 12 June 1840.
1800–1860’, Unpub. Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1956, 45–9.
52. Howard Temperley, White Dreams, Black Africa: The Antislavery Expedition to
the River Niger 1841–1842 (New Haven, 1991), 154.
53. Gallagher, ‘Fowell Buxton’, 54.
54. Ibid., 55.
55. LCP, W.P. Jayne, Monrovia Journal, 2 February 1841.
56. Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, 207–16.
57. Ibid., 218–19; Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 198.
58. John Jeremie, A Letter to T. Fowell Buxton, Esq. on Negro Emancipation and
African Civilization (London, 1840), 21–3.
59. TNA CO 267/163 Jeremie to Russell, 4 March 1841.
60. Excerpt quoted in Kennedy Report, 1843, 981.
61. TNA, CO 267/148, 10 December 1838.
62. SLA, Miscellaneous Minutes of Council 1828–30, 14 August 1828.
63. TNA, CO 267/114, 6 February 1832.
64. David Killingray, ‘ “A Good West Indian, a Good African, and, in Short, a
Good Britisher”: Black and British in a Colour-Conscious Empire, 1760–1950’,
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36, 3 (2008), 368.
65. TNA, CO 714/144, 31 May 1831.
66. Letter from Fergusson to Buxton in Buxton, Slave Trade and Its Remedy, 371–3.
67. TNA, CO 267/132, 2 May 1836.
68. Hugh G. Soulsby, The Right of Search and the Slave Trade in Anglo-American
Relations 1814–1862 (Baltimore, 1933), 41.
69. Donald L. Canney, Africa Squadron: The U.S. Navy and the Slave Trade,
1842–1861 (Washington, 2006), 18.
70. ‘The Times and the American Colonization Society’, The Morning Post, 2
December 1840.
71. Howard, ‘American Involvement in Africa South of the Sahara’, 47.
72. ACSP, IB30 reel 172, 16 July 1841.
73. Charles Henry Huberich, ed., The Political and Legislative History of Liberia
(New York, 1947), 686.
74. Ibid.
75. Africa’s Luminary¸ 19 February 1841.
76. LOC, American Colonization Society Papers, Dispatches of Governor
Buchanan, 24 February 1841.
77. Foote, Africa and the American Flag, 166.
78. African Repository XV, 277.
79. Liberia Herald, 31 October 1842.
80. Howard, ‘American Involvement in Africa South of the Sahara’, 52.
81. Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841, 160.
6 Commercial Rivalry and Liberian Independence

1. TNA, CO 96/2, James Stephen, 26 December 1842.
2. DM, Diana Skipwith to John Hartwell Cocke Senior, 7 March 1843.
Notes 199
3. Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian

America (Ithaca, NY, 1985), 31.
4. Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South
Africa and Britain (London, 2001), 48; Hietala, Manifest Design, 11.
5. John Gallagher, ‘Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy, 1838–1842’,
The Cambridge Historical Journal 10, 1 (1950), 58.
6. Macabe Keliher, ‘Anglo-American Rivalry and the Origins of U.S. China
Policy’, Diplomatic History 31, 2 (2007), 227–57; Gerald Graham, The China
Station: War and Diplomacy 1830–1860 (Oxford, 1978), 18.
7. Hietala, Manifest Design, 18.
8. RHO, MSS British Empire s22 G84 (US). For a detailed treatment of Southern
reactions to British involvement with Texas, see Edward B. Rugemer, ‘Robert
Monroe Harrison, British Abolition, Southern Anglophobia and Texas
Annexation’, Slavery and Abolition 28, 2 (2007), 169–91.
9. David Turley, ‘Anti-Slavery Activists and Officials: “Influence”, Lobbying
and the Slave Trade, 1807–1850’, in Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon,
eds., Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave
Trade (Brighton, 2009), 90.
10. Thirtieth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of
Colour of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1846), 39.
11. Marie Tyler-Mcgraw, An African Republic: Black & White Virginians in the
Making of Liberia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 154.
12. Liberia Herald, 29 February 1844.
13. Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the ACS, 9.
14. Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the ACS, 32.
15. The Report of Rev. R.R. Gurley, 31st Congress, 1st Session, Executive Doc. 75
(1850).
1800–1860’, Unpub. Ph.D. Diss.., Harvard University, 1956, 96.
17. LCP, Gallinas Documents 1840–1859, Part I of II, State Papers, 33, 1844–45,
314–316, Macdonald to Aberdeen, 31 December 1843.
18. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, 22 May 1847.
19. LCP, Svend Holsoe Collection, Cape Mount Documents, R. Spaulding,
11 January 1834, African Repository, X, 1834, 121.
20. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, to Mohora Suru of Tambacca,
13 January 1847.
21. TNA, FO 2/3, Admiralty to Foreign Office, 15 March 1847; 16 March 1847.
22. PP, 1844 (577), Instructions for the Guidance of Her Majesty’s Naval Officers
employed in the Suppression of the Slave Trade.
23. Ibid., 16.
24. TNA, CO 267/163, Treaty with Temne and Loko, 13 January 1841; CO
267/187, Fergusson to Stanley, 18 July 1845.
25. TNA, CO 96/2, Stephen, 16 November 1843; CO 96/11, Barrow, 9 August
1847.
26. Turley, ‘Anti-Slavery Activists and Officials’, 91.
27. Howard Temperley, British Anti-Slavery 1833–1870 (Charleston, South
Carolina, 1972),137–67.
28. Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850
(Madison, WI, 1964), 316–17.
200 Notes
29. A.G. Hopkins, ‘Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain’s Annexation
of Lagos, 1861’, The Journal of Economic History 40, 4 (1980), 785.
30. Martin Lynn, ‘John Beecroft and West Africa 1829–54’, Unpub. PhD. Diss.,
King’s College, University of London, 1978, chapter 7.
1997), 23.
32. TNA, CO 268/38, Stanley to Macdonald, 10 June 1842.
33. TNA CO 267/124, 25 November 1834.
34. TNA, CO 268/33, 12 March 1835.
35. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, to the Reverend Mr. Raymond,
Sherbro wars, 26 February 1846.
36. TNA, CO 268/35, Russell to Doherty, 23 July 1840.
38. TNA, CO 267/187, Fergusson to Stanley, 18 July 1845.
39. Ibid.
40. PP, 1847–48, LXIV (133), Class A Correspondence with the British commission-
ers at Sierra Leone, Reports from Naval Officers, Enclosure 2 in No. 260, 292.
41. Trial of the Suit Instituted by the Collector of Customs for the Port of Monrovia, Against
the Superintendent of the Liberia Mission of the ‘Missionary Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church’, before the Supreme Court of Liberia, in Session at Monrovia, Sept.
4th and 5th, 1840, with most of the pleadings (Monrovia, 1840), 6.
42. Mr. Fox to Mr. Upshur, 9 August 1843, in US Lynch Report, House Executive
Document 1, 33rd Congress, 1st session (1853), 7.
43. Mr. Upshur to Mr. Fox, 25 September 1843, in US Lynch Report, 9.
44. Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Everett, 31 January 1844, in US Lynch Report, 7.
45. African Repository, XV, 277; SNM, Peyton Skipwith to John Hartwell Cocke,
11 November 1839.
46. HSP, Minutes of the Liberia Providence Baptist Association, 4.
47. Liberia Herald, April 1841.
48. TNA, CO 267/166, 12 October 1841.
49. ACSP, IB 30, Reel 172, Buchanan Dispatches, 5 April and 10 June 1841.
50. ACSP, IB30 reel 172, 16 July 1841.
51. Thirtieth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of
Colour of the United States.
52. ACSP Series I:B29 reel 171, James Brown to the Rev. Mr McLain, Corresponding
Secretary of the ACS, 24 April 1846.
53. DM, Peyton Skipwith to John Hartwell Cocke, 25 June 1846.
55. African Repository, Vol. XIX No. 1, January 1843, Despatches from Gov.
Roberts, 14.
57. LCP, Gallinas Documents 1840–1859, Part I of II, Commander Jones’s Letter,
9 September 1844, in African Repository, August 1845, 253–4.
58. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters, 1846–48, 17 May 1847, Governor Macdonald
to John Hook, emigration agent.
60. Africa’s Luminary, 14 July 1847.
Notes 201
7 Arguments for Colonial Expansion

