By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  Russwurm wrote again to his board as well. The missionaries, he said, in their relationship with the colonists, “acted like men, who were dealing with beings of an inferior order, and by their speeches only tended to widen the breach.” He reported that invidious comparisons were being drawn between the missionary boards and the Maryland Colonization Society. The missionaries, he said, were telling the Grebo that the mission societies were rich and the colonization society was poor. And what was worse, said the governor, the missionaries were telling the Grebo that the colonists wanted the missionaries out of the way so that they could drive Freeman and his people away from Big Town.15

  And so it went as each side made its accusations against the other, and the divisions hardened.

  RUSSWURM’S LETTERS, AND especially his announcement that he intended to resign, caused alarm in Baltimore. The colonization society board was already in crisis, in spite of Latrobe’s glowing report several months earlier. The society was deeply in debt, was under constant attack by abolitionists, and was losing support from conservatives associated with the mission societies. It had done little, in spite of substantial state aid, to rid Maryland of what whites regarded as the state’s dangerously increasing free black population. And now the board’s star, John B. Russwurm, the brilliant governor and anchor of the board’s troubled colony, was announcing his intention to resign.16

  Latrobe and his colleagues acted quickly. They said that Russwurm clearly understood the laws of the colony—any civilized African at Fair Hope was required to perform military duty. They wondered how the Reverend Leighton Wilson or anyone else who had examined the laws of the colony could think otherwise. They pointed to a need for a strong defense, since the colony was surrounded by “barbarians.” And they pleaded with Russwurm “to continue the exercise of functions that have been exerted so honorably to himself and so beneficially to the colony.” They communicated their decision to both the American Board and the board of the Episcopal Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.17

  In Boston, Rufus Anderson and his colleagues received communications from Baltimore and from the missionaries at Cape Palmas. They protested the Maryland Colonization Society’s action, pointed to the correspondence between Latrobe and Anderson in 1838, and wondered how teaching Africans the skills of modern warfare would add to the security of the colony. They asked for a reconsideration and resolved that requiring African teachers to do military duty would be injurious, if not destructive, to the mission. They noted that the mission had been established by the American Board with the consent and approbation of the Maryland Colonization Society. When they had established a mission at Fair Hope, Anderson and his colleagues said, they had had no reason to anticipate the enforcement of a law so repugnant to the principles that guided their missions around the world. Any attempt by the Maryland society to reverse its earlier position and require military duty would be regarded, they said, as oppressive to the mission. They asked Latrobe and the Baltimore board to send Russwurm instructions that would prevent any agitation of the subject in the future. And they warned the Baltimore board not to take any action that might make mission and colonization in West Africa appear incompatible with one another. The Christian public, they said, would be watching, and if a confrontation took place, the Bostonians made clear, colonization would be the loser.18

  Latrobe and the Baltimore board were adamant—they were going to support Russwurm, and they were not going to be instructed by anyone in Boston. Latrobe wrote Anderson that the Baltimore board saw no reason to modify the action it had already taken.19

  WHEN LETTERS REACHED Cape Palmas stating the decision of the colonization society board, the missionaries knew that the time had come for them to act. They closed the school at Fair Hope and moved the center of their educational mission to Fish Town, beyond the colony’s borders. Dr. Wilson, who had started the school at Fish Town, had died of dysentery in the fall of 1841, and a grieving Mrs. Dr. Wilson was staying at Fair Hope. So James went to Fish Town to head the school and to teach with Margaret and Catherine. Some of the African teachers at Fair Hope joined them while others went to other outlying schools, and in this way they avoided having to participate in the colonial militia. At the same time, the Episcopal mission was moving the center of its operations to Yellow Will’s town at Half Cavally as well as to Grand Cavally, where Baphro was king. In this way the Episcopal mission also moved beyond the authority of Russwurm and the colonial government.20

