Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The American Colonization Society Civilizing Mission in Liberia and John B. Russwurm, 1829–1836

  • Chapter
African American Settlements in West Africa

  • 67 Accesses

Abstract

Russwurm’s activities in Liberia can be better examined in the context of his American experiences together with the evolving Liberia’s high moral rectitude in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, Liberia’s developing institutional values and Russwurm’s acquired rectitude accommodated each other easily largely because they had a lot in common.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Gordon Wood, “Republicanism as a Revolutionary Ideology,” John R. Jr. Howe, ed. The Role of Ideology in the American Revolution (New York, 1970) pp. 83–91;

    Google Scholar 

  2. Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969), pp. 3–124;

    Google Scholar 

  3. Henry P. Johnston, ed., John Jay, Correspondence and Public Papers (New York, 1890–1893), pp. 406–407;

    Google Scholar 

  4. Robert McCollery, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia, 2nd edition (Urbana, IL, 1964), pp. 34–56, 114–140;

    Google Scholar 

  5. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, NY, 1966), pp. 164–212;

    Google Scholar 

  6. Andrew D. White, “Jefferson and Slavery,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 9 (1862), p. 31;

    Google Scholar 

  7. Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968), pp. 430–336;

    Google Scholar 

  8. William Cohen, “Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery,” Journal of American History, vol. 56 (1969), pp. 503–526;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. William W. Freehling, “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” American Historical Review, vol. 77 (1972), pp. 81–93;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Fredrika Teute Schmidt and Barbara Ripel Wilhelm, “Early Proslavery Petitions in Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 30 (1973), pp. 81–93;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 232–246;

    Google Scholar 

  12. Bernard Bailyn, “The Central Themes of the American Revolution: An Interpretation,” in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1973), p. 29;

    Google Scholar 

  13. Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, WI, 1990), pp. 3–19, 25–50;

    Google Scholar 

  14. Matthew T. Mellon, Early American Views on Negro Slavery (New York, 1934), pp. v–xiii, 37–81, 82–84, 90–123, 124–164;

    Google Scholar 

  15. Ronald Takaki, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America (New York, 1990), pp. 3–55;

    Google Scholar 

  16. Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), pp. 363–387; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, William Peden, ed. (Chapel Hill, NC), pp. 162, 164–165;

    Google Scholar 

  17. Douglass Adair, “The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy: Republicanism, the Class Struggle, and the Virtuous Farmer,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University (1943);

    Google Scholar 

  18. Louis Ruchames, ed., Racial Thought in America: From the Puritans to Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1 (Amherst, MA, 1969), pp. 79–110;

    Google Scholar 

  19. Forest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (Boston, 1990), pp. 245–338;

    Google Scholar 

  20. Frederick M. Binder, The Color Problem in Early National America as Viewed by John Adams, Jefferson, and Jackson (Paris, 1968), p. 150;

    Google Scholar 

  21. Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jefferson Philanthropy and the American Indians (New York, 1973), pp. 243–275;

    Google Scholar 

  22. Curtis P. Nettels, The Roots of American Civilization: A History of American Colonial Life, 2nd edition (New York, 1963), p. 326;

    Google Scholar 

  23. Stanley Feldstein, ed., The Poisoned Tongue: A Documentary History of American Racism and Prejudice (New York, 1972), pp. 36–37;

    Google Scholar 

  24. Paul Otis Evans, “The Ideology of Inequality: Asbury, Methodism, and Slavery,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University (1981);

    Google Scholar 

  25. James D. Essig, “A Very Wintry Season: Virginia Baptists and Slavery, 1785–1797,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 88, no. 2 (1980), pp. 170–185;

    Google Scholar 

  26. Larry E. Tise, Proslavery Argument: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America 1701–1840 (Athens, GA, 1987), pp. 12–40, 97–182, 204–261, 347–362.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins, pp. 22–54, 94–123, 160–229, 230–319; Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), pp. 3–58;

    Google Scholar 

  28. Robert E. Shalhope, “Thomas Jefferson’s Republicanism and Antebellum Southern Thought,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 42 (1976), pp. 529–556;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Shalhope, “Race, Class Slavery, and the Antebellum Southern Mind,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 37 (1971), pp. 557–574;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. David M. Streifford, “The American Colonization Society: An Application of Republican Ideology to Early Antebellum Reform,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 45 (1979), pp. 201–220;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Joseph C. Burke, “The Pro-Slavery Argument and the First Congress,” Duquesne Review, vol. 14 (1969), pp. 3–15;