1. David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
(Oxford, 1987), 213.
2. Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1970),
327–63.
3. Ronald Hyam, Britian’s Imperial Century, 1815–1914, Third Edition (Hampshire,
2002), 104.
4. Seymour Drescher writes that ‘Imperialism, in the sense of extending dom-
ination in Africa, was thus the last thing on the minds of British policy-
makers or the public press throughout the period of the suppression of the
transatlantic slave trade’. Derek R. Peterson, ed., Abolitionism and Imperialism
in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic (Athens, OH, 2010), 141.
5. SNM, Nelson Sanders to Susan Fishback, 5 January 1848.
6. SNM, Sion Harris to William McLain, 5 January 1848.
7. Eric Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American
Colonization Society (Gainesville, FL, 2005), Table 2.
8. Liberia Herald, 29 October 1849 (Article quoted from the Journal of
Commerce).
10. LCP, Methodist Annual Report of Missionary Society, Thirty-second annual
report, 1851, 158.
11. LOC, England and Liberia (American Colonization Society, 1884), 5–6.
12. Report of the Naval Committee to the House of Representatives, 74.
13. SNM, Matilda Lomax to J.H. Cocke, 27 January 1852.
14. Ibid.
15. TNA, FO 47/5, Norman Macdonald to Joseph Jenkins Roberts, 16 December
1851.
16. TNA, FO 47/5, Governor Macdonald to President Roberts, 16 December
1851.
17. TNA, FO 47/5, Roberts to Macdonald, 26 December 1851.
18. TNA, FO 47/5, Bruce to Roberts, 30 December 1851.
19. Ibid.
20. TNA, FO 47/5, Bruce to Roberts, 19 April 1852.
21. TNA, FO 47/5, Government Notice.
22. LOC, Statutes at Large, XI. 404, 1859, March 3. United States Statute:
Appropriation; Senate, ‘Report of the Secretary of the Interior’, Senate Ex.
Doc., 1, 37th Congress, 2nd session, (1861), 435.
23. Recognition of Liberia (Philadelphia, n.d.), 2.
24. Benjamin Coates to Frederick Douglass, 16 January 1851, Emma Lapansky-
Werner J. and Margaret Hope Bacon, ed., Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates
and the Colonization Movement in America 1848–1880 (University Park,
Pennsylvania, 2005).
25. Liberia Herald, 21 May 1851.
26. Report of the Naval Committee to the House of Representatives, August, 1850,
in favor of the establishment of a line of Mail Steamships to the Western Coast
of Africa, and thence via the Mediterranean to London; Designed to promote
the emigration of free persons of color from the United States to Liberia: Also to
202 Notes
increase the steam navy, and to extend the commerce of the United States. With
An Appendix by the American Colonization Society (Washington, 1850), 67.
27. LOC, Lecture on African Colonization, 5.
28. The Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free
People of Colour of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1851), 79.
30. Adapted from Commerce of Liberia – returns for year ending 30 September
1859, Custom House, Port of Monrovia, African Repository, XXXVI (1861),
78–9. Commercial data for the colony was surprisingly irregularly published
by the ACS, considering the economic case the society made.
31. Colonization of the Western Coast of Africa, by means of a line of Mail Steam Ships.
Report of the Naval Committee – Extracts from the Press-Letters – Speeches,
&c. (New York, 1851), 74. (Extract from the New-York Colonization Journal,
January 1851 ‘The Proposal of the British Government to invite Emigration
of Free Blacks from the United States to the British West Indies’).
32. Ibid., 56 (Extract from the Boston Post).
33. LCP, U.S. Department of State, Report of the Secretary of State, 1850, 28–29,
M. Lewis, 23 November 1849.
34. LOC, H.R. 367 (Report No. 438) 31st Congress, 1st session, 1 August 1850, 1.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Report of the Naval Committee to the House of Representatives, 18–19.
38. Ibid., 19.
39. Ibid.
40. LCP, Communication of Liberian Finances 1847, The People of Grand Bassa,
6 November 1867.
41. Ibid., Governor Wright of Indiana, 3 July 1850 to the Exec Committee of the
ACS, 35.
42. NAUS, Despatches from the United States Consuls in Monrovia, 1852–1906,
Register, 1852–1906 and Volume I, 23 June 1852–31 December 1857.
43. George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619
to 1880, vol. 2 (New York, 1883), 55.
1800–1860’, Unpub. Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1956, 266.
1997), 338.
46. TNA, CO 272/1–38 Blue Books.
48. RHO, Buxton Papers, MSS British Empire s444, The African Colonizer clipping.
49. TNA, CO 267/197, James Stephen, Minute on Sierra Leone Legislative
Council, 12 April 1847.
50. David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (London,
2002), 12.
51. Christopher Fyfe, ‘The Sierra Leone Press in the Nineteenth Century’, Sierra
Leone Studies 8, (June 1957), 226–36.
52. Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 282–97.
53. Gustav Kashope Deveneaux, ‘Public Opinion and Colonial Policy in
Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone’, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies 9, 1 (1976), 64.
Notes 203
54. RHO, MSS British Empire S22 G19A, ‘Rules and Regulations of the “Sierra
Leone Native Association” Established 19th April 1854’.
55. RHO, MSS British Empire S22 G19B, vol. 1, Petition 17 March 1858 to ‘the
Right Honorable Henry Labouchere, Her Majesty’s Principle Secretary of
State for the Colonies’.
56. RHO, MSS British Empire S22 G19A Sierra Leone Native Association to JR
Dailey, Esq., 20 November 1858; Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 279, 282.
57. Mary Louise Clifford, The Land and People of Sierra Leone (Philadelphia,
1974), 58.
58. Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 282.
59. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, BC Pine to Canreba King of Bonthe,
2 May 1848.
60. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, BC Pine to Tom Coubak Bonthe,
April 1848.
61. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, to Fourry Bundo, 27 June 1848.
62. SLA, Governor’s Local Letters 1846–48, B.C. Pine to R.A. Oldfield and
W. Saukey, 17 July 1848.
63. TNA, CO 267/225, Grey to Macdonald, 28 June 1851.
64. PP, 1855, XXXCII (383), 36.
65. First Annual Report Trustees for Donations to Education, 10.
67. SLA Colonial Secretary’s Letter book 6 December 1854–9 August 1855,
Smyth to McCormack, 6 July 1855.
69. SLA Letter Book 1856, Maunsell to Burneur, 24 November 1855.
70. TNA, CO 267/154, 30 November 1839; CO 267/164, June 1841.
71. TNA, CO 267/154, 21 March 1840.
72. TNA, CO 267/154, 30 November 1839.
73. John Herskovits Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The ‘Sierra Leonians’ in
Yoruba, 1830–1890 (Madison, WI, 1965), 41–51.
74. Ibid., 53.
75. TNA, CO 267/164, June 1841.
76. Kopytoff, Preface to Modern Nigeria, 44–60.
77. TNA, CO 267/175, Fergusson to Colonial Office, 30 January 1842.
78. Ibid.
79. CMS CA1 IL, L1-L2, 11 November 1856.
80. Ibid., 4 November 1856.
81. Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900
(Bloomington, IN, 2007), 91–102.
82. PP, 1852, LIV (221), 29–30, Palmerston to Beecroft, 25 February 1850.
83. 51,687 slaves were embarked from the Bight of Benin; 27,372 from Lagos
alone. http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1840&y
earTo=1851&mjbyptimp=60500
85. Ibid.
86. TNA, FO 84/816, Beecroft to Palmerston, 22 July 1850.
87. TNA, FO 84/816, Addington to Secretary of the Admiralty, 11 October
1850.
204 Notes
88. TNA, FO 84/858, Palmerston to Beecroft, 18 February 1851.