  WHILE THE MISSIONARIES at Cape Palmas were seeking to extract themselves from what they regarded as Russwurm’s interference, both the American Board and the Episcopal mission board were making plans to increase their West African efforts. Both Leighton and his Episcopal colleagues had been pleading for help. The challenges before them, they had acknowledged, were great, but they had insisted that the opportunities for mission in West Africa were far greater. In early 1842, more missionaries finally arrived—three for the Episcopal mission and three for Fair Hope.21

  Benjamin Griswold, William Walker, and William’s wife, Prudence Walker, arrived at Fair Hope in February 1842. They were all Vermont Yankees who had grown up under the shadow of the Green Mountains among an independent people of small farms and villages. Two of the three were to influence the West African mission in important ways, and one was to become Leighton’s closest colleague during the coming decade.

  Griswold had been born and raised in the little village of Randolph in central Vermont. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1837, he had spent some time at Andover Theological Seminary before transferring to Yale to complete his theological education. While a student at Yale, Griswold had been deeply moved by his encounter with the prisoners from the Spanish slave ship Amistad. He spent time with Cinqué, the leader of the captive Africans who had revolted off the coast of Cuba and gained control of the ship, and who had, guided by two Spanish crewmen, sailed along the US coast until being taken by an American revenue cutter. Griswold had gone regularly to the jail in New Haven to assist one of his instructors, George E. Day, in teaching the prisoners English and the Bible. There, with the Africans crowded around, he had learned that Cinqué was one of the thousands that had passed through the slave factories of Pedro Blanco on the Gallinas River before being carried along Atlantic highways to Cuba.22

  The trial of the Amistad mutineers had attracted intense national interest, becoming a rallying point for abolitionists. It nurtured in Griswold both abolitionist sympathies and an antipathy for any colonization schemes. On the day the district court ruled that the Africans were to be freed, January 13, 1840, Griswold had decided that he wanted to be a missionary to West Africa. On December 6, 1841, after a year of medical studies—he hoped eventually to receive a medical degree for his mission work—he sailed from Boston, and he came ashore through the surf at Cape Palmas on February 3, 1842. Riding in the canoe with him was a skeleton that he anticipated using in any medical practice he had in Africa and in preparation for his hoped-for return to medical school in the United States.23

  William Walker grew up near the tiny village of Vershire, where farmers who tried to make a living off of the rocky Vermont soil came for supplies, and where on Sundays they came to worship at the white-framed Congregational church. A tall, lanky farm boy, he had been raised by his parents in modest Yankee fashion at the foot of mountains where summer days were long and green and winter days were short and white. Here year round, morning sun came first to mountain tops, and here young Walker learned to rise early, before roosters stirred in January or sleek crows came sailing out of maples in late spring into fields of sprouting corn. In the summer and fall he split and stacked wood, so that fires could burn and glow on winter nights when the wind howled or when quiet snow built a white world. He learned to plow a straight furrow behind a strong horse, and to turn a tight circle for neat rows, but he also learned a little carpentry, and during summer vacations he became a skilled blacksmith. In this way and in this place he began to carry himself in
his own distinctive fashion, to look at the world through eyes shaped by the daily scenes and routines of his life, and to understand himself as a man in such a world. He was blunt, straightforward, and fearless. But he was also restless, for he knew the narrowness of creek-bed roads and of his valley home, and he felt the confining power of hill and ridge and mountaintop. Years later, after going through deep personal sorrows, he developed an introspective and tender heart that tempered the Yankee steel in his character that had been forged on a Vermont farm.24

  When he was eighteen, William Walker left his valley home for a wider landscape, and for Amherst College in Massachusetts. He carried with him not only his Latin grammar, but also calloused hands and a strong, angular physique. While he was a student at Amherst, his parents gave up on farming Vermont soil and left with his younger brothers and sisters for the rich and abundant lands on the Wisconsin frontier. Years would pass before he saw them again. After Amherst, he went to Andover Theological Seminary, and after Andover he married a young Vermont woman with the good Yankee name of Prudence. A few weeks after their marriage, they sailed from Boston with Griswold.25

