History

In the outpost that would become Liberia, Cary labored, struggled and distinguished himself. He rallied the tired, starving and disease-ridden colonists to stand firm in battle against native tribes. Taylor quotes a letter in which Cary compares his group to “the Jews, who in rebuilding their City, ‘grasped a weapon in one hand, while they labored with the other.’”  

Cary established Providence Baptist Church—the first church in Liberia—and became its pastor. Providence Baptist is still standing, and it remains the “mother” church to many Baptist congregations in Monrovia today. (The research varies and is imprecise, but about 40 percent of Liberia’s people are said to be Christian, while another 40 percent follow traditional rituals based on family, community, ancestors and other beliefs. The remaining 20 percent are Muslim.)

Virginia was sending its best and brightest blacks to form the colony, and they were joined by former slaves from North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Maryland and Georgia. The settlers did yeoman’s work in a strange land, trying to farm as they had in America. But their methods and crop choices did not take in a tropical climate, where spring, summer, fall and winter were now two seasons: dry and rainy. Unsurprisingly, the African cotton tree did better than the American cotton bush. Thousands died before the settlements became relatively stable and secure. In 1824, the principal settlement at the mouth of the Mersado River was christened Monrovia, named after President James Monroe.

In 1829, Petersburg native Joseph Jenkins Roberts set sail from Norfolk, bound for Monrovia, with most of his family members aboard. Until then, he had been a moderately successful businessman. But he could see, hanging above him, the concrete racial ceiling. After the move to Monrovia, he quickly established a trading company using contacts he had made while working in Petersburg for his stepfather, who operated trading barges.

A Methodist minister, Roberts was bright, economically astute and politically savvy. His export venture turned a profit, and he soon became involved in running the settlement—one of the few blacks allowed in the administration of a colony still run by white officials of the ACS. According to Schwarz, Roberts was a man who, “having [improved] his status, was determined to hang onto it.”

By 1846, with prodding from the indebted ACS, the settlers fixed their eyes on becoming an independent nation. The U.S. government was aware of threats on the sovereignty of the enclave from France and England. In an echo of America’s own founding, the time for the colonists to break free was at hand.