89. PP, 1852, LIV (221), Papers relative to the reduction of Lagos by Her Majesty’s
forces on the west coast of Africa, 191–2; For more on the seizure of Lagos
see Lynn, ‘Consul and Kings: British Policy, “the Man on the Spot,” and
the Seizure of Lagos, 1851’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 10,
2 (1982), 150–167; A. G. Hopkins, ‘Property Rights and Empire Building:
Britain’s Annexation of Lagos, 1861’, The Journal of Economic History 40, 4
(1980), 777–798; David Richardson, ‘Background to Annexation: Anglo-
African Credit Relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1700–1891’, in Olivier Pétré-
Grenouilleau, ed., From Slave Trade to Empire: European Colonisation of Black
Africa, 1780s-1880s (Abingdon, 2004), 62.
90. Martin Lynn, ‘British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa, 1830–55’, The Journal
of African History 22, 3 (1981), 335.
91. Ibid., 337.
92. Thirty fourth annual ACS report, 1851 Value of Domestic British produce
exported to Africa from 1839 to 1844 inclusive.
93. Porter, ‘Religion and Empire: British Expansion in the Long Nineteenth
Century’, JICH, 20, 3 (1992), 380.
94. TNA, FO 881/1518, Report Proceedings of Squadron on West Coast,
Commodore Edmonstone 1861.
95. TNA, FO 2/34, Palmerston Minute Protection of Trade, 22 April 1860.
96. Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City, 101.
97. TNA, FO 881/1518, Report Proceedings of Squadron on West Coast,
Commodore Edmonstone 1861.
98. TNA, CO 267/271, Sir George Barrow, 12 December 1861; Duke of Newcastle,
14 December 1861.
Epilogue: 1861 and Beyond

1. RHO MSS British Empire S22 G33/A (Liberia).
(Urbana, 1972), 390–1.
3. Ibid., 389.
4. The Trent case was a diplomatic incident in 1861, in which a Union com-
mander seized two Confederate agents aboard the British steam ship. For
more on its implications see Jay Sexton, ‘Transatlantic Financiers and the
Civil War’, American Nineteenth Century History 2, 3 (2001), 32. The Alabama
was a ship being constructed for the Confederacy by a British shipyard.
See Maureen M. Robson, ‘The Alabama Claims and the Anglo-American
Reconciliation, 1865–71’, Canadian Historical Review 42, 1 (1961), 1–22.
5. LOC, England and Liberia, 6.
6. TNA, CO 267/164, petition, 13 May 1841; Carr to Russell, 5 July 1841.
7. Ronald W. Walters, Pan Africanism in the African Diaspora: An Analysis of
Modern Afrocentric Political Movements (Detroit, 1993); George Shepperson,
‘Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African
Nationalism’, The Journal of African History, 1 (1960), 299–312; Thomas
Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (New York, 1956); J. Ayodele Langley,
Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West Africa, 1900–1945: A Study in Ideology
and Social Classes (Oxford, 1973); Godgrey Mwakikagile, Relations Between
Notes 205
Africans, African Americans, and Afro-Caribbeans (Dar es Salaam, 2007);