  The three young Vermonters received from Leighton and Jane a warm and anxious welcome. The newcomers moved into the upstairs rooms at Fair Hope and waited for the fever to strike. They did not have to wait long. All three were soon struggling as the malarial parasites entered their bloodstreams and invaded their red blood cells. Their fevers raged and then dropped, raged again, and seemed intent on bringing them all down to the grave. But with the careful nursing of Leighton and Jane, Griswold and William Walker began to recover. Prudence, however, after some hopeful signs, began to sink toward death in spite of all that her desperate husband and friends could do. With her husband and Jane at her side, Leighton finally told her that death was near. She was buried in the little cemetery at Fair Hope beside David and Helen White, who five years earlier had also come to Cape Palmas in love and with faith and hope. A grieving William Walker made a simple marker for the grave of his Prudence.26

  Two weeks later, in May 1842, Leighton and Griswold—together with a number of former students and teachers at Fair Hope and from outlying schools—sailed for the south with Captain Lawlin on the Atalanta. They were determined to establish a new station far removed from any colonial authorities. Jane stayed at Fair Hope with the still weak and grieving William Walker and with Mrs. Dr. Wilson. The plan was that once the travelers found a spot for the new mission, Leighton and all but Griswold would begin the work of establishing a new station. Griswold was to return to Fair Hope to help with the closing of the mission at Cape Palmas. Then Griswold, Walker, and Mrs. Dr. Wilson—together with the James family and the African teachers at Fish Town—would sail south to join Leighton. Jane in the meantime would sail to the United States for a visit with family before returning to Africa and the new mission station. The plan was complicated, and, as might be anticipated, unexpected developments would shape what actually happened.27

  TWO MONTHS LATER, Griswold and Captain Lawlin returned to Cape Palmas with the news that the travelers had found a place for the mission by the waters of the Gabon estuary. Leighton and the Grebo students and teachers were already preparing a place for the new station on a hillside above the great estuary. Work was now to proceed for the closing of Fair Hope and for the transfer of the station to Gabon.28

  The following week, Captain Lawlin prepared to sail directly for New York with Jane as a passenger. She and Leighton had been talking for some months about the possibility of her returning to the United States on furlough. She had suffered a terrible bout with dysentery during an epidemic in the fall of 1841—an epidemic that had killed not only Dr. Wilson but also many Grebo and settlers. She and Leighton had decided that a furlough would allow her to recover her health more fully, to have a thorough exam by a Philadelphia physician, and to see friends and family.29

  So in July 1842, Jane said her painful goodbyes to the other missionaries, to her Grebo friends and former students, and, no doubt, to Paul and others from Bayard Island. With her luggage already on board, Grebo canoe men carried her through the surf and held steady as she boarded the Atalanta. Captain Lawlin then raised anchor and the ship began to move toward the north. Jane stood on the deck and watched a place she had come to love begin to disappear into the horizon—the tall palms of Cape Palmas swaying in the morning wind, the smoke from Big Town and the settler houses curling skyward, waves heaving and crashing on a wide beach. But of course it was Fair Hope, a cottage and cluster of buildings in the distance, that held her attention. There in that fading spot was the place closest to her heart and deepest in her memory. Seven years had passed since singing boatmen had brought her as a young bride through the rolling surf to an African home. She and Leighton had been welcomed ashore by King Freeman and a tumultuous crowd of singing, dancing Grebo and led up the hill to the newly built cottage overlooking the Atlantic. Later she had become the much loved teacher of many Grebo children—what deep pleasure she had found in teaching them and watching them discover a world beyond Cape Palmas. She had welcomed Freeman and Ballah and Davis to her dinner table and had listened to their stories and had tried to understand something of their lives. And there at Fair Hope she and Leighton had sat together on its piazza and looked out in the evenings into the wonders and beauty of an African sky and African nights.30

