The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

The people of the United States, with but little assistance from the Government, have established a free republic in Liberia, with a constitution modelled after our own, and under the control of the negro race. Its area is 14,300 square miles; its population is about 1,200,000 souls; its commerce is valuable; its government is successful, and its people are prosperous.

The necessity for a negro colony in Liberia was suggested by the fact that slaves found in vessels captured for violations of the slave-trade laws and treaties were required to be returned to Africa when that was practicable, and it was impossible, and it would have been useless and cruel, to send them back to the localities where they were first enslaved. Humanity prompted certain private citizens of the United States to organise the American Colonisation Society in aid of the return of captured slaves to Africa and to find a congenial asylum and home for negroes who were emancipated in the United States.

Henry Clay was, for many years, president of this association, and assisted it with the influence of his great name and broad philanthropy.

The success of the Liberian colony has demonstrated the usefulness of that system of dealing with a social question which is, to the people of the United States, of the highest importance. It has also established a recognised precedent in favour of the right of untitled individuals to found states in the interests of civilisation in barbarous countries, through the consent of the local authorities, and it has given confidence to those who look to the justice of the nations for a restoration of the emancipated Africans to their own country, if they choose to return to it.

This great duty has, so far, been left entirely to the efforts of citizens of the United States, and it has been supported almost exclusively by their personal contributions. The governments of the world have been slow even to recognise the state thus founded by the courage and means of private citizens, but it is now firmly established in the family of nations and is everywhere recognised as a free and independent nation.

This pleasing history of progress, attended with peace and prosperity in Liberia, has given rise to a feeling of earnest interest amongst the people of the United States in the questions which arise from the recent discovery by their countryman, H. M. Stanley, of the great river which drains equatorial Africa. They rejoice in the revelation that this natural highway affords navigation for steamers extending more than half the distance across the continent, and opens to civilisation the valley of the Congo, with its 900,000 square miles of fertile territory and its 50,000,000 of people, who are soon to become most useful factors in the increase of the productions of the earth and in swelling the volume of commerce.

The movements of the International African Association which, with a statement of its purposes, are referred to in the letter of the Secretary of State, appended to this report, are in the direction of the civilisation of the negro population of Africa, by opening up their country to free commercial relations with foreign countries.

As a necessary incident of this praiseworthy work, which is intended, in the broadest sense, for the equal advantage of all foreign nations seeking trade and commerce in the Congo country, the African International Association has acquired, by purchase from the native chiefs, the right of occupancy of several places for their stations and depots. The property so acquired is claimed only for the association, which is composed of persons from various countries, and it could not, therefore, be placed under the shelter of any single foreign flag.

From the time when the people of Christian countries began to export slaves from Africa, the custom grew up of locating “barracoons” or slave depots along the African coasts and rivers, and they were each placed under the shelter of the flag of the country to which the slave merchants belonged. In this way certain settlements were made along the shores of the Congo River as far inland as Yellalla Falls, and were claimed and held under the protection of the respective flags of the countries from which these traders came.

This was, generally, a mere personal adventure, and had no relation to any governmental authority of those countries over the barracoons. When this traffic took the shape of legitimate commerce with the natives, these places were called factories, and they gradually assumed certain powers of self-government as their necessities required. Each factory was independent of the control of all others, and established for itself such regulations, having really the effect of laws, as were necessary to protect life and property. To this day those settlements are held in the same way, and while the governments, whose flags are thus displayed over them, claim no sovereignty there, they do not recognise the rights of their people at such places as entitling them to protection, and they require their flags to be respected.