Thomas W. Livingston, Education and Race: A Biography of Edward Wilmot
Blyden (San Francisco, 1975).
8. Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, Pan-African History: Political Figures from
Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 (London, 2003), 86–9.
9. Edward Wilmot Blyden and Alexander Crummell, Liberia: The Land of
Promise to Free Colored Men (Washington, D.C., 1861); Hollis R. Lynch, ed.,
The Selected Letters of Edward Wilmot Blyden (Millwood, NY, 1978).
10. Vivian Bickford-Smith, ‘Betrayal of the Creole Elites’ in Philip D. Morgan
and Sean Hawkins (eds.), Black Experience and the British Empire (Oxford,
2004), 194–227.
11. Amory Mayo, Southern Women in the Recent Education Movement in the South
(Washington, D.C., 1892), 82–3.
12. Ibid., 84.
13. Herbert G. Gutman, ‘Schools for Freedom’, in Thomas C. Holt and Elsa
Barkley Brown (eds.), Major Problems in African-American History, Volume 1:
From Slavery to Freedom, 1619–1877 (Boston, 2000), 399.
14. Edward Crapol, ‘Coming to Terms with Empire: The Historiography of Late-
Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations’, Diplomatic History 16, 4
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Index
Abeokuta, 138, 149, 159, 166–70 Naval patrols, 28, 29, 82–4, 87, 102,
Aberdeen, Lord, 116, 135, 141–2, 149 105, 116, 119–20, 124, 126, 130,
abolition movement, 4, 96–7, 99–100, 136, 141, 149, 157, 167, 177
112–13, 146 World Anti-Slavery Convention,
Aborigines Protection Society, 3, 162 113–14
Africa’s Luminary, 125, 145 apprenticeship
African Civilization Society, 108–11, in Liberia, 77, 102
113, 114, 124, 127, 159, 165 in Sierra Leone, 20–1, 85, 178
African Institution, 3, 7, 19, 20, 21, campaign against, 3, 85
23, 24, 27, 30–2, 87, 109, 110 architecture, 37–8, 42, 47–8, 62, 70,
Afro-Victorian, 34, 48–9, 160, 165 74, 88, 165, 167
agents, 27–9, 36, 58, 59, 75, 94, 104, Ashburton, Lord, 116
155 Capitulation, also Webster-
agriculture, 36, 42, 56, 58, 85, 87–8, Ashburton Treaty, 116, 126, 141
109 Ashmun, Jehudi, 1, 29, 32, 76, 103
see also commerce; plantations
‘Aku’, 38, 164, 166 Bacon, Ephraim, 36, 81
Alabama, 173, 204n Badagry, 149, 153, 165, 166–7, 169
Alcohol, 77, 155, 156 Baltimore, 27, 62, 93, 133, 135
Allen, Reverend Richard, 27, 92 Baptist Missionary Society, 95, 176
ambassador, 116, 141–2, 163 Bassa Cove, 58, 59, 99, 120, 124, 139,
AME Church, 27, 31 140–5
American Colonization Society, 1, 4, Beecroft, John, 138, 167, 168
6, 24–7 Benezet, Anthony, 22
American Revolution, 19, 22 Benson, Stephen Allen, 143, 158, 173
Amistad, 116–18 the Bights, 82–5, 89, 138, 153, 167,
anti-colonization, 4, 82, 89, 91–3, 169–70
104, 113, 131 of Benin, 84, 153, 167, 170
anti-slavery of Biafra, 83, 84, 89, 170
American Anti-slavery Society, 5, black poor, 18, 22
93, 94, 96, 114 Blackford, Mary, 11
American and Foreign Anti-slavery Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 175–6
Society, 5, 114, 137, 146 Bonard, Jason, 43
British Anti-Slavery Society, 82, 98 Bonny, 2
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Boston, 91, 134, 135
Society, 113, 114, 115, 127, 128, Brazil, 148–9
132, 133, 137, 146, 162, 173 British Empire, 110, 132, 170, 171, 179
campaign in America, 5, 98–9, 113, Britishness, 34, 37, 40, 42, 45, 53
132–3, 171–2 Brown, Thomas, 61, 93, 94–5
campaign in Britain, 3, 86, 98, Buchanan, Thomas, 59, 111, 112, 119,
99–100, 113–14, 116, 127, 132 120, 124–7, 129, 142, 143, 154,
immediatism, 46, 96, 98–9, 106, 177
108, 112 Burgess, Ebenezer, 29, 30
223
224 Index
Burin, Eric, 151 Coates & Austie, 135

Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 3, 12, 48, 81, Coates, Benjamin, 1, 154, 172
97, 98, 107–13, 114, 118, 119, 121, Cocke, John Hartwell, 11, 68, 129, 152
122, 126, 127, 128, 137, 165 Coguano, Ottabah, 18
Coker, Daniel, 26–8, 29, 31–2, 34–5
Caesar, Samson, see Ceasar, Samson colleges, 49, 53
Calhoun, John C., 133 also Fourah Bay College, 49, 53
Campbell, Henry Dundas, 37–8, 41, colonialism, 7, 121
45–7, 50, 51, 86, 123 see also empire; imperialism
Campbell, Neil, 83, 89 colonization, 1, 4, 7, 12, 18, 22–3, 24,
Camwood, 48, 95, 145 25, 30, 31, 32, 56–60, 96, 108,
Canot, Theodore, 64, 103, 120–1, 125 132–3, 154–9, 165
Cape Coast, 43, 137 advocates of, 4, 25, 26, 27, 28, 48,
Cape Mount, 65, 83, 118, 120, 136, 74, 100–1, 103, 110, 112, 114
142, 143, 147, 151, 152 debate over, 81–3, 91–106, 108,
Caribbean, see West Indies 117–18
Carr, John, 121, 129 Ladies’ auxiliaries, 70
Caulker, Stephen, 163 opponents of, 4–5, 82, 89, 91–4,
Ceasar, Samson, 61, 63, 67, 94 96–7, 99, 110–11, 113, 130
Chesapeak and Liberia Trading state societies, 57, 58–9, 91, 96
Company, 133 Columbine, Edward, 19
children commerce
apprenticeship, 102 legitimate, 1, 2–3, 10, 13, 19, 20, 30,
liberated African, 35, 49 38, 45, 86, 109, 111–12, 116, 121,
education of, 48, 49, 50, 52, 69, 71, 129–30, 133–40, 149, 167, 170–1,
91, 160, 161 174
slave trade, 21 settler, 47, 86, 124, 136, 140, 143,
wards, 66–7, 109 147–8, 156, 159, 163, 168,
China, 130, 131–2, 146, 172 170–2
Christianity, 61–3, 65, 66, 77–8, 103, see also ‘Civilization, Commerce,
111, 151, 152, 155, 171 and Christianity’; economy
Church Missionary Society, 21–2, 34, Congress, 26, 61, 87, 104, 105, 145,
35–6, 40, 41, 49, 50–1, 53, 109, 151, 155, 157, 158–9, 172, 179
121, 161, 166, 167, 169–70 Connecticut, 22, 117
Grammar School, 52–3 constitution, 59, 65–6, 75, 107, 113,
Civil War, 5, 8, 132, 151, 173–6, 179 127, 147, 162
civilization, 1, 13, 20, 21, 23, 25, consul, 132, 138, 158, 164, 167, 170
35–6, 40–1, 42, 47, 49, 54, 63, cooperation, 6, 18, 21, 23, 24, 29, 30,
67, 71–7, 87–8, 109–11, 152, 155, 31, 100, 111, 112, 113, 114, 118,
165, 175 127, 130, 141, 153, 177, 180
‘Civilization, Commerce, and cotton, 20, 42, 44, 87, 154–5, 156–7
Christianity’, 9, 12–13, 33–4, 53, Courts of Mixed Commission, 21, 43,
78, 82–3, 104–5, 108, 109–10, 85, 90, 103, 105
126, 146, 151–2, 155, 170–2 creole, 86, 176, 181n
Clapham Sect, 18–20 Creole (ship), 116
Clarkson, John, 19 Cresson, Elliot, 1, 99, 118
Clarkson, Thomas, 19, 81, 97, 99 Crowther, Samuel Ajayi, 37, 40, 166,
Clay, Henry, 24 167, 169, 176
Clegg, Claude Andrew, 77 Cuffee, Paul, 23–4, 27, 29, 30, 31–2
Index 225
culture, 11, 12, 13, 25, 33–4, 40, 42, Sierra Leonean, 11, 21–2, 41–2,
47–8, 49, 54, 55, 56, 60, 64, 67, 49–53, 54, 82–3, 85, 89, 105, 107,
72–3, 77–8, 86, 108, 122, 146, 109, 160–1, 164, 188n
147, 156, 161 see also colleges; schools
emancipation, 3, 4, 24, 46, 48, 62, 86,
Dahomey, 137, 167–8, 170 95, 96, 97, 106, 107, 109, 127, 151,
debates, 2–3, 5, 24, 83, 87, 112, 114, 160, 174, 175, 176
115, 118, 127, 128, 131, 145, 146, empire, 1, 7, 9, 11, 21, 25, 42, 48, 54,
152, 165, 172 81, 82, 110, 131–3, 139, 149, 155,
deeds, 74 160, 162, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177,
defences, 29, 76 179–80
see also fortifications see also colonialism; imperialism
Dei, 28, 29, 64, 66, 86, 103, 119 Equiano, Olaudah, 18, 196n
Denman, Captain, 120, 124 Everett, Edward, 116, 141–2
Deveneaux, Gustav, 3 expansion, 1, 3, 4, 7–9, 10, 12, 32, 66,
Doherty, Richard, 39, 112, 121, 122, 86, 100, 102, 112, 114, 119–22,
140, 165 126–7, 128–30, 130–3, 135–43,
domestic slavery, 93–4, 174 146–7, 149, 150–4, 159–72, 177–8
see also apprenticeship expenditure, 45, 48, 86, 88
domestication, 41, 75 exports, see economy
see also gender roles Ezzidio, John, 43, 161
Douglass, Frederick, 5, 154
duties, see economy; taxation Fante, 137
female education, 50, 51, 53
East India Company, see India Fergusson, William, 48, 117–18, 121,
economy, 95, 175 126, 129, 140, 142, 166
commerce, 2–3, 19–20, 38, 45, 47, Fernando Po, 84, 89–90, 101, 110,
58, 71–7, 86, 109–12, 116, 121, 121, 138
125, 129–30, 133–40, 143, 147–8, Findlay, Alexander, 36, 37, 39, 46–7,
149, 156, 159, 163, 167–74 51, 84–5, 101, 122
duties, 48, 132, 137, 139, 143–4, Finley, Reverend Robert, 24–6
145, 147 Fladeland, Betty, 6, 173
exports, 38, 43, 45, 48, 84, 87, Foote, Andrew, 107, 125
134–5, 138–9, 155–7, 159–60, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, see
168–9, 172 Lord Aberdeen (1828–30;
imports, 42, 43, 47–8, 135, 139–40, 1841–46); Viscount Palmerston
143, 145, 156–8, 159, 163, (1830–34; 1835–41; 1846–51);
168–9, 172 Lord John Russell (1852–53;
trade, 30, 47, 131, 142, 143, 155, 1859–65)
158, 168–9 Forten, James, 92
tariff, 95, 130, 137, 139, 145, 156, 169 fortifications, 120, 149
Edina, 57, 58, 60–1, 66, 113, 142 see also defences
education Fourah Bay College, 49, 53
in America, 91, 176 Fouricaria, 137, 140
female, 50, 51, 53 Fox, George, 51
Ladies’ Auxiliaries, 70 Fox, Henry, 116, 141
Ladies’ School Association, 70 France also French, 18, 22, 43,
Liberian, 26, 56, 60, 68–71, 78, 50, 104
90–3, 95, 112, 164 Fraser, Alexander, 43, 46, 52, 90
226 Index
freed slaves, 1, 22, 33, 60, 69, 92, (1830); Alexander Findlay
150, 176 (1830–33); Octavius Temple
Freetown, 21–2, 24, 27, 31, 42, 43, 46, (1833–34); Henry Dundas
47–8, 50, 84, 85, 89, 135, 138, Campbell (1835–37); Richard
161, 162, 163 Doherty (1837–40); John Jeremie
frontier, 8, 10, 25, 56, 74, 77, (1840–41); John Carr (1841);
147, 169 William Fergusson (1841–42;
Fula, 39 1844–45); George Macdonald
(1842–44); Norman William
Gabbidon, Stephen, 43, 46 MacDonald (1845–52); Arthur
Gallagher, John, 7, 177 Edward Kennedy (1852–54);
Gallinas also Gallinhas, 83–4, 117, Stephen John Hill (1854–55;
118, 120, 121, 122, 124, 135, 143, 1855–59; 1860–61); Alexander
152, 167, 170, 174 Fitzjames (1859–60)
Gambia also Gambia River, 22, 31, of Liberia, see Thomas Buchanan
46, 77, 83, 84, 122, 123, 128, 139, (1839–41); Joseph Jenkins Roberts
149, 159, 161, 175, 177 (1841–48); also Colonial Agents
Garrison, William Lloyd, 3, 4–5, 25, of Liberia
26, 96–9, 112, 114 of Maryland in Liberia, see John
Garrisonianism, 97–9, 107, 137 Brown Russwurm (1836–52)
gender roles also domestication, 41, Grammar School, 52, 53
75, 76 Gurley, Ralph R., 6, 66, 69, 76,
Getumbe, 119–20 110–12, 114, 118, 124, 135,
Ghezo, 167–8 140, 165
girls’ schools, 50, 51, 53 Guyatt, Nicholas, 25
Goderich, 37
Gola, 29, 64, 86, 103, 119 Hall, Catherine, 12
Gold Coast, 83, 84, 128, 137, 138, Harris, Sion, 120, 150
143, 149, 158, 159, 161, 166, 169, Hastings, 29, 34
175, 189n Hausa, 38
goods, 17, 38, 42, 45, 48, 58, Hodgkin, Thomas, 3, 99, 100–1, 114,
74, 75, 95, 133, 134–5, 139, 190n
140, 156 Hopkins, A.G., 2
agricultural see produce Hopkins, Reverend Samuel, 22, 26
American, 58, 133, 156 Houston, Sam, 115, 133
British, 38, 42, 48, 139, 156 Howard, Lawrence, 7, 28
India, 42 humanitarian
Manchester, 42, 48 competition, 9, 23, 30, 31, 87,
see also material culture; produce 132, 179
Governors definitions and historiography, 1, 3,
of Sierra Leone, see Zachary 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 34, 96, 182n
Macaulay (1794–95; 1796–99); efficacy, 13, 90
Thomas Perronet Thompson expansionism and intervention, 2,
(1808–10); Edward Columbine 9, 52, 89, 122, 159, 174, 177, 178,
(1810–11); Charles Maxwell 179, 180
(1811–15); Charles McCarthy imperial, 9, 169, 177, 179
(1814; 1815–20; 1821–24); Charles internal struggles, 137, 149
Turner (1824–26); Neil Campbell networks, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 33, 49,
(1826–27); Alexander Fraser 85, 147, 148, 154, 175
Index 227
Ibo, 38, 164, 165 Kissy, 34

