President Roberts is an epitome of Liberian history. He stands pre-eminently the guiding genius of Liberia through all her struggles. That there is none equal to him in point of ability, combined with wisdom and linked to virtue; that he is superior to all in these respects, to every other Liberian, is no more an argument for the average inferiority of the colored race than the proud pre-eminence of George Washington is an argument for the inferiority of the American branch of the white race. The history of nations is written in the lives of individuals. President Roberts has shaped the destiny of his country, and as much as any other man living has contributed to the moral and physical good of the human race.
I dined at President Roberts’ table with the members of his Cabinet, Ex-President Warner, and the Haytien Consul, Mr. Yates. Most of them were new men to me. They exhibited a general knowledge of passing events which, from their isolated condition, would have surprised me, had I not in previous experience observed that men forced to read what others daily saw were generally more accurate in their knowledge and more critical in their deductions. The Cabinet of Mr. Roberts seemed to me respectable men, quite up to the average of men, whether white or black.
Without disparagement to others, I wish to make a brief mention of a pleasant visit to the house of a private citizen. This house was presided over by a lady whose refined and elegant manners would have attracted attention and admiration in any drawing-room. In her conversation she exhibited a brilliancy which was really remarkable, and an intelligence quite as surprising. She was Liberian born, but spoke of America with the love she had inherited.
Along the streets and by-ways of Monrovia are to be seen the ordinary variety of human beings, young and old, rich and poor, sick and well. You note the absence of grogshops and the presence of churches. Like pilgrims as they are, or were, the prevailing and controlling sentiment of the community is a religious one. To land upon a foreign shore, to cut one’s self off from kith and kin, to plunge into a wilderness, needs faith absolute, vital, in the personality of God and in Divine protection. Add to this the emotional character of the negro and you have the ordinary Liberian; law-abiding and, from his nature and race, indolent, timid, willing to be helped, loth to help himself. I do not mean to compare this colonist with the great domineering, self-asserting, self-dependent Anglo-Saxon, who bullies and conquers and rules wherever he emigrates, but I do mean to say that Liberia and its inhabitants will compare, and favorably, too, with the towns and the people scattered over Central and South America and Mexico, settled by the Spaniard, the Italian, and the Frenchman. Go where you will in these countries you see the same evidences of indolence, the same apparent lack of progress, yet these people are prospering in their way, gradually but surely reaching a higher plane, and so I contend are the Liberians. Remember, the Liberians were poor even to abject poverty, they had received no inheritance but the badge of their servitude, they were ignorant—the law in this free country of ours had taken care to keep them so—painfully ignorant, not only of the common principles of law by which they were to construct a government, but of the common principles of life by which they were to live.
God measures people for Himself. He is patient because He is Eternal. Fifty years in the life of a nation born under such adverse circumstances, struggling under poverty and obliquy—predicted a failure by the prophets of caste, checked and thwarted by the priests and politicians of conservatism, unaided, uncheered, born in a wilderness, surrounded, hemmed in by barbarism while just emerging from barbarism itself—fifty years in the life of such a nation is but a moment of time in the Providence of God. Let us then endeavor in our imperfect way to imitate God’s patience and wait while we hope and pray.
The Krooman, whose tribes are scattered for eighty miles along the Liberian Coast, is the Bedouin of the African sea. He is the sailor-man and the boat-man for every ship that comes and sails down the Coast. His skill in landing through the surf and passing over bars in his frail canoe is something wonderful. His canoe and himself are one and the same thing; together they glide over the swell of the ocean with speed and safety, now hidden, now seen. If capsized he soon rights his boat, rolls in again and paddles away. He is a bird upon the water and a fish in the sea. Always willing and obedient, he is honest and trustworthy. He wants his wages when his contract is up, when he returns to his tribe and invests in another wife. Wives are his treasures; they are the support of his old age. He speaks a little English, of which he is very proud. Some ship-master gives him a fantastic name, as “Draw Bucket” or “Plug of Tobacco,” to which he clings as his badge of honor, and his merits are duly recorded in his “book,” which he receives from his employer and carries around his neck, each succeeding master increasing the wealth of his recommendation. His mother is his great object of reverence; he never ventures to dispute her authority. In this respect he never “comes of age.”
If Monrovia, the capital, had not largely increased in wealth and population during these twenty-five years, Liberia had extended her boundaries league by league, each additional possession encroaching upon or destroying some well-known haunt of the slave trader, until for six hundred miles of the adjacent Coast not a slave factory could be found or a slaver get a cargo. In the very nature of things slavery was abhorrent to Liberia. It could not exist within or near her borders. It disappeared by virtue of the expelling force which exists in the power of light and civilization. These two things could not be at the same time in the same place. By this moral alliance with the Powers of the world—this silent partnership, which in the end banished the trade in human beings from the entire Coast of Western Africa; this passive victory over the greatest sin of modern times—by this deed alone she has earned her title to the possession of her territory, and her friends and the friends of humanity have met with more than their reward.
An author says, in 1853: “The fact stands acknowledged before the world that Great Britain, after the expenditure of more than one hundred millions of dollars, has failed in suppressing the slave trade on one mile of Coast beyond the limit of her colonies, while Liberia has swept it from nearly four hundred miles of Coast where it existed in its chief strength, liberated 80,000 slaves, and bound by treaties 200,000 natives never to engage in the traffic in their brethren.”
Liberia, geographically considered, is situated upon the West Coast of Africa, between the latitudes 4° 20´ and 7° 20´ north. It extends from the British Colony of Sierra Leone, on the northwest, to the Pedro river, on the southeast, a distance of 600 miles along the Coast, the interior boundary varying from 10 to 40 miles from the seaboard, an area of 9,700 square miles, every mile of which has been purchased from the original proprietors. No war of conquest marks this gradual enlargement of territory or mars the record of the consequent progress. In 1873, the period of my last visit, Monrovia, the capital, had about 13,000 inhabitants. The total number of Americo-Liberians in the Republic at that time was estimated at 20,000, and 700,000 aborigines. The Americans are settled in sixteen towns, all of which have the characteristics of Monrovia, and are situated in propinquity to the sea. Millsburg, which is twenty miles up the St. Paul’s river, is an agricultural settlement.
The most important of the native tribes is the Mandingo, which occupies nearly the whole of the eastern frontier of Liberia. These people are Mahomedans, and their influence extends into the interior of the Continent as far as Soudan. Travelers in Africa agree upon the fact that Mahomedanism is spreading over that land with marvelous strides. I ask your attention to this religious phenomenon in connection with the prospects of Liberia as a Christian community. If you believe that Christianity is to be the religion of the future in Africa, essential not only to her salvation but to her temporal welfare, then I beg you to consider Liberia as an important bulwark against the encroachment of the followers of the Prophet, and as a point from whence to start Christian propagandism into the heart of Africa. Most of the foreign settlements on the Coast are simply trading ports, and the duty of Christianizing the country is lost sight of in the pursuit of gain. Liberia, on the other hand, is a Christian community, established as such. Upon it and upon its friends devolves this positive mission, preaching the Gospel to the heathen. It is our duty to assist her in this mission by every means in our power. Liberia is the initial point for American effort in the Christianization of Africa. The tendency of all the African tribes is to approach the sea; most of the tribal wars are made on this account. To reach the “heach,” as they call it, to open trade with the white man is the great object of their ambition. To occupy the “heach,” therefore, to present there the bold front of Christianity, is to set back the tide of Mahomedanism and to bring within the peaceful influence of Christianity the pagan when, after his struggles, he reaches the sea.