    Google Scholar 

  32. Dew Gilpin Faust, “A Southern Stewardship: The Intellectual and the Pro-Slavery Argument,” American Quarterly, vol. 31 (1979), pp. 63–80;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. John Hope Franklin, “The North, the South, and the American Revolution,” Journal of American Revolution, vol. 62 (1975), pp. 5–23;

    Google Scholar 

  34. Lawrence J. Friedman, “Purifying the White Man’s Country: The American Colonization Society Reconsidered, 1816–1840,” Societas, vol. 6 (1976), pp. 1–24;

    Google Scholar 

  35. Kenneth S. Greenberg, “Revolutionary and the Proslavery Argument: The Abolition of Slavery in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of Negro Southern History, vol. 42 (1976), pp. 365–384;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Richard Hofstadter, “U. B. Phillips and the Plantation Legend,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 29 (1944), pp. 104–124;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Adelaide Avery Lyons, “Religious Defense of Slavery in the North,” Trinity College Historical Society Historical Papers, vol. 13 (1919), pp. 5–34;

    Google Scholar 

  38. Larry R. Morrison, “Nearer to the Brute Creation: The Scientific Defense of American Slavery before 1830,” Southern Studies, vol. 19 (1980), pp. 228–242;

    Google Scholar 

  39. Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969), pp. 471–499, 519–524, 562–564; Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, pp. 442–451;

    Google Scholar 

  40. Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slave-Holders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation (New York, 1965), pp. 118–244;

    Google Scholar 

  41. Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820 (New York, 1971), pp. 301, 306–309; and Edward Brown, Notes on the Origin and Necessity of Slavery (Charleston, SC, 1826), pp. 5–38.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Although they destroyed the colonial system the British had imposed on the American colonists, and framed a constitution that was the most democratic document in the world at the time, American revolutionary leaders were to maintain ironically slavery and some of the other institutional systems the British had introduced in colonial America. For the details of the foregoing statement see ibid., and the following works: Ruchames, ed., Racial Thought in America, pp. 135–298; Mellon, Early American Views, pp. 82–84; Davis, Problem of Slavery, pp. 78–81, 94; David H. Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1965), pp. 129–149;

    Google Scholar 

  43. Linda K. Kerber, Federalist in Dissent: Images and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (Ithaca, NY, 1970), pp. 21–22, 173–178, 182–193;

    Google Scholar 

  44. and James M. Banner Jr., To the Hartford Convention: The Federalist and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815 (New York, 1970), pp. 104–109.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Nieman, Promises to Keep, pp. 10–14; John P. Kaminski, ed., A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate over the Constitution (Madison, WI, 1995), pp. 41–157; Finkelman, “The Centrality of Slavery in American Legal Development,” Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law, pp. 3–26; and Finkelman, “Chief Justice Hornblower of New Jersey and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793,” Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law, pp. 113–142.

    Google Scholar 

  46. For details of the background of the American Colonization Society and the ways in which it established and governed its Liberian colony from 1822 to 1847 see: Beyan, The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the Liberian State, 1822–1880, (New York: Lanham, MD, 1991), pp. 1–17, 51–70, 79–104, 113–138;

    Google Scholar 

  47. Beyan, “The American Background of Recurrent Themes in the Political History of Liberia,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 22, no. 1 (1994), pp. 20–40;

    Google Scholar 

  48. Eric Burim, “The Peculiar Solution: The American Colonization Society and Antislavery Sentiment in the South, 1820–1860,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1999);

    Google Scholar 

  49. Charles I. Foster, “The Colonization of Free Negroes in Liberia, 1816–1835,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 38 (1953) pp. 41–66;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Frederic Bancroft, “The Colonization of American Negroes, 1801–1865,” in Jacob E. Cooke, ed., Frederic Bancroft (Norma, OK, 1957) pp. 147–191; Friedman, “Purifying the White Man’s Country: The American Colonization Reconsidered, 1816–1840,” pp. 1–24; Streifford, “The American Colonization Society”, pp. 316–341;