identity, 12 Krio, 181n
American, 55–6, 71, 78 Kru, 41, 124, 175, 188n
British, 33, 35, 37, 123
imperial or colonial, 12, 34, 37, 56, labour
62, 178–9 apprenticed, 20, 66–7, 93, 105
Liberian, 55–6, 60–2, 69, 71, 78 enslaved, 19, 67, 93
middle class, 54, 78 free, 2, 19, 155
political, 38, 62, 69 mobile, 175
religious, 38, 60–2, 78 unskilled, 94
settler, 34, 55–6, 178–9 wages, 188n
Sierra Leonean, 33, 54, 82 women’s work, 41, 51
Victorian, 11, 34, 48, 49, 156, 160, 165 Ladies’ Auxiliaries, 70
see also missionaries Ladies’ School Association, 70
Igbo, see Ibo Lagos, 137, 138, 147, 149, 153, 154,
imperialism, 2, 7–9, 177, 179–80 159, 166–71, 175
economic, 149, 156, 179 Law, Robin, 2
‘new’ imperialism, 176 Leeward coast, 90
sub-imperialism, 108, 179 legislative council of Sierra Leone,
see also colonialism; empire 144, 161
imports, see economy legitimate commerce, see commerce
incomes, 48, 143, 159, 160–1 Leigh, Benjamin, 43, 122
independence, 5, 6, 130, 144–6 Lester, Alan, 9, 131
India, 2, 7, 25, 42, 48, 114, 121 Liberated Africans, 20, 21, 22, 34–43,
Indiana, 57, 158 47, 49–53, 82, 84–5, 86, 101, 161,
intervention, 2, 8–9, 11, 12, 13, 164, 165, 166, 167, 175, 181n
34, 36, 76, 105, 108, 119–26, in Liberia, 57, 59, 75, 76
140, 149, 152, 159, 167, 168, see also education; identity, Sierra
170, 171, 176, 177–8, 179, Leonean; identity, British;
180 recaptives
Islam, 39, 64, 176 The Liberator, 4, 94
see also Muslim Liberia
ivory, 48, 95, 135 Governors of, see Thomas
Buchanan (1839–41); Joseph
Jackson, Andrew, 87, 104 Jenkins Roberts (1841–48)
Jefferson, Thomas, 24 Governor of Maryland in Liberia,
Jeremie, John, 117, 120, 121, 125, see John Brown Russwurm
126–7, 129, 140, 177 (1836–52)
Liberia Herald, see newspapers
Keliher, Macabe, 131–2 Liberia Packet, 134, 145
Kentucky, 57, 60, 71 Maryland in Liberia, 57, 107, 113,
King Tom Institution, 53 134, 142, 150
Kings merchants, 135
Alimamee Ali of Fouricaria, 137; population, 56, 150–1, 174
Brister, 119; Bromley, 119; settlers, 55–6, 60–2, 69, 71, 78
Canreba, 163; George, 35; Ghezo, trade, 58, 134–6, 143, 149, 155, 156,
137, 167–8, 170; John Macaulay, 158, 171–2
38, 164; Mama Ketzie, 119; Peter, Lincoln, Abraham, 173
28–9, 76, 119; Willey, 119 Loko, 84, 86, 137
228 Index
London Sierra Leonean, 38, 43–5, 45–6, 47,

