21. Quotation: African Repository 53, April 1877, 60. For the effort to “whiten” the upper South, see Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 359–389. For the shifting demographics of slavery in Maryland, see T. Stephen Whitman, The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland (Lexington, KY, 1997), esp. 10. For Latrobe’s promotion of black leadership at Cape Palmas, see African Repository 53, April 1877, passim. Latrobe’s complexity is seen not only in his life and writings but also in the varying responses of historians to him. Cf., for example, the treatment of Latrobe in Amos J. Beyan, African American Settlements in West Africa: John Brown Russwurm and the American Civilizing Efforts (New York, 2005); and in Winston James, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851 (New York, 2010). Van Sickle’s dissertation, “A Transnational Vision,” has the best and fullest treatment of Latrobe and explores the competing impulses in Latrobe’s colonization efforts.
22. Quotations: Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters (New York, 1974), 204; Liberator, 4 June 1831. For a helpful summary of black responses to colonization, see Leonard I. Sweet, Black Images of America, 1784–1870 (New York, 1976), 35–68.
23. Quotation: Christopher Phillips, Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860 (Urbana, IL, 1997), 215.
24. Quotation: JLW to JB, 9 October 1833, CTS.
25. B. B. Wisner to JHBL, 5 October 1833, MSCS.
26. Quotation: JLW to JB, 24 October 1833. See also JLW to JB, 9 October 1833, CTS; JLW to JB, 13 October 1833, CTS; JLW to Henry Hill, 22 October 1833, ABCFM; JLW to JB, 15 November 1833, CTS.
27. JLW to RA, 12 May 1833, ABCFM; JLW to JB, 24 October 1833, CTS.
28. JLW to JB, 24 October 1833, CTS.
29. Quotation: ibid.
30. Quotation: ibid. Georgia law required any slave freed by an owner to leave the state; otherwise, the freed person could face re-enslavement. See Jones, Saving Savannah, 49.
Chapter Five: Testing the Waters
1. For details of the embarkation, see JLW to JB, 28 November 1833, CTS; John H. B. Latrobe, Maryland in Liberia: A History of the Colony (Baltimore, 1885), 36–37, 133; Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834–1857 (Baltimore, 2003), 3–5.
2. Quotation: Latrobe, Maryland in Liberia, 133–134.
3. Quotation: James Hall, “Cape Palmas,” African Repository 60, no. 4 (1884): 102. For life on shipboard, see JLW to JB, 28 November 1833, CTS.
4. For a map of Atlantic currents, see David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven, CT, 2010), 8. The concept of an “Atlantic world” with an “Atlantic history” has become a rapidly developing field of historical study. For overviews of themes and issues and important interpretative studies, see John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, UK, 1998); David Eltis, “Atlantic History in Global Perspective,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 141–161; Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, MA, 2005); Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford, 2009).
5. Quotation: Hall, “Cape Palmas,” 102.
6. For the launching of the sailboat and the pursuit by “Guineamen,” see J. Leighton Wilson, “Journal of J. Leighton Wilson on a Missionary Tour to Western Africa,” 22–26 January 1834, ABCFM. Cf. JH to JHBL, 29 January 1834, MSCS. For Pedro Blanco, see Theodore Canot, Captain Canot; or Twenty Years of an African Slaver, ed. Brantz Mayer (New York, 1854).
7. Quotations: Wilson, “Journal,” 27 January 1834, ABCFM.
8. For the arrival in Monrovia, see JLW to JB, 28 January 1834, CTS.
9. Quotation: Stephen Wynkoop, “Journal of S. R. Wynkoop to Western Africa,” 1–5, ABCFM. For the language ability of the schoolchildren, see JLW to JB, 28 January 1834, CTS; Wilson, “Journal,” 29–30 January 1834, ABCFM.
10. Quotations: Wynkoop, “Journal,” 6, ABCFM; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 22. See also Wilson, “Journal,” 31 January 1834, ABCFM.
11. JLW to JB, 28 January 1834, CTS.
12. Quotations: Wilson, “Journal,” 3 and 6 February 1834, ABCFM. The Mandingo man was later discovered to be a slaver. See Wynkoop, “Journal,” 9, ABCFM.
