By the Rivers of Water
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62. Quotation: Wilson, “Excursion to Bolobo,” 26 October 1836, ABCFM. For the relationship of music—and by implication dance—to social structures and deep cultural assumptions, see Kofi Agawu, “John Blacking and the Study of African Music,” Africa 67 no. 3 (1997): 491–499. For dance, see Rex M. Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity, The Case of Jamaica: An Essay in Cultural Dynamics (Kingston, 1979), 27–30; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 581–588, 592–593.
63. Quotations: Wilson, “Excursion to Bolobo,” 27 October 1836, ABCFM.
64. Quotation: ibid.
65. Daily routines at Fair Hope are described in letters from the Wilsons. See, especially, JLW to RA, 28 June 1836, ABCFM; letter from JBW to “a friend in Philadelphia,” published in Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1846), 423; and JLW to RA, 1 April 1836, ABCFM.
Chapter Eight: Sorrows and Conflicts
1. Quotation: JLW to RA, 6 September 1836, ABCFM. Holmes arrived at Cape Palmas on 4 February 1836 and announced his resignation in early September 1836. See Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834–1857 (Baltimore, 2003), 118–122, 134–135.
2. Quotation: JLW to RA, 3 November 1836, ABCFM.
3. For the Whites’ background, see Joseph Tracy, “History of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,” in History of American Missions to the Heathen, from Their Commencement to the Present Time (Worcester, MA, 1840), 322; “West Africa,” Missionary Herald, December 1836; Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 89–91. For James, see Tracy, “History of the American Board,” 322; JLW to RA, 16 April 1836, ABCFM; JLW to “My Dear parents, Brothers and Sisters,” 21 April 1837, CTS; BVRJ to RA, 11 May 1837, ABCFM; Nancy Sikes Porter to “Dear Mother,” 30 June 1851, in the Mary Coultier private collection of Gabon mission letters.
4. Quotation: Dubose, Memoirs, 72. For the arrival of the Whites, see David White to RA, 28 December 1836, ABCFM.
5. JLW to RA, 28 January 1837, ABCFM.
6. Quotation: ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Quotations: Dubose, Memoirs, 89; JLW to RA, 28 January 1837, ABCFM. For a full exposition of the doctrine of providence as understood by “Old School Calvinists” such as the Wilsons, see the work of JBW’s cousin Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (New York, 1873), vol. 1, 575–616.
10. Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 149; JBR to JHBL, 21 August 1838, MSCS.
11. See Winston James, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851 (New York, 2010).
12. Quotation: Horatio Bridge, Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1893), 30. For the period of JBR’s time at Bowdoin, see ibid., 16–32. See also Nehemiah Cleaveland, History of Bowdoin College with Biographical Sketches of Its Graduates, from 1806 to 1870 (Boston, 1882); James, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm, 16–17, 352–353.
13. Quotation: James, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm, 29. For the history and context of Freedom’s Journal, see Jacqueline Bacon, Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper (Lanham, MD, 2007).
14. Quotation: James, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm, 31. See also ibid., 44.
15. Quotation: ibid., 51. For the bitter response to Russwurm’s decision, see ibid., 49–53.
16. Ibid., 60, 77.
17. Quotation: James Hall, “Monument to Governor Russwurm,” Maryland Colonization Journal, March 1853, 352. See also James, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm, 18–19, 261n61.
18. Russwurm’s life and his role as governor of Maryland in Liberia has been the subject of significant scholarly debate. On the one hand, Winston James, for example, in The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm, provided a thoughtful and enthusiastic picture of Russwurm from a Caribbean and “back to Africa” tradition. Amos J. Beyan, on the other hand, in African American Settlements in West Africa: John Brown Russwurm and the American Civilizing Efforts (New York, 2005), presented a highly critical portrait from the perspective of the indigenous Liberian people. Beyan tellingly dedicated his study “in memory of the more than 250,000 Liberians who died in the Liberian Civil War in the 1990s.”
19. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 7 July 1838, MSCS. See also, for the food crisis, JBR to JHBL, 26 April 1838, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 28 April 1838, MSCS; JBR to Oliver Holmes, 28 April 1838, MSCS; JLW to Ira Easter, 5 July 1838, MSCS. William E. Allen has argued that complaints such as Russwurm’s about the “Indolent Americo-Liberians” who “abhorred agriculture because it evoked unpleasant memories of slavery,” and who “misinterpreted their new freedom as an excuse from work,” is “actually a variant of the popular nineteenth-century stereotype of the lazy African slave of the Atlantic World.” If so, it was a view fully articulated by African American leaders at Cape Palmas such as Russwurm and Samuel McGill. See William E. Allen, “Rethinking the History of Settler Agriculture in Nineteenth-Century Liberia,” International African Historical Studies 37, no. 3 (2004): 435–462, esp. 435. For ships arriving with new immigrants from 1836 to 1838, see Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 452–473. For the high mortality rates among African American immigrants to Liberia, see Antonio McDaniel, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: The Mortality Costs of Colonizing Liberia in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1995).
20. For the financial panic of 1837, see Alasdair Roberts, America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder After the Panic of 1837 (Ithaca, NY, 2012). For the split in the Presbyterian church, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT, 1972), 455–471.
21. Quotation: JLW to RA, 26 February 1838, ABCFM. See also JLW to RA, 29 December 1838, ABCFM.
22. JLW to RA, 25 August 1836, ABCFM.
23. BVRJ to RA, 11 May 1837, ABCFM.
24. Quotation: JLW to RA, 25 August 1836, ABCFM.
25. Quotation: JLW to RA, 16 April 1837, ABCFM.
26. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 12 February 1837, MSCS. See also JBR to JHBL, 14 November 1836, MSCS.
27. Quotations: Samuel McGill to JHBL, 8 June 1840, MSCS. For the settlers’ increasing hostility toward the Grebo and for settler identification of themselves as Americans and Grebo as savages, see “Remonstrance of Citizens of Maryland in Liberia,” 12 September 1838, MSCS. See also JLW to RA, 3 November 1836, ABCFM; JBR to JHBL, 10 October 1841, MSCS; S. F. McGill to JH, 22 August 1844, MSCS. Cf. also Svend E. Holsoe, “A Study of Relations Between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Western Liberia, 1821–1847,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 4, no. 2 (1971): 331–362. For settler opposition to education of the Grebo, see JLW to JHBL, 16 January 1836, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 3 November 1836, ABCFM; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 174.
28. Cf. James Sidbury, Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic (New York, 2007). Sidbury argued that, beginning in the 1820s, Northern free African Americans began to regard themselves as “colored Americans” and not Africans. Much of the use of “African,” as in Savannah’s First African Baptist Church, was from an earlier period.
29. Quotation: JLW to RA, 7 February 1837, ABCFM.
30. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 21 August 1838, MSCS. For details of the confrontation, see JBR to JHBL, 12 February 1837, MSCS; JLW to RA, 7 February 1837, ABCFM.
31. Quotation: JLW to RA, 7 February 1837, ABCFM. For JBR’s praise of JLW and JBW, see JBR to JHBL, 12 February 1837, MSCS. See also Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 147–150; Jane Jackson Martin, “The Dual Legacy: Government Authority and Mission Influence Among the Glebo of Eastern Liberia, 1834–1910” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1968), 105–106.
32. Quotations: JBR to Oliver Holmes, 27 December 1837, MSCS; Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 179. Russwurm had already been in conflict with settlers in Monrovia. The settler-dominated colonial assembly had removed him from his position as colonial secretary in 1835. The
white American Colonization Society board had reinstated him. See Beyan, African American Settlements in West Africa, 79.
33. JLW to RA, 7 February 1837, ABCFM.
34. Quotation: JLW to RA, 16 April 1837, ABCFM. For JLW’s protest to JHBL, see JLW to JHBL, 18 April 1837, MSCS. For the critical role of African provisions in the international slave trade, see Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (Berkeley, CA, 2009), esp. 53, 57, 65–79. For the conflict between Methodist missionaries and colonial authorities in Monrovia during this period, see Tom W. Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1977), 37–41; Eunjin Park, White Americans in “Black” Africa: Black and White American Methodist Missionaries in Liberia, 1820–1875 (New York, 2001), 136–143.
35. JLW to JHBL, 6 July 1837, MSCS; RA to JHBL, 28 June 1837, ABCFM and MSCS.
36. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 22 June 1837, MSCS.
37. JLW to JHBL, 5 July 1837, MSCS; JLW to JHBL, 6 July 1837, MSCS; George McGill to JHBL, 25 December 1837, MSCS; JLW to JHBL, 16 January 1838, MSCS; JBR to Oliver Holmes, 28 April 1838, MSCS.
38. RA to JHBL, 28 June 1838, ABCFM and MSCS; RA to JHBL, 11 July 1838, ABCFM and MSCS.
39. Quotation: RA to JHBL, 11 July 1838, ABCFM and MSCS.
40. Cf. JLW to RA, 11 October 1837, ABCFM. For the deepening sectional crisis in mission work, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT, 1972), esp. 649–669, and for the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, 455–471.
41. Quotation: “The Scheme of the Maryland Colonization Society,” The Liberator (Boston), 9 August 1834. Cf. also “Immediate Emancipation,” The Liberator (Boston), 24 January 1834; “Colonization,” The Liberator (Boston), 8 July 1842. For JLW’s protest to RA, see JLW to RA, 14 January 1839, ABCFM; and see also JLW to RA, 25 September 1838, ABCFM. For William Lloyd Garrison on the Cherokees and colonization, see Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998), 137–139. For British abolitionists and their efforts to protect indigenous people from white settlers, see Alan Lester, “Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century,” in Mission and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford, 2005), 64–85. Cf., for abolitionist parallels with JLW’s arguments, G. B. Stebbins, Facts and Opinions Touching the Real Origin, Character and Influence of the American Colonization Society (Boston, 1854), esp. 155–189.
42. Quotation: Charles Snetter to JHBL, 9 July 1837, MSCS.
43. Quotation: ibid.
44. JBR to Oliver Holmes, 27 December 1837, MSCS.
45. JLW to JHBL, 6 July 1837, MSCS.
46. Quotation: JLW to RA, 25 October 1837, ABCFM.
47. Quotation: ibid. See also JLW’s report on colonization sent to RA, 13 March 1838, esp. # 5, ABCFM. For abolitionists’ summaries of charges against Liberian settlers in regard to the slave trade, see Stebbins, Facts and Opinions, esp. 160–165; William Goodel, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A History of the Great Struggle in Both Hemispheres, with a View of the Slavery Question in the United States (New York, 1852), esp. 341–352.
48. Quotations: JBR to Oliver Holmes, 27 December 1837, MSCS.
Chapter Nine: The Bitter Cost of Freedom
1. The letters from JLW and JBW to Nicholas Bayard have not been found but are referenced, with excerpts, in JLW to RA, 12 June 1836, ABCFM; JLW to JHBL, 25 June 1836, MSCS; and JLW to RA, 28 June 1836, ABCFM. For the management of the Hutchinson Island settlement, see Estate of N. S. Bayard in account with N. J. Bayard, Administrator, 1832–1838, SCCC.
2. Quote from earlier letter to JHBL found in Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 8 February 1837, MSCS. For the neglect of the dams and trunks of the former rice fields, see “Report of Richard Rowell,” Georgian, 3 June 1822. See also Estate of N. S. Bayard, 15 February 1825, 10 November 1825, 3 January 1826.
3. For management of the estate, see Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1832–1838. For the bateau, a plank version of a dugout canoe, and its use on the rivers of the Lowcountry, see William C. Fleetwood, Tidecraft: The Boats of South Carolina, Georgia and Northeastern Florida, 1750–1950 (Camden, SC, 1995), esp. 145–147, 316–321. For the dangers associated with using such a small boat on a powerful river, and for the Gullah name for the bateau, see ibid., 146, and Ambrose Gonzales, The Black Border (Columbia, SC, 1964), 335. For the drowning of Bayard slaves, see Estate of N. S. Bayard, October 1830 and June 1838, SCCC.
4. JLW to JHBL, 25 June 1836, MSCS; Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 8 February 1837, MSCS; JLW to RA, 26 February 1838, ABCFM; Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 2 April 1838, MSCS. For the communal spaces in Lowcountry slave settlements and activities there, see Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), 104–122; Theresa Ann Singleton, “The Archaeology of Afro-American Slavery in Coastal Georgia: Regional Perception of Slave Household and Community Patterns” (PhD diss., University of Florida, 1980); cf. James C. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, (New Haven, CT, 1990), 1–16.
5. Nicholas Bayard, “List of Slaves Belonging to the Estate of the Late Doc. N. S. Bayard of Savannah, Georgia, Who Would Probably Emigrate to Cape Palmas,” 4 October 1836, MSCS.
6. Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1836–1838; Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 26 October 1837, MSCS. See also Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 1 November 1837, MSCS; Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 20 November 1837, MSCS; Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 14 December 1837, MSCS.
7. Bayard, “List of Slaves.”
8. Ibid. Cf. Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788–1864 (Fayetteville, AR, 1996), 150–153; Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (New York, 2008), 44–46, 49; Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford, 2009), 321–324. For Paul’s hopes to eventually bring his family to Cape Palmas, see Paul Sansay to “Dear Sir” [Latrobe?], 17 January 1839, MSCS.
9. Quotation: Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 2 April 1838, MSCS. For funds sent to the Maryland board, see Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 26 April 1838, MSCS. For provisions provided in Savannah, see Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1837–1839. For “Old Toby” and “Old Lucy,” see “Indenture Between James R. Eckard and Margaret Bayard,” 15 June 1833, SCCC; Bayard, “List of Slaves”; JBW to RA, 1 April 1843, ABCFM.
10. Quotations: JLW to RA, 26 February 1838, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 28 March 1838, ABCFM.
11. Quotations: JLW to RA, 26 February 1838, ABCFM; JLW to William Wilson, [?] March 1838, SCL.
12. For the Cavally River disaster, see JBR to JHBL, 26 April 1838; King Freeman to JHBL, 27 April 1838, MSCS; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 171–172. For JLW’s early trip, see Chapter 11.
13. JLW to Nicholas Bayard, 26 April 1838, copied in letter from Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 10 July 1838, MSCS. JLW had asked Bayard to “give the letter no needless publicity,” but Bayard copied the letter and sent it to the Maryland Colonization Society, apparently not realizing it would increase the tension between the missionary and the colonial officials in Baltimore. For Russwurm’s acknowledgment that many settlers wanted to return to the United States, see JBR to JHBL, 12 February 1837, MSCS.
14. Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 30 April 1838, MSCS.
15. For the adoption of family names by freed slaves, see Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 248–251; Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 285–286; Christopher Phillips, Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860 (Urbana, IL, 1997), 88–91.
16. Cf. Paul Sansay to “Dear Sir” [Latrobe?], 17 January 1839, MSCS. See also Nicholas Bayard to Ira Easter, 30 April 1838, MSCS; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 467–470. Hall mistakenly has the Bayard people sailing directly from Savannah to Cape Palmas.
17. Quotations: JLW t
o Ira Easter, 5 July 1838, MSCS; JLW to JHBL, 15 January 1839, MSCS.
18. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 7 July 1838, MSCS.
19. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 1 November 1838, MSCS.
20. Quotation: Paul Sansay to “Dear Sir” [Latrobe?], 17 January 1839, MSCS.
21. For allotted tracts on Bayard Island, see “Revey Map,” MSCS. For the occupations of the new immigrants, see Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 467–470.
22. Cf. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, esp. 560–580. See also Philip Morgan, ed., African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee (Athens, GA, 2010).
23. JLW to RA, “Copied from Mr. Wilson’s Journal,” 13 August 1838, ABCFM.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.; JBR to JHBL, 6 August 1838, MSCS. Because Snetter was responsible for the secular affairs at Fair Hope, JLW had apparently not objected to his serving in the militia.
26. JLW to RA, “Copied from Mr. Wilson’s Journal,” 13 August 1838, ABCFM; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 183–191.
27. Quotations: JBR to Oliver Holmes, 24 May 1839, MSCS; “Petition from the Citizens of Maryland in Liberia,” 12 September 1838, MSCS.
28. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 1 November 1838, MSCS.
29. The African Repository and Colonial Journal 17 (1841): 41; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 557–558; Svend E. Holsoe, “A Study of Relations Between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Western Liberia, 1821–1847,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 4, no. 2 (1971): 349–351.
Chapter Ten: Exploring Strange Worlds
1. JLW to RA, 28 June 1836, ABCFM.
2. Karen Hess, The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection (Columbia, SC, 1992).
3. JLW to RA, 28 June 1836, ABCFM. For provisions sent from the United States, see JLW to H. Hill, 18 March 1836, ABCFM. For JLW’s garden and for the food eaten at Fair Hope, see JLW to RA, [?] January 1839, ABCFM; JLW to “Dear Parents, Brothers, and Sisters,” 18 May 1840, SCL.