Convention of London, 115 48, 49, 123, 126, 136, 153, 154,
Sierra Leoneans in London, 18, 161, 164, 165, 168, 170
167, 170, 176 Mexico, 8, 130
trade, 157, 164, 169 middle class, 31, 34, 43, 48–54, 55–6,
World Ant-Slavery Convention held 60, 71, 78, 81–2, 91, 108, 122,
in 1840, 113 128, 146, 156, 160, 165, 177, 179
Louisiana, 116 military, 9, 10, 36, 76, 86, 105, 116,
Lowry, Donal, 34 119, 121–4, 126, 127, 131, 149,
loyalty, 34–5, 37, 52, 54 154, 167, 171, 179, 180
militia, 12, 108, 178
Macaulay & Babington, 43 Liberian, 29, 75, 76–7, 86, 87, 103,
Macaulay, John, 38, 164 119–20
Macaulay, Zachary, 20, 30, 81, 89 Sierra Leonean, 43, 122–3
MacCarthy, Charles, 31, 34–6, 53, millennialism, 26, 46
88, 118 Minor, James C., 65, 94
Macdonald, George, 129, 135–6, Minor, Lucy, 11
139 missionaries
Macdonald, Norman William, 136, African American, 22, 25
140, 145, 152–4, 163 American Missionary Association,
Macqueen, James, 87–9 117–18, 176
Madison, James, 26 Baptist, 64, 95, 109, 142, 176
Mama Ketzie, 119 Church Missionary Society, 21–2,
Manchester goods, 42, 48 34, 35–6, 40, 41, 49, 50–1, 53,
Mandinka, 39, 64, 140 109, 121, 161, 166, 167, 169–70
manifest destiny, 8, 130–3 controversies, 35–6
manumission, 28, 68, 114, 151 and education, 21–2, 35, 41, 49–51,
maps, 136 69–70, 161, 164
Maroons, 19, 38, 41, 43, 46, 51, 52, and expansion, 53, 126–7, 138, 142,
175 152, 159–60, 166–70, 179–80
Maryland, 57, 61, 63, 133 and humanitarian networks, 18,
Maryland Colonization Society, 7, 25–6
57, 74, 150 and identity, 49, 53, 54
Maryland in Liberia, 57, 107, 113, and indigenous religions, 38–40,
134, 142, 150 77, 129
Massachusetts, 22, 23, 25, 57 Liberian, 56, 64–6, 78
material culture, 11, 13 Methodist, 64, 75, 109, 152
architecture, 37–8, 42, 47–8, 62, 70, ‘native’ missionaries, 12, 35–6, 49,
74, 88, 165, 167 108, 166
deeds and wills, 73–4 Wesleyan, 35, 52, 109, 166
photographs and paintings, 72–3 Mississippi, 7, 130
and identity, 33, 42, 47, 48, 55, 56, Missouri crisis, 4, 183n
72–3, 108, 147, 156 modernity, 9, 34, 54, 55–6, 71, 123,
Mende, 117–18 180
merchants Monroe, James, 28
American, 30, 130, 172 Monrovia, 28, 58, 60, 61, 64,
British, 2, 89, 123, 126, 140–3, 153, 73–4, 92, 103, 124, 135, 139,
154, 164 142, 164
Liberian, 135 Mouser, Bruce, 30
Index 229
Muslim, 38–40 palm oil, 44, 48, 75, 89, 135, 138–9,
143, 145, 154, 158, 159, 168–9, 170
Nash, Gary, 11, 62 panic of 1837, 5, 111
Navy, 7, 20, 26, 104, 124, 125, parish plan, 21, 25, 34–41, 50, 53, 85,
135, 137, 142, 153, 155, 179
157–8, 171 parliament, 48, 87, 97–8, 101, 123,
Naval Squadron, 7, 83, 84–5, 98, 125, 132, 137, 139, 148–9, 159,
102, 104, 110, 130, 136, 140, 168, 164
177 Parliamentary Select Committee,
networks, 6, 11, 17–18, 21, 23, 27–8, 47–8
29, 30, 31–2, 77, 105–6, 108, 130, Parsons, Timothy, 34
146, 155–6, 169, 178 Payne, James Spriggs, 75
New Cestos, 120, 125, 143 Pennsylvania, 7, 57, 99, 112
New Georgia, 60, 75 Pennsylvania Colonization Society,
newspapers, 11, 26, 91, 94, 144, 157, 57, 58, 99, 110, 142
176 petitions, 11, 37–8, 41, 43, 45–6, 50,
African Repository, 87, 93, 94, 144 51–2, 90, 97, 122, 123, 160, 162,
Africa’s Luminary, 125, 145 164–6, 175, 176
The Liberator, 4, 94 Philadelphia, 27, 60, 62, 91, 92, 113,
Liberia Herald, 57, 58, 59, 65, 67, 68, 135
70, 71, 75, 103, 126, 142, 145, photographs and paintings, 72–3
146, 151, 154 plantations
Morning Post, 124 alternatives, 85
The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone culture, 60, 61, 69, 74, 78
Advertiser, 29, 83, 89, 90, 104 in West Africa, 19, 121, 179
New York, 57, 62, 68, 74, 91, political representation, 47, 76, 95,
117, 134 160, 161, 164, 171, 176
Colonization Society, 7, 57–8, 99, Polk, James, 146
113, 142, 157 Polkinghorne, Captain, 102
Niger population
Delta, 48–9, 136 Sierra Leonean, 20, 27, 32, 38–9, 86,
Expedition, 40, 108, 111, 114, 121, 149, 159
124, 126–7, 128 Liberian, 56, 57, 59, 68, 75, 149,
River, 111, 123, 169 150, 164, 174
Nigeria, 3, 7, 38, 149, 166, Porter, Andrew, 49
169, 176 President
North Carolina, 99 of Liberia, see Joseph Jenkins Roberts
Nova Scotians, 41, 51, 181n (1848–56); Stephen Allen Benson
Nullification crisis, 95 (1856–64); James Spriggs Payne
Nupe, 38, 164 (1868–70, 1876–78)
Nylander, Reverend Joseph, 34 of United States of America, see
Thomas Jefferson (1801–09);
Old Calabar, 2 James Madison (1809–17); James
Opium wars, 131 Monroe (1817–25); John Quincy
Adams (1825–29); Andrew
Pakenham letter, 133 Jackson (1829–37); John Tyler
Palmerston, Lord (also Viscount), 104, (1841–45); James Polk (1845–49);
109, 115–16, 123, 125, 137–8, James Buchanan (1857–61);
148, 149, 167–8, 170, 173 Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865)
230 Index
Prime Minister of Great Britain, see Church Missionary Society, 21–2,

Lord John Russell (1846–52); 161
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount in Liberia, 61–2, 68–71
Palmerston (1855–58; 1859–65) girls’, 41, 50, 51, 53
Prince Cain, 136 in Sierra Leone, 21–2, 49–53
Prince de Joinville, 22 Sierra Leoneans in Britain, 147
produce, 75, 86, 111, 119, 130, 135, see also colleges; universities
136, 139, 140, 156, 157 Secretary of State of the United States
see also camwood; cotton; ivory; of America
rice see Daniel Webster (1841–43;
Province of Freedom, 18 1850–52); Abel Upshur
(1843–44); John C. Calhoun
Quakers, also Society of Friends, 3, (1844–45); James Buchanan
22–3, 26, 31, 97, 99, 100, 109 (1845–49); Edward Everett
Quincy Adams, John, 117 (1852–53)
settlement
recaptives, see Liberated Africans of Fernando Po, 89–90
religion, see Christianity; churches; of Liberia, 25–9, 30–2, 56–60,
identity; Islam; missionaries 119–21
rice, 44–5 of Nigeria, 110–12, 138, 149,
Rio Nunez, 85, 121, 170 165–67
Rio Pongas, 84–5, 170 of Sierra Leone, 18–20, 30–2
Roberts, Jane, 72 settlers, see Liberia; Sierra Leone
Roberts, Joseph Jenkins Sharp, Granville, 1, 18–20, 23
and the British, 143–5, 152–4 Shaw, Andrew, 43
business, 57, 74 Sherbro
emigration, 57, 67 and American settlement, 24,
and expansion, 152 27–31, 55, 118
Governor, 67, 129, 134, 143–4 and Sierra Leonean expansion,
and Independence, 145 135–6, 137, 140, 163
pictures of, 72–3 and the slave trade, 83, 170
President, 74, 150 Sierra Leone
Robinson, Ronald, 177 Company, 3, 7, 19, 30
Rokelle river, 86 exports, 38, 43, 45, 48, 87, 138–9,
Russell, Lord John 156, 159–61, 168–9
and the African Civilization Gazette, see newspapers
Society, 111–12, 118 imports, 42, 168–9
Foreign Secretary, 170 merchants, 38, 43–5, 45–6, 47, 48,
Prime Minister, 148–9 49, 123, 126, 136, 153, 154, 164,
Russwurm, John Brown 165, 168, 170
Governor of Maryland in Liberia, Native Association, 162
57, 74, 107, 113 population, 20, 27, 32, 38–9, 86,
Trading partnership, 134 149, 159
settler identity, 33–4, 54, 82,
Sanneh, Lamin, 7, 55, 61 178–9
Savage, William Henry, 36, 43–7 see also governors; identity;
schools settlements; trade
in Abeokuta, 167 Skipwith, Peyton, 11, 65–6, 67, 68, 93,
African American, 91 129, 142, 144
Index 231
slave trade Texas, 2, 113–15, 128, 130–3, 146–7,

abolition, 13, 20, 23, 115–16, 133, 178
140, 144, 152 Thompson, Thomas Perronet, 19–21
Act of 1819, 76 Thornton, Henry, 19
internal American, 116 Thornton, William, 22–3
intervention in, 9, 13, 19, 25, 36, trade, 30, 47, 131, 142, 143, 155, 158,
66, 82–90, 100–5, 117, 119–27, 168–9
152 American, 131, 136, 156
negative reports about, 82–90, British, 30, 47, 131, 142, 143, 155,
100–5, 112, 124–6, 135–6 158, 168–9
recaptives, 28, 105 factories, 59, 125, 142
The Slave Trade and Its Remedy, legitimate commerce, 1, 2–3, 10, 13,
108–9, 111, 122 19, 20, 30, 38, 45, 86, 109, 111–
sources of slaves, 84 12, 116, 121, 129–30, 133–40,
suppression, 83–6, 102, 121–2, 144, 149, 167, 170–1, 174
149, 157, 170–1, 177 Liberian, 58, 134–6, 143, 149, 155,
transition to legitimate commerce, 156, 158, 171–2
2–3, 10, 20, 49, 100, 136, palm oil, 44, 48, 75, 89, 135, 138–9,
138, 149 143, 145, 154, 158, 159, 168–9,
in West Africa, 17, 20, 152, 167–70 170
see also Naval Squadron value, 135, 138, 156, 158, 159, 169
slave traders, 43, 57, 59, 100–5, 123, Sierra Leonean, 12
148–9 slave, see slave trade
see also Theodore Canot traders, 135, 172
Smeathman, Henry, 18 women, 42
South Africa, 131 transatlantic
South Carolina, 63, 95 anti-slavery movement, 6, 32,
steam vessels, 85, 122, 151, 157, 169 95–105, 173
see also Liberia Packet networks, 17–18, 23, 31–2
Stein, Gil, 12 rivalry, 29–31, 114, 131–2, 173
Sturge, Joseph, 3, 97, 107, 109, 112, trade, 74
113, 115, 126, 137 treaty
sugar, 45, 116, 132, 137 anti-slave trade, 86, 114–16, 121–2,
Sugary, 59, 151–2 132–3, 137, 167
Susu, 40 commercial, 114–15, 139–40, 153–
4, 167–8
Tambaka, 136 joint-cruising, 130, 173, 177
Tappan, Lewis, 5, 26, 112, 114, 117–18 Webster-Ashburton, 114–16, 126,
tariff, see taxation 141
taxation violation, 143
customs, 139 Trent, 173, 204n
duties, 48, 132, 137, 139, 143–4, Turner, Charles, 36, 83, 89, 112, 177
145, 147 Turner, Nat, 57, 95
tariff, 95, 130, 137, 139, 145, 156, Twombly & Lamson, 135
169 Tyler, John, 26, 115, 131–2, 146
Walker’s tariff, 130
Teage, Hilary, 75 universalism, 1, 34
Temne, 19, 38, 84, 137, 139 universities, see colleges
Temple, Octavius, 35, 102 Uphsur, Abel, 131, 141
232 Index
Vai, 29, 64, 119 Wilberforce, William, 19–20, 30,

Venn, Henry, 53, 169 81, 97
Virginia, 7, 11, 57, 63, 74, 95, 116, 129 wills, 73
Virginia Colonization Society, 58, 131 Windward coast, 84
Wise, James, 43
wages, 44, 188n women
Walker, David, 4, 96–7 and anti-slavery movement,
Walker, Robert, 130 114
War of 1812, 23–4, 105 domestication, 41–2, 50,
wards, see apprenticeship 75
Waterloo, 37, 165 schools, 50–1
Watson, Samuel, 8 work, 41–2, 45, 50–1
Webster, Daniel, 116, 126, 141 World Anti-Slavery Convention,
West, Richard, 7 113–14
West Indies, 46, 53, 85, 86, 101, 107,
109, 127, 128–9, 137, 157 Yoruba, 38, 40, 165–7, 169
emigration to, 145, 159, 164, 166, 175
interests, 87, 89 Zevin, Robert, 8

(Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series) Bronwen Everill (Auth.) - Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2013)

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Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

General Editors: Megan Vaughan, Kings’ College, Cambridge and Richard

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

1 Transatlantic Anti-Slavery Networks 17

2 An African Middle Class 33

4 The Abolitionist Propaganda War 81

5 Slave Trade Interventionism 107

6 Commercial Rivalry and Liberian Independence 128

7 Arguments for Colonial Expansion 148

Epilogue: 1861 and Beyond 173

2.1 Five major wage categories 44

4.1 Sources of slaves, 1808–63 84

I am grateful to many people for helping to make this book a reality. I

ACSP American Colonization Society Papers, Library of Congress

Map 1 Map of the West Coast of Africa, 1830

Benjamin Coates, an American anti-slavery activist and international

arising from the formation of anti-slavery movements throughout the

British anti-slavery historiography has long been preoccupied by the

and other areas of modern-day Nigeria. When Sierra Leonean contribu-

1896, but the role of Sierra Leoneans in manipulating anti-slavery pol-

propaganda. In 1833, he and several other prominent anti-slavery activ-

comparative works have attempted to bring together the study of these

The comparative approach reveals significant differences in the

their approaches to various institutions – educational, religious, and

internal communications, official subscription publications and books,

The study examines issues of identification in view of the role Sierra

differently by different anti-slavery actors over the course of the mid-

The early history of the anti-slavery colonization movement reveals

to shape the development of the transatlantic colonization movements

In 1787, three ships bearing a total of 459 passengers arrived on the

Thompson was hand selected by William Wilberforce to be its first gov-

Until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, humanitarian networks

Coast settlements and the Gambia under the Freetown government.

by his British friends, who were working simultaneously to establish the

of civilized and Christian Colonies, planted by men of their own color –

of Paul Cuffe, he travelled with the first American Colonization Society

With African American interest so focused on Sierra Leone, why then,

The establishment of these colonies reveals the personal nature of the

West and Central African traditions.2 Black identification with British

The legacy of the parish plan in Sierra Leone

The parish plan established by MacCarthy attempted to instil British

a Welsh Methodist who commented that ‘Christianity alone can civ-

partnership remained responsible for pastoral, educational, and admin-

success which has attended Governor Campbell’s exertions, in establish-

Sierra Leonean Christians’ relationships with indigenous beliefs were

fraught. In dealing with the British government in the colony and in

Consumption and ‘civilization’

instruction in sewing and many of them also in spinning cotton, mak-

to gain professional standing. Stephen Gabbidon, a Maroon, was a mer-

Domestic wages in grams of

Trade wages in grams of

Timber loaders wages in

Frequently, schools were still administered by European missionar-

irritated at the better salaries offered to Europeans in similar govern-

the missionary societies were still closely allied to the government.

The early nineteenth century saw the development and implementa-

British priorities of missionary expansion and recaptive education as

From the early nineteenth century, African American settlers began

civilization emerging in Sierra Leone, but it potentially overstates the

After the initial founding of the colony, Liberian settlement tended to

goodwill of indigenous groups and European slave traders. Liberian set-

established in Africa is more commercial in its character, than is sup-

of the settlements experienced food shortages in these years. These