13. For introductions to the nature of West African religions and to the debates among scholars about the character of African religions and encounters with missionaries, see Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston, 1992 [1976]), esp. 44–45; Robin Horton, “On the Rationality of Conversion,” Africa 45 (1975): 219–235; V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington, IN, 1988); Rosalind Shaw, “The Invention of ‘African Traditional Religion,’” Religion 20 (1990): 339–353; J. D. Y. Peel’s review article, “Historicity and Pluralism in Some Recent Studies of Yoruba Religion,” Africa 64 (1994): 150–166; Sean
Hawkins, “Disguising Chiefs and God as History: Questions on the Acephaloussness of Lodagaa Politics and Religion,” Africa 66 (1996): 202–247; J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington, IN, 2000); Paul S. Landau, “Hegemony and History in Jean and John L. Comaroff’s Of Revelation and Revolution,” Africa 70 (2000): 501–519; David Maxwell, “Writing the History of African Christianity: Reflections of an Editor,” Journal of Religion in Africa 36 (2006): 379–399; Patrick Harries, Butterflies and Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa (Oxford, 2007). For a vivid first-person account of conversion and of an African Christian’s sense of continuity with pre-Christian religious beliefs and practices, see Lamin Sanneh, Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African (Grand Rapids, MI, 2012), esp. 82–121.
14. For the continuity in African religion in its pre-Christian and Christian forms, see Andrew F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Edinburgh, 2002), 116–135.
15. Quotations: Wilson, “Journal,” 1 February 1834; J. Leighton Wilson, Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects (New York, 1856), 208. See also Robert Hamill Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (New York, 1904). Nassau was a young associate of JLW’s. For a critical evaluation of missionary descriptions of fetishes, see John M. Cinnamon, “Missionary Expertise, Social Science, and the Uses of Ethnographic Knowledge in Colonial Gabon,” History in Africa 33 (2006): 413–432. The term “fetish” is rarely used today to describe African greegrees—the physical bodies that embody spiritual power.
16. Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 35.
17. Wynkoop, “Journal,” 16–17, ABCFM. For the size of the Atlantic slave trade between 1820 and 1880 and its character, see Eltis, “Atlantic History in Global Perspective,” esp. 151–152.
18. Quotation: Wynkoop, “Journal,” 7, ABCFM.
19. Quotation: Wilson, “Journal,” 7 February 1834, ABCFM. Later, after JLW had spent years among the Grebo—whom he designated under the general term Kru—he wrote, “they are as capable of intellectual improvement as any other race of men”—a clear challenge to derogatory Western stereotypes of Africans. See Wilson, Western Africa, 105. For the Kru, see George E. Brooks, The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Compendium (Newark, DE, 1972); George E. Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coaster and African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1970), esp. 222–225; Francis Bacon, “Cape Palmas and the Mena or Kroomen,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 12 (1842): 196–206; Esu Biyi, “The Kru and Related Peoples, West Africa,” Journal of the African Society 29 (1929–1930): 71–77, 181–188.
20. Wilson, “Journal,” 10 February 1834, ABCFM; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 38.
21. Wynkoop recorded the conversation between Joe Wilson and Freeman as Wilson related it the next morning. Wynkoop, “Journal,” 21, ABCFM. See also Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 40–41.
22. Wilson, “Journal,” 10 Februa
ry 1834, ABCFM; Brooks, Yankee Traders, 222–233, 313–326. Cf. “Yali’s Question,” in Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York, 1997), 3–32. “Why,” Yali asked Diamond, “is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” By “cargo,” Yali meant the material goods of the West, such as that brought to West Africa in the nineteenth century. Ibid., 4.
23. On the political structures of Grebo society, see Wilson, Western Africa, 128–139; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 85–88; Jane Jackson Martin, “The Dual Legacy: Government Authority and Mission Influence Among the Glebo of Eastern Liberia, 1834–1910” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1968), 14–24.
24. Quotations: Wilson, “Journal,” 11 February 1834, ABCFM.
25. Quotation: ibid., 12 February 1834.
26. Ibid; Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 74–75. See also Wynkoop, “Journal,” 22, ABCFM.
27. Quotation: Wilson, “Journal,” 12 February 1834, ABCFM.
28. Ibid; JLW to JB, 13 October 1833, CTS.
29. For Clay as a possible business manager, see JLW to JB, 30 November 1833, CTS.
30. Quotation: Wilson, “Journal,” 13 February 1834, ABCFM.
31. For Baphro, see Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 53, 55, 528n27; JLW to RA, 26 May 1837, ABCFM; JBR to JHBL, 1 November 1838, MSCS.
32. Wilson, “Journal,” 13 February 1834, ABCFM.
33. For Simleh Ballah, see JLW to RA, 7 March 1836, ABCFM; Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 100, 270; Latrobe, Maryland in Liberia, 49–51.
34. Quotations: Hall, “Cape Palmas,”105. For the procedure of a palaver, see Wilson, Western Africa, 131–133.
35. For the treaty between the Grebo and the Maryland Colonization Society, signed by Freeman, Baphro, Weah Bolio and James Hall, see Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 422–423. For the list of goods given for the land, see Wynkoop, “Journal,” 28, ABCFM. See also Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 45–46, for the estimated value of $1,200.
36. Wilson, “Journal,” 13–15 February 1834, ABCFM; JLW to JB, 13 April 1834, CTS.
37. For the promised land imagery, see Tom W. Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1977).
38. Quotation: Wilson, “Journal,” 28 February 1834, ABCFM.
39. Wilson, “Journal,” 28 February–7 March 1834, ABCFM.
40. Quotation: Wilson, “Journal,” 7 March 1834, ABCFM. For a report on Gomas [Gomez], “well known for his atrocities in the slave trade,” see “Sierra Leone,” in The Morning Chronicle (London), 4 September 1826.
41. Quotation: Wilson, “Journal,” 7 March 1834.
42. Quotations: J. Leighton Wilson and Stephen Wynkoop, “Report of the State of the Colony of Liberia,” 24 March 1834, ABCFM, passim.
43. Quotations: ibid.
44. Quotation: ibid, 8.
45. Quotation: ibid., 19.
Chapter Six: Fair Hope Among the Grebo
1. Quotations: JLW to JB, 13 April 1834, CTS.
2. JLW to RA, 13 April 1834, ABCFM; JLW to JB, 25 April 1834, CTS.
3. Clay returned to a divided First African Baptist Church. For his leadership as a deacon in the congregation, see James M. Simms, The First Colored Baptist Church in North America (Philadelphia, 1888), 49, 88, 92–105.
4. “Extracts from the Journals of Messrs. Wilson and Wynkoop,” Missionary Herald, August 1834, 288–292; J. Leighton Wilson and Stephen Wynkoop, “Report of the State of the Colony of Liberia to the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,” 24 March 1834, ABCFM; J. Leighton Wilson and Stephen Wynkoop, “To the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM,” 18 April 1834, ABCFM.
5. JLW to JB, 25 April 1834, CTS. On Wynkoop, see “Stephen Rose Wynkoop,” in Encyclopedia of the Presbyterian Church, ed. Alfred Nevin (Philadelphia, 1884), 1049–1050.
6. Quotation: JLW to RA, 12 May 1834, ABCFM.
7. JLW to JB, 25 April 1834, CTS; JLW to RA, 12 May 1834, ABCFM.
8. For time at Fair Hope plantation, see JLW to RA, 12 May 1834, ABCFM; JLW to Henry Hill, 26 September 1834, ABCFM; JLW to Henry Hill, 23 October 1834, ABCFM.
9. “Marriages,” in Wilson Family Bible, CTS. For the Eckards, see “American Board of Missions,” Missionary Register (London), 1 March 1835, 141.
10. JLW to RA, 12 May 1834, ABCFM; JLW to Henry Hill, 16 October 1834, ABCFM. For Southern women organizing mission and other benevolent societies, see Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA, 1963), 287–301. For the larger picture of women and missions, see Elizabeth E. Prevost, The Communion of Women: Missions and Gender in Colonial Africa and the British Metropole (Oxford, 2010), 1–27; Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood, and Shirley Ardener, eds., Women and Missions, Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Providence, RI, 1993).
11. Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 60.
12. JLW to RA, 12 May 1834, ABCFM; JLW to B. B. Wisner, 21 July 1834, ABCFM; JLW to B. B. Wisner, 9 August 1834, ABCFM; JLW to JB, 29 December 1832, CTS; JLW to RA, 12 June 1836, ABCFM.
13. JLW to B. B. Wisner, 21 July 1834, ABCFM; JLW to B. B. Wisner, 2 September 1834, ABCFM; JLW to Henry Hill, 18 September 1834, ABCFM; JLW to Henry Hill, 16 October 1834, ABCFM; JLW to Henry Hill, 5 November 1834, ABCFM. For trade goods and trading generally, see George Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters and African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1970); Tom W. Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1977), 102–121; George E. Brooks, The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Compendium (Newark, DE, 1972).
14. JLW to RA, 12 September 1834, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 21 September 1834, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 7 October 1834, ABCFM.
15. Quotation: “The Rev. John Leighton Wilson Received the Instructions of the Prudential Committee in the Central Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia,” Missionary Herald, 19 October 1834.
16. For the distinctive American character of the ABCFM and other American mission societies and boards, especially as articulated by Rufus Anderson, see Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Edinburgh, 1996), 223–227.
17. Quotations: “The Rev. John Leighton Wilson Received the Instructions of the Prudential Committee in the Central Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia,” Missionary Herald, 19 October 1834. For additional details of the commissioning service, see “Mission to Western Africa,” Charleston Observer, 8 November 1834; “Cape Palmas of Maryland,” Missionary Register (London), 1 January 1835. The mission strategy of developing indigenous leaders was a part of the ABCFM’s larger strategy of initiating, in mission fields, “self-governing, self-sup-porting, and self-propagating” churches. See Paul Harris, “Denominationalism and Democracy: Ecclesiastical Issues Underlying Rufus Anderson’s Three Self Program,” in North American Foreign Mission, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, Wilbert R. Shenk, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI, 2004), 61–85.
18. Quotation: Records of Superior Court, Chatham County, Georgia, 5 October 1838, Record Book 2W-2, SCCC. The reason for Clay’s delay in having the document recorded in Savannah is not clear, but it was most likely an attempt to keep the pending manumission secret.
19. See letter of JBW in Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1846), 423.
20. JLW to Theodosia Bayard, 14 December 1834, CTS; JLW to RA, 13 December 1834, ABCFM.
21. For the description of their arrival at the Cape, see JLW to RA, 10 January 1835, ABCFM.
22. Quotations: JLW to “Father, Mother, Sisters and Brothers,” 26 January 1835, CTS; Alexander, A History of Colonization, 423. Cf. JLW to RA, 7 January 1835, ABCFM.
23. Quotation: JLW to JB
, 13 October 1833, CTS. JLW designed the house while in Baltimore in preparation for his exploratory trip. For the replication of American architectural styles in Liberia, see Svend E. Holsoe and Bernard L. Hermand, with photographs by Max Belcher, A Land and Life Remembered: Americo-Liberian Folk Architecture (Athens, GA, 1988).
24. JLW to RA, 10 January 1835, ABCFM; JLW to “Father, Mother, Sisters and Brothers,” 26 January 1835, CTS.
25. Quotation: Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834–1857 (Baltimore, 2003), 98. For Leighton’s description of their arrival, see JLW to “Father, Mother, Sisters and Brothers,” 26 January 1835, CTS. Cf. JLW to RA, 7 January 1835, ABCFM.
26. Alexander, A History of Colonization, 425.
27. Ibid.
28. Quotations: Alexander, A History of Colonization, 424, 429. For comments on their early interactions with the Grebo, see JLW to RA, 10 January 1835, ABCFM; JLW to “Father, Mother, Sisters and Brothers,” 26 January 1835, CTS.
29. For descriptions of Davis, see JH to JHBL, 15 October 1834, MSCS; JLW to RA, 3 November 1836, ABCFM; “West Africa,” Charleston Observer, 8 September 1838.
30. For Simleh Ballah, see JLW to RA, 7 March 1836, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 3 November 1836, ABCFM; JHBL, Maryland in Liberia: A History of the Colony (Baltimore, 1885), 49–51. For Baphro, see J. Leighton Wilson, “Journal of J. Leighton Wilson on a Missionary Tour to Western Africa,” 12 February 1834, ABCFM; JLW to RA, “Journal of a Tour to Grabbo,” 6 April 1837, ABCFM.
31. Quotation: Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford, 2009), 71. See also Eric Robert Papenfuse, The Evils of Necessity: Robert Goodloe Harper and the Moral Dilemma of Slavery (Philadelphia, 1997); and Carey M. Roberts, “Harper, Robert Goodloe,” in The South Carolina Encyclopedia, ed. Walter Edgar (Columbia, SC, 2006), 429–430. Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 26–27.
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