  The leaving was not easy for Jane, nor had it been for Leighton. So many hopes and so much effort had been concentrated in this place they had come to call home. While they both thought they had made the right decision to leave, Leighton later wrote Jane that “there are scenes, associations and events connected with that place and people which will ever endear them to me, and there are many there for whom I shall continue to pray as long as I frequent the throne of grace.” They had spent years learning the Grebo language, studying Grebo ways, and teaching Grebo students. And during the course of those years they had come to admire much about the Grebo and to call some of them friends. Now they felt they had to leave behind the fruit of their labors because of the opposition of the colonists.31

  The Grebo had watched Leighton leave in May, and now, two months later, they saw Jane leave as well. So Leighton and Jane, who had come among them with such high hopes, who had eaten with them, and who had brought so many changes with them—they had now abandoned them. Jane had been a cheerful and winsome spirit among them and had taught some of their children how to master the mysteries of reading and writing. Leighton had been their friend, had doctored many of them, had helped to settle many disputes among them, and had spoken for them in their conflicts with the colonists. They had called him “true man” because “he never changes his word.” And Dr. James Hall, Governor Russwurm’s close friend and supporter, observing Leighton’s way with the Grebo, said of Leighton, “We know him to have possessed the confidence of the native Africans to a greater degree than any other white man we have ever met with on that coast.”32

  In this way those whom the Grebo had counted on and trusted left them. The missionaries of the American Board turned over their remaining students and schools to the Episcopal mission, which had moved beyond the control of the colonial authorities. So while the work of Fair Hope was to be continued by the Episcopal mission, the loss of Fair Hope was a blow for the Grebo. Leighton had been a consistent and influential voice on their behalf, and Jane had been their friend in the ordinary comings and goings of life at Cape Palmas.

  For Governor Russwurm, however, the departure of Leighton and Jane did not seem an abandonment, but rather a relief. Leighton, in particular, had been so confident that he knew what was best for the settlers; he had assumed such a self-righteous attitude toward Russwurm’s dealing with slavers, and had been so ready to interfere in matters that were none of his business. And Leighton had always been watching the governor, looking for some false step, some wrong turn, some mistake that was the inevitable lot of a leader in a demanding new situation. And then when Russwurm did make some po
or calculation or some error of judgment, the white missionary could say—but of course he is a colored man.33

  A FINAL DRAMATIC chapter of Fair Hope’s history, however, remained to be played out during the months following Jane’s departure. Four days after the Atalanta sailed, thieves broke into Fair Hope and took most of the trading goods that Griswold and the Walkers had brought out with them. They even took the skeleton Griswold had brought for his medical work. The theft was much more serious than the earlier pilfering—that had simply been a regular annoyance—and represented a major shift in the Grebo’s relationship to what remained of Fair Hope. Griswold was furious, especially about the loss of his skeleton.34

  Word soon circulated that the thieves were four headmen from Big Town. Walker wrote in his diary: “The whole people are engaged in this matter, and it leaks out.” What soon leaked out was that Freeman was a recipient of some of the stolen goods. Griswold, as a young abolitionist, abhorred the colonization movement, and he, like most other abolitionists who knew of Russwurm, had little respect for him. Furthermore, he thought the colonial government had no authority over him or over the Grebo. So he ignored the governor and sent a note by Wasa asking for a palaver about the stolen goods. Freeman agreed, and the next day the king came to Fair Hope with a number of Grebo leaders. When Freeman arrived, Griswold immediately proceeded to read a statement from one of the Grebo leaders saying that Freeman had received some of the stolen goods. The king flew into a great rage and stormed away, threatening Griswold and the mission with a “heavy palaver” and violence. Dr. Savage, hearing reports of what had happened, sent word to Freeman saying that what they had done to Fair Hope they had done to him, that he was one with Fair Hope, and if Freeman touched Fair Hope, he was hurting the Episcopal mission as well.35