The concurrent testimony of these distinguished officers and thoughtful men, embracing the period from the foundation of the colony to the time of our civil war, express not only the hope, but the belief that Liberia, poor and weak as she is, yet possesses many of the elements of national wealth and strength, and proves beyond cavil the progress and the permanence of that Republic.
During the war, and while our own nationality was in peril, the Navy had but little time to spare for the interests of Liberia. The battle for the freedom of the black man was being fought upon a grander scale than within her narrow limits. After that victory had been gained our ships began once more to visit the African Coast, though at rare intervals.
In 1873 it became my duty and my pleasure to visit the Coast of Africa, after an interval of twenty-five years. A quarter of a century had passed leaving its furrows upon my face, as it does upon the face of every son of Adam, but the interest I had felt in that lone lorn colony was as fresh as ever. It was therefore with unmixed satisfaction that I landed again at Cape Mesurado, and in an instant recalled the familiar streets and many of the faces that used to greet me in Monrovia years ago.
I do not propose to go into the history of Liberia; that is to be found in every Cyclopedia—those who run may read it. My own personal impressions will be of more interest to you; these have vitality which comes of contact, a freshness not to be found in the musty pages of a book however well written. Personal experience compared with history is the original compared with the photograph.
Cape Mesurado juts out into the sea, a promontory of gentle height, covered with the verdure which the tropics only can produce. The surf roars at its base and the water of the Mesurado river breaks over the bar by its side—the canoe of the native glides through the surf over this bar and lands you with wonderful safety at Monrovia, which lies just behind the cape by the side of the river.
In the growth of a new nation, in its consolidation and crystalization, time forms no just measure of progress. Not to go back, to stem the adverse tide, to wait, is absolutely to advance. To be where you were, after years of struggles against obstacles almost insurmountable, is a point gained, and a success accomplished.
Monrovia presented the same sunny streets and shaded houses, the same evidences of comfort, and of the absence of want, that it did twenty-five years before; no great mark of improvement, no sad evidences of decay. In the meanwhile, however, more activity on the wharves, more canoes laden with produce coming down the river, steamships stopping eight times a month landing and receiving cargo, more sugar mills, coffee trees growing where the forest undisturbed had waved before—all this, and more, indicated life, business, commercial and agricultural prosperity.
I thought to myself as I walked again through the streets, “Monrovia is a fixed fact.” No reflux tide can wash her into the sea. She may advance more rapidly, she may stand still. But every event, whether rapid, slow, or stationary in her course, Liberia is there to stay. An island in the ocean of barbarism, “a little cloud out of the sea like a man’s hand,” yet full of portent to Africa, a herald of the coming of that army of civilization which by an inexorable law exterminates where it cannot convert.
But a great change manifested itself in the temper and tone of the people. Years ago I saw indicated everywhere that innate consciousness of inferiority, that deprecating humility which came of their birth—emigrants from the slave cabins in our own country—that absence of independent thought, that shrinking humility which feared to give an opinion; these came from the remembrance of that grand old thing, now of the past—the master. With warm affections toward their home, as they called America, favors easily remembered and wrongs as easily forgotten, they welcomed us and bore with us as we tacitly claimed that superiority which comes of being born white men.
Now a change had taken place, a new generation had come and a regeneration. We were welcomed with hospitality devoid of servility, and with kindness devoid of fear. They acknowledged gratefully the protection which the American flag affords them, not more for the fact than as a token of remembrance from the mother country.