    Google Scholar 

  51. Kent P. Opper, “The Minds of White Participants in the African Colonization Movement, 1816–1840,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina (1972);

    Google Scholar 

  52. Eli Seifman, “A History of the New York Colonization Society,” Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University (1965);

    Google Scholar 

  53. Werner Wickstron, “The American Colonization and Liberia: An Historical Study in Religious Motivation and Achievement,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Hartford Seminary (1949); Issac V. Brown, Memoirs of the Reverend Robert Finley (New Brunswick, NJ, 1819), pp. 93–99; Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of the American Colonization Society, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1816), pp. 1–9;

    Google Scholar 

  54. Philip Slaughter, The Virginia History of Colonization (Richmond, VA, 1855), Chapter 4;

    Google Scholar 

  55. Henry N. Sherwood, “Early Negro Deportation Projects,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 2 (1916), pp. 484–508;

    Google Scholar 

  56. Henry N. Sherwood, “The Formation of the American Colonization Society,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 2 (1917), pp. 209–228;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Early L. Fox, The American Colonization Society, 1817–1840 (Baltimore, 1919), pp. 46–125;

    Google Scholar 

  58. Franklin L. Riley “A Contribution to the History of the Colonization Movement in Mississippi,” Publication of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. 9 (1906), pp. 337–414;

    Google Scholar 

  59. Charles S. Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi (New York, 1933), pp. 203–238;

    Google Scholar 

  60. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York, 1961);

    Google Scholar 

  61. Staudenraus “Victims of the African Slavery Trade: A Document,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 41 (1956), pp. 148–151; An Essay on the Late Institution of the Free People Colour of the United States (Washington, DC, 1820), pp. 1–11, 33–34, 37–59;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Arch W. Carswell, “A Study of Robert Finley, D.D.,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 56 (1938), pp. 194–196;

    Google Scholar 

  63. and Tom Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of African-American Settler Society in Nineteenth Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  64. Streifford, “The American Colonization Society,” pp. 201–220; Friedman, “Purifying the White Man’s Country,” pp. 1–24; Tise, Proslavery, pp. 41–74; Standenraus, The African Colonization, pp. 19–21, 28–32, 51–52; Gaillard Hunt, “William Thornton and Negro Colonization,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 30 (1920), pp. 30–39; Brown, Memoirs of the Rev Robert Finley …, p. 77; Gardiner Spring, Memoirs of the Rev Samuel Mills.… (New York, 1820), p. 142; Arch W. Carswell, “A Study of Robert Finley, D.D.,” Teute and Ripel, “Early Proslavery Petitions in Virginia,” pp. 133–146; Robert Walsh, An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain Respecting the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1819), pp. 392–398, 404–424;

    Google Scholar 

  65. Winthrop Jordan, “An Antislavery Proslavery Document,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 47 (1962), pp. 54–56; Jesse Torrey Jr., A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States: With Reflections on the Practicability of Restoring the Moral Rights of the Slave, Without Impairing the Legal Privileges of the Possessor. … (Philadelphia, 1817), pp. 48–53; William L. Garrison, Thoughts on Colonization (Boston, 1832), pp. 95–110;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers’ Keepers; Moral Stewardship in the United States (Brunswick, NJ, 1960), pp. 3–115;

    Google Scholar 

  67. Clifford S. Griffin, “Religious Benevolence as Social Control 1815–1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 44 (1957), pp. 423–444;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Dixon R. Fox, “The Protestant Counter-Reformation in America,” New York History, vol. 16 (1935), pp. 19–35; and Richard Nisbet, Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture.…, (Philadelphia, 1773), pp. 1–30.

    Google Scholar 

  69. For similar arguments used to justify the transatlantic slave trade see the following works: Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade (New York, 1997), pp. 23–24, 71–72; Wood, The Arrogance of Faith, pp. 21, 36–38, 84–111;

    Google Scholar 

  70. Christopher Fyfe, “The Dynamics of African Dispersal: The Transatlantic Slave Trade,” in Martin L. Kilson and Robert I. Rotberg, eds., The African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (Cambridge, MA, 1976), pp. 57–58;

    Google Scholar 

  71. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944), pp. 42–50;

    Google Scholar 

  72. Steven Mintz, ed., African American Voices: The Life Cycles of Slavery, 2nd edition (St. James, NY, 1999), pp. 6–7, 9;

    Google Scholar 

  73. Amos J. Beyan, “The Transatlantic Trade and the Coastal Area of Pre-Liberia,” The Historian, vol. 57, no. 4 (1995), pp. 764–765; Amos J. Beyan, The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the Liberian State, pp. 5–7;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  74. David E. Stannard, The Conquest of the New World: American Holocaust (New York, 1992), pp. 62, 66, 180–181, 151–152; Davis, The Problem of Slavery, pp. 260–261;

    Google Scholar 

  75. Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (Princeton, NJ, 1959), pp. 387–396; Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom,” p. 6;

    Google Scholar 

  76. and Allison Blakely Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society, (Bloomington, IN, 1993), pp. 202–224.

    Google Scholar 

  77. Tenth Annual Report of the ACS (1826), pp. 21–22; African Repository, vol. 5 (1828), pp. 277–278; vol. 9 (1833), p. 358. Other prominent members of the ACS used similar contradictory arguments to justify their colonization scheme. For details of the foregoing statement, see the following studies: J. Tracy, A View of Exertions Lately Made for Purpose of Colonizing the Free People of Color in Africa or Elsewhere (Washington, DC, 1817), pp. 4, 30; Archibald Alexander, A History Colonization on the West Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1846), pp. 77–82, 87; African Repository, vol. 1 (1825), p. 176, vol. 3 (1827), pp. 67, 197, 201, 202; vol. 4 (1828), pp. 274, 344, vol. 9 (1833), p. 59; vol. 11 (1835), p. 14; Torrey, A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States, pp. 9, 10, 69; Nisbet, Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, pp. 1–30;

    Google Scholar 

  78. Milton Canton, “The Image of the Negro in Colonial Literature,” The New England Quarterly, vol. 36 (1963), p. 453; William Knox, Three Tracts Respecting the Conversion and Instruction of Free Indians and Negroes in the Colonies. … (London, 1768), pp. 28, 30, 31–40;

    Google Scholar 

  79. and Lawrence W. Towner, “The Seward-Saffin Dialogue on Slavery,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 21 (1964), pp. 40–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  80. For details of the ways in which Sierra Leone was established see the following works: Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962);

    Google Scholar 

  81. Christopher Fyfe, ed., Sierra Leone Inheritance (London, 1964);

    Google Scholar 

  82. John D. Hargreaves, “The Establishment of the Sierra Leone Protectorate and the Insurrection of 1898,” Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. 12, no. 1 (1956), pp. 56–78;

    Google Scholar 

  83. Akintola Wyse, The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretive History (London, 1989), pp. 1–14;

    Google Scholar 

  84. Richard West, Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia (New York, 1970), pp. 13–85, 159–218;

    Google Scholar 

  85. Hollis Lynch, “Sierra Leone and Liberia in the Nineteenth Century,” J. F. Abe and Ian Espie, eds., A Thousand Years of West African History (Ibadan, Nigeria, 1970), pp. 332–345;

    Google Scholar 

  86. and C. Clapham, Liberia and Sierra Leone: An Essay in Comparative Politics (London, 1976), pp. 6–16.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  87. Ibid., p. 55; and Alexander, A History of Colonization. For similar views by later African nationalists and Pan-Africanists see the following studies: C. Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (London, 1962);

    Google Scholar 

  88. Nnandi Azikiwe, The Future of Pan-Africanism (Lagos, Nigeria, 1964);

    Google Scholar 

  89. Nnandi Azikiwi, Renascent Africa (Lagos, Nigeria, 1937);

    Google Scholar 

  90. George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism? (London, 1956); L. C. Gwam, “Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden,” Ibadan, no. 15 (1963), pp. 8–10;

    Google Scholar 

  91. Robert July, “Nineteenth Century Negritude: Edward W. Blyden,” Journal of African History, vol. 5, no. 1 (1964), pp. 73–86;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  92. A. Nicol, “Great Sons of Africa: Dr. Edward Blyden,” Africana, The Magazine of the West African Society, vol. 1 (1949), pp. 19–20;

    Google Scholar 

  93. George Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American Influence on the Emergence of African Nationalism,” Journal of African History, vol. 1, no. 2 (1960), pp. 299–312;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  94. Hollis Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot (New York, 1967);

    Google Scholar 

  95. Hollis Lynch, and “Edward W. Blyden: Pioneer West African Nationalist,” Journal of African History, vol. 6, no. 3 (1965), pp. 373–388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  96. Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 60–62; Alexander, A History of Colonization, pp. 127–129; West, Back to Africa, pp. 101–111; Charles Henry Huberich, The Political and Legislative History of Liberia, vol. 1 (New York, 1947) pp. 72–75, 127–136; Staudenraus, The African Colonization, pp. 62–64; and Jehudi Ashmun, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Rev. Samuel Bacon …, Principal Agent of the American Government for Persons Liberated from Slave Ships on the Coast of West Africa … (Washington, DC, 1822), pp. 244, 249, 263–278.

    Google Scholar 

  97. Anthony J. Nimley, The Liberian Bureaucracy: An Analysis and Evaluation of the Environment, Structure, and Functions (Washington, DC, 1977), pp. 127–137; Beyan, The American Colonization Society, p. 66; West, Back to Africa, pp. 114–115; Robert F. Stockton to the Board of Managers, U.S.S. Alligator, December 16, 1821 in RACS; Fifth Annual Report of the ACS (1821), pp. 58–59, 63, 64–66; and Staudenraus, The African Colonization, p. 65.

    Google Scholar 

  98. The following studies testify to this: Jordan, White Over Black, pp. 491–511; Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made, pp. 30–31, 43, 77, 96, 97, 100–112, 119; Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States 1790–1860 (Chicago, 1961), pp. 30–63; and Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 79–80.

    Google Scholar 

  99. For details on how blacks were paternalistically treated by whites in Antebellum South and in colonial Liberia, see the following studies: Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 80–81, 85–86; Beyan, “The American Colonization Society and the Socio-Religious Characterization of Liberia: A Historical Survey, 1822–1900,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 10, no. 2 (1985), pp. 1–10;

    Google Scholar 

  100. Beyan, “The American Colonization Society and the Origins of Undemocratic Institutions in Liberia in Historical Perspective,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 14, no. 2 (1989), pp. 140–151;

    Google Scholar 

  101. C. Vann Woodward, ed., George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All or Slaves Without Masters (Cambridge, England, 1973), p. 187;

    Google Scholar 

  102. James Oaks, The Ruling Race: History of American Slaveholders (New York, 1983), pp. 97–122;

    Google Scholar 

  103. Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (Baton Rouge, LA, 1918), pp. 291–308, 489–490; Journal of the Board of Managers, Washington, DC, June 26, December 23, RACS, reel 18; Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, p. 66; Constitution, Government, and Digest of the Laws of Liberia as Confirmed and Established by the Board of Managers of the American Colonization Society (Washington, DC, 1825), pp. 3–7; Twelfth Annual Report of ACS (1828), pp. 35–36; Ralph Gurley, Life of Jehudi Ashmun, Washington, DC (1835), pp. 115–116; and Huberich, The Political and the Legislature History of Liberia, vol. 1, pp. 199–214, 278–292.

    Google Scholar 

  104. See Note 5 of chapter 1; Litwack, North of Slavery, pp. 182–184; Joseph W. Wilson, Sketches of Higher Classes of Coloured Society in Philadelphia by a Southerner (Philadelphia, 1841), pp. 47–48, 54, 56, 60, 95–97; and M. H. Freeman, “The Educational Wants of Free Colored People,” Anglo African Magazine, vol. 1 (1859) pp. 116–119.

    Google Scholar 

  105. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, pp. 32–53; Edward W. Blyden, “Mixed Races in Liberia,” Smithsonian Institute Annual Report (Washington, DC, 1870), pp. 386–388; Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 100–101; African Repository, vol. 46 (1870), pp. 102–111; and “The True Whig National Convention 1869,” Liberian National Archives, Monrovia, Liberia.

    Google Scholar 

  106. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, pp. 38–39; W. W. Reade, The African Sketch-Book (London, 1873), pp. 257–258;

    Google Scholar 

  107. and Aboyami Karnga, A History of Liberia (Liverpool, Britain, 1926), p. 45.

