By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  22. Ibid.

  23. For the liturgy and character of baptism at Fair Hope, see “Of Baptism,” in The Westminster Confession of Faith (1645), the governing confessional document for Presbyterians in the nineteenth century. Cf. Erskine Clarke, Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Low Country, 1690–1990 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1995), 135–137.

  24. For the theology behind this simple celebration of the Lord’s Supper, see “Of the Sacraments,” in The Westminster Confession of Faith (1645). The Calvinist theology of the Fair Hope mission insisted that the supper was not the sacrifice of a Catholic Mass but a “commemoration” of Christ’s once and for all sacrifice. The bread and wine were regarded as remaining “truly, and only, bread and wine,” in contrast to the Catholic confession that the bread and wine, through the mystery of transubstantiation, were the actual body and blood of Christ. Cf. Clarke, Our Southern Zion, 62–69.

  25. Cf. the discussion of eating together as a social act, “a bond, created simply by partaking of food, linking human beings with one another,” in Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985), 3–5.

  26. JLW to RA, 18 April 1838, ABCFM.

  27. Quotation: “Petition from the Citizens of Maryland in Liberia,” 12 September 1838, MSCS.

  28. Wilson, Western Africa, 247. For the role and character of American traders such as Richard Lawlin on the West Coast of Africa, see George E. Brooks, Jr., Yankee Traders, Old Coasters and African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1970), esp. 3–5, and for the Leeward Coast, 222–290.

  29. Cf. Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (New York, 2002), 141; Kingsley Kofi Yeboah, A Guide to the Cape Coast Castle (Cape Coast, Ghana, 2007).

  30. George MacLean to JLW, 31 December 1839, ABCFM; JLW to RA, “Visit to the Leeward Coast,” 2 April 1839, ABCFM. See also Yeboah, A Guide to the Cape Coast Castle, 43–44.

  31. JLW to RA, “Visit to the Leeward Coast,” 2 April 1839, ABCFM.

  32. JLW to RA, 6 December 1839, ABCFM; “Board of Missions,” in Missionary Register (London), 1 January 1842.

  33. Quotation: Dr. Alexander Wilson to William Armstrong, 24 September 1840, ABCFM. For Alexander Wilson’s friendship with JLW’s father, see JLW to William Armstrong, 29 January 1839, ABCFM. For Alexander Wilson’s time in South Africa, see Dr. Alexander Wilson, “Journal,” 15 June 1836 to 20 March 1837, ABCFM; William Ireland, Historical Sketch of the Zulu Mission in South Africa (Boston, 1865), 14–17. There are many letters from Dr. Wilson in South Africa to the American Board in ABCFM.

  34. For Dr. Alexander Wilson’s perspectives on the Cape Palmas colony, see Alexander Wilson to RA, 9 December 1839, ABCFM.

  35. Quotation: JLW to RA, 6 December 1839, ABCFM. For the role of Freeman and Davis in the palaver that decided to abandon the ordeal, see JBR to JHBL, 8 December 1839, MSCS. See also Samuel F. McGill to Moses Sheppard, 3 January 1839, MSCS.

  36. For the oracle, see Dr. Alexander Wilson to RA, 9 December 1839, ABCFM.

  37. JLW to RA, 15 January 1840, ABCFM.

  38. For Samuel McGill’s experiences in the United States, see Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 130–133, 194–197.

  39. Samuel F. McGill to Moses Sheppard, 3 January 1839, in Maryland Colonization Journal, November 1843, 74–77. Parts of the letter had been published earlier as well.

  40. “Census,” Maryland in Liberia, 1839, MSCS; “Census,” Maryland in Liberia, 1840, MSCS.

  41. “Marriages in the Colony, 1839,” MSCS; “Marriages in the Colony, 1840,” MSCS; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 467–470.

  42. Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 469–470; WWD, 25 July 1842–11 November 1842, WHS.

  43. Quotations: Paul Sansