With the adoption of its constitution the Republic of Liberia formally asked to be considered in the family of nations; and since 1847 the history of the country has naturally been very largely that of international relations. In fact, preoccupation with the questions raised by powerful neighbors has been at least one strong reason for the comparatively slow internal development of the country. The Republic was officially recognized by England in 1848, by France in 1852, but on account of slavery not by the United States until 1862. Continuously there has been an observance of the forms of order, and only one president has been deposed. For a long time the presidential term was two years in length; but by an act of 1907 it was lengthened to four years. From time to time there have been two political parties, but not always has such a division been emphasized.
It is well to pause and note exactly what was the task set before the little country. A company of American Negroes suddenly found themselves placed on an unhealthy and uncultivated coast which was thenceforth to be their home. If we compare them with the Pilgrim Fathers, we find that as the Pilgrims had to subdue the Indians, so they had to hold their own against a score of aggressive tribes. The Pilgrims had the advantage of a thousand years of culture and experience in government; the Negroes, only recently out of bondage, had been deprived of any opportunity for improvement whatsoever. Not only, however, did they have to contend against native tribes and labor to improve their own shortcomings; on every hand they had to meet the designs of nations supposedly more enlightened and Christian. On the coast Spanish traders defied international law; on one side the English, and on the other the French, from the beginning showed a tendency toward arrogance and encroachment. To crown the difficulty, the American Government, under whose auspices the colony had largely been founded, became more and more halfhearted in its efforts for protection and at length abandoned the enterprise altogether. It did not cease, however, to regard the colony as the dumping-ground of its own troubles, and whenever a vessel with slaves from the Congo was captured on the high seas, it did not hesitate to take these people to the Liberian coast and leave them there, nearly dead though they might be from exposure or cramping. It is well for one to remember such facts as these before he is quick to belittle or criticize. To the credit of the "Congo men" be it said that from the first they labored to make themselves a quiet and industrious element in the body politic.
The early administrations of President Roberts (four terms, 1848-1855) were mainly devoted to the quelling of the native tribes that continued to give trouble and to the cultivating of friendly relations with foreign powers. Soon after his inauguration Roberts made a visit to England, the power from which there was most to fear; and on this occasion as on several others England varied her arrogance with a rather excessive friendliness toward the little republic. She presented to Roberts the Lark, a ship with four guns, and sent the President home on a war-vessel. Some years afteryards, when the Lark was out of repair, England sent instead a schooner, the Quail. Roberts made a second visit to England in 1852 to adjust disputes with traders on the western boundary. He also visited France, and Louis Napoleon, not to be outdone by England, presented to him a vessel, the Hirondelle, and also guns and uniforms for his soldiers. In general the administrations of Roberts (we might better say his first series of administrations, for he was later to be called again to office) made a period of constructive statesmanship and solid development, and not a little of the respect that the young republic won was due to the personal influence of its first president. Roberts, however, happened to be very fair, and generally successful though his administrations were, the desire on the part of the people that the highest office in the country be held by a black man seems to have been a determining factor in the choice of his successor. There was an interesting campaign toward the close of his last term. "There were about this time two political parties in the country—the old Republicans and the 'True Liberians,' a party which had been formed in opposition to Roberts's foreign policies. But during the canvass the platform of this new party lost ground; the result was in favor of the Republican candidate."[144]
Stephen Allen Benson (four terms, 1856-1863) was forced to meet in one way or another almost all of the difficulties that have since played a part in the life of the Liberian people. He had come to the country in 1822 at the age of six and had developed into a practical and efficient merchant. To his high office he brought the same principles of sobriety and good sense that had characterized him in business. On February 28, 1857, the independent colony of Maryland formally became a part of the republic. This action followed immediately upon the struggle with the Greboes in the vicinity of Cape Palmas in which assistance was rendered by the Liberians under Ex-President Roberts. In 1858 an incident that threatened complications with France but that was soon happily closed arose from the fact that a French vessel which sought to carry away some Kru laborers to the West Indies was attacked by these men when they had reason to fear that they might be sold into slavery and not have to work simply along the coast, as they at first supposed. The ship was seized and all but one of the crew, the physician, were killed. Trouble meanwhile continued with British smugglers in the West, and to this whole matter we shall have to give further and special attention. In 1858 and a year or two thereafter the numerous arrivals from America, especially of Congo men captured on the high seas, were such as to present a serious social problem. Flagrant violation by the South of the laws against the slave-trade led to the seizure by the United States Government of many Africans. Hundreds of these people were detained at a time at such a port as Key West. The Government then adopted the policy of ordering commanders who seized slave-ships at sea to land the Africans directly upon the coast of Liberia without first bringing them to America, and appropriated $250,000 for the removal and care of those at Key West. The suffering of many of these people is one of the most tragic stories in the history of slavery. To Liberia came at one time 619, at another 867, and within two months as many as 4000. There was very naturally consternation on the part of the people at this sudden immigration, especially as many of the Africans arrived cramped or paralyzed or otherwise ill from the conditions under which they had been forced to travel. President Benson stated the problem to the American Government; the United States sent some money to Liberia, the people of the Republic helped in every way they could, and the whole situation was finally adjusted without any permanently bad effects, though it is well for students to remember just what Liberia had to face at this time. Important toward the close of Benson's terms was the completion of the building of the Liberia College, of which Joseph Jenkin Roberts became the first president.
The administrations of Daniel Bashiel Warner (two terms, 1864-1867) and the earlier one of James Spriggs Payne (1868-1869) were comparatively uneventful. Both of these men were Republicans, but Warner represented something of the shifting of political parties at the time. At first a Republican, he went over to the Whig party devoted to the policy of preserving Liberia from white invasion. Moved to distrust of English merchants, who delighted in defrauding the little republic, he established an important Ports-of-Entry Law in 1865, which it is hardly necessary to say was very unpopular with the foreigners. Commerce was restricted to six ports and a circle six miles in diameter around each port. On account of the Civil War and the hopes that emancipation held out to the Negroes in the United States, immigration from America ceased rapidly; but a company of 346 came from Barbadoes at this time. The Liberian Government assisted these people with $4000, set apart for each man an allotment of twenty-five rather than the customary ten acres; the Colonization Society appropriated $10,000, and after a pleasant voyage of thirty-three days they arrived without the loss of a single life. In the company was a little boy, Arthur Barclay, who was later to be known as the President of the Republic. At the semi-centennial of the American Colonization Society held in Washington in January, 1867, it was shown that the Society and its auxiliaries had been directly responsible for the sending of more than 12,000 persons to Africa. Of these 4541 had been born free, 344 had purchased their freedom, 5957 had been emancipated to go to Africa, and 1227 had been settled by the Maryland Society. In addition, 5722 captured Africans had been sent to Liberia. The need of adequate study of the interior having more and more impressed itself, Benjamin Anderson, an adventurous explorer, assisted with funds by a citizen of New York, in 1869 studied the country for two hundred miles from the coast. He found the land constantly rising, and made his way to Musardu, the chief city of the western Mandingoes. He summed up his work in his Narrative of a Journey to Musardo and made another journey of exploration in 1874.
Edward James Roye (1870-October 26, 1871), a Whig whose party was formed out of the elements of the old True Liberian party, attracts attention by reason of a notorious British loan to which further reference must be made. Of the whole amount of £100,000 sums were wasted or misappropriated until it has been estimated that the country really reaped the benefit of little more than a quarter of the whole amount. President Roye added to other difficulties by his seizure of a bank building belonging to an Industrial Society of the St. Paul's River settlements, and by attempting by proclamation to lengthen his term of office. Twice a constitutional amendment for lengthening the presidential term from two years to four had been considered and voted down. Roye contested the last vote, insisted that his term ran to January, 1874, and issued a proclamation forbidding the coming biennial election. He was deposed, his house sacked, some of his cabinet officers tried before a court of impeachment,[145] and he himself was drowned as he was pursued while attempting to escape to a British ship in the harbor. A committee of three was appointed to govern the country until a new election could be held; and in this hour of storm and stress the people turned once more to the guidance of their old leader, Joseph J. Roberts (two terms, 1872-1875). His efforts were mainly devoted to restoring order and confidence, though there was a new war with the Greboes to be waged.[146] He was succeeded by another trusted leader, James S. Payne (1876-1877), whose second administration was as devoid as the first of striking incident. In fact, the whole generation succeeding the loan of 1871 was a period of depression. The country not only suffered financially, but faith in it was shaken both at home and abroad. Coffee grown in Liberia fell as that produced at Brazil grew in favor, the farmer witnessing a drop in value from 24 to 4 cents a pound. Farms were abandoned, immigration from the United States ceased, and the country entered upon a period of stagnation from which it has not yet fully recovered.
Within just a few years after 1871, however, conditions in the United States led to an interesting revival of the whole idea of colonization, and to noteworthy effort on the part of the Negroes themselves to better their condition. The withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, and all the evils of the aftermath of reconstruction, led to such a terrorizing of the Negroes and such a denial of civil rights that there set in the movement that culminated in the great exodus from the South in 1879. The movement extended all the way from North Carolina to Louisiana and Arkansas. Insofar as it led to migration to Kansas and other states in the West, it belongs to American history. However, there was also interest in going to Africa. Applications by the thousands poured in upon the American Colonization Society, and one organization in Arkansas sent hundreds of its members to seek the help of the New York State Colonization Society. In all such endeavor Negro Baptists and Methodists joined hands, and especially prominent was Bishop H.M. Turner, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. By 1877 there was organized in South Carolina the Liberian Exodus and Joint Stock Company; in North Carolina there was the Freedmen's Emigration Aid Society; and there were similar organizations in other states. The South Carolina organization had the threefold purpose of emigration, missionary activity, and commercial enterprise, and to these ends it purchased a vessel, the Azor, at a cost of $7000. The white people of Charleston unfortunately embarrassed the enterprise in every possible way, among other things insisting when the Azor was ready to sail that it was not seaworthy and needed a new copper bottom (to cost $2000). The vessel at length made one or two trips, however, on one voyage carrying as many as 274 emigrants. It was then stolen and sold in Liverpool, and one gets an interesting sidelight on Southern conditions in the period when he knows that even the United States Circuit Court in South Carolina refused to entertain the suit brought by the Negroes.
In the administration of Anthony W. Gardiner (three terms, 1878-1883) difficulties with England and Germany reached a crisis. Territory in the northwest was seized; the British made a formal show of force at Monrovia; and the looting of a German vessel along the Kru Coast and personal indignities inflicted by the natives upon the shipwrecked Germans, led to the bombardment of Nana Kru by a German warship and the presentation at Monrovia of a claim for damages, payment of which was forced by the threat of the bombardment of the capital. To the Liberian people the outlook was seldom darker than in this period of calamities. President Gardiner, very ill, resigned office in January of his last year of service, being succeeded by the vice-president, Alfred F. Russell. More and more was pressure brought to bear upon Liberian officials for the granting of monopolies and concessions, especially to Englishmen; and in his message of 1883 President Russell said, "Recent events admonish us as to the serious responsibility of claims held against us by foreigners, and we cannot tell what complications may arise." In the midst of all this, however, Russell did not forget the natives and the need of guarding them against liquor and exploitation.
Hilary Richard Wright Johnson (four terms, 1884-1891), the next president, was a son of the distinguished Elijah Johnson and the first man born in Liberia who had risen to the highest place in the republic. Whigs and Republicans united in his election. Much of his time had necessarily to be given to complications arising from the loan of 1871; but the western boundary was adjusted (with great loss) with Great Britain at the Mano River, though new difficulties arose with the French, who were pressing their claim to territory as far as the Cavalla River. In the course of the last term of President Johnson there was an interesting grant (by act approved January 21, 1890) to F.F. Whittekin, of Pennsylvania, of the right to "construct, maintain, and operate a system of railroads, telegraph and telephone lines." Whittekin bought up in England stock to the value of half a million dollars, but died on the way to Liberia to fulfil his contract. His nephew, F.F. Whittekin, asked for an extension of time, which was granted, but after a while the whole project languished.[147]
Joseph James Cheeseman (1892-November 15, 1896) was a Whig. He conducted what was known as the third Grebo War and labored especially for a sound currency. He was a man of unusual ability and his devotion to his task undoubtedly contributed toward his death in office near the middle of his third term. As up to this time there had been no internal improvement and little agricultural or industrial development in the country, O.F. Cook, the agent of the New York State Colonization Society, in 1894 signified to the legislature a desire to establish a station where experiments could be made as to the best means of introducing, receiving, and propagating beasts of burden, commercial plants, etc. His request was approved and one thousand acres of land granted for the purpose by act of January 20, 1894. Results, however, were neither permanent nor far-reaching. In fact, by the close of the century immigration had practically ceased and the activities of the American Colonization Society had also ceased, many of the state organizations having gone out of existence. In 1893 Julius C. Stevens, of Goldsboro, N.C., went to Liberia and served for a nominal salary as agent of the American Colonization Society, becoming also a teacher in the Liberia College and in time Commissioner of Education, in connection with which post he edited his Liberian School Reader; but he died in 1903.[148]