    Google Scholar 

  108. Robert S. Starobin, Blacks in Bondage: Letters of American Slaves, 2nd edition (Princeton, NJ, 1994), pp. 167–169.

    Google Scholar 

  109. Beyan, The American Colonization Society, p. 157. For details of Liberia’s social arrangements, see Gus Liebenow, Liberia: The Evolution of Privilege (Ithaca, NY, 1969).

    Google Scholar 

  110. D. Elwood Dunn, Amos J. Beyan, and Carl Patrick Burrowes, eds., Historical Dictionary of Liberia, 2nd edition (Lanham, Maryland and London, 2001), pp. 36–37, 40, 204, 350, 351, 357,359, 365.

    Google Scholar 

  111. Miles Mark Fisher, Negro Slave Songs in the United States (New York, 1953), pp. 111–146.

    Google Scholar 

  112. Elder S. S. Ball, Liberia: The Conditions and Prospects of the Liberia (Alton, IL, 1848);

    Google Scholar 

  113. G. B. Stebbins, Facts and Opinions Touching the Real Origin, Character, and Influence of the American Colonization Society: Views of Wilberforce, Crackson, and Others, and Opinions of the Free People of Color of the United States (1853; reprinted, New York, 1969), pp. 184–185; and Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 126–127.

    Google Scholar 

  114. Sir Harry Johnston, Liberia, vol. 2 (New York, 1906), pp. 353–354; and quoted in Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 149–150.

    Google Scholar 

  115. David Eltis, “The Impact of Abolition on the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in David Eltis and James Walvin, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the America (Madison, WI, 1981), pp. 155–176; Pieter C. Emmer, “Abolition of the Abolished: The Illegal Dutch Slave Trade and Mixed Courts,” in Eltis and Walvin, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 177–192; and Serge Daget, “France, Suppression of the Illegal Trade, and England, 1817–1850,” in Eltis and Walvin, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 193–217.

    Google Scholar 

  116. Franklin and Moss Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Africa, 8th edition (Boston, MA, 2000), p. 104; Stebbins, Facts and Opinions …, pp. 155–164; Beyan, The American Colonization Society, pp. 127–129.

    Google Scholar 

  117. Phil Sigler “Attitudes of the Free Blacks Towards Emigration,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University (1969), p. 71;

    Google Scholar 

  118. and George Stockwell, The Republic of Liberia (New York, 1868), p. 118.

    Google Scholar 

  119. African Repository, vol. 66 (1829), p. 189; and quoted in Nathaniel R. Richardson, Liberia’s Past and Present (London, 1959), p. 50.

    Google Scholar 

  120. Huberich, The Political and Legislative History of Liberia, vol. 2, pp. 437–439; Richardson, Liberia’s Past and Present, p. 318; and Jane Martin, “The Dual Legacy: Government Authority Mission Influence Among the Glebo of Eastern Liberia, 1834–1910,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University (1968), pp. 95–96.

    Google Scholar 

  121. L. Minor Blackford, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory; The Story of a Virginian Lady Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford, 1802–1896, Who Taught Her Sons to Hate Slavery and to Love the Union (Cambridge, MA, 1954), pp. 1–2, 21–24, 27; and Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, pp. 109–110; African Repository, vol. 1 (1825), p. 5; African Repository, vol. 2 (1826), pp. 110–119, 142–152, 173–183, 211–220.

    Google Scholar 

  122. Thomas W. Gilmer, from Charlottesville, Virginia, April 30, 1832 to Ralph Gurley RACS, reel 30; Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, pp. 167–168; and Luther Porter Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830–1860 (New York, 1942), p. 15.

    Google Scholar 

  123. Julie Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite Activism and Accomodation and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787–1848 (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 43–44.

    Google Scholar 

  124. Mary Sagarin, John Brown Russwurm: The Story of Freedom’s Journal (New York, 1970), pp. 88–89.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Amos J. Beyan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2005 Amos J. Beyan

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Beyan, A.J. (2005). The American Colonization Society Civilizing Mission in Liberia and John B. Russwurm, 1829–1836. In: African American Settlements in West Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979193_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979193_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53094-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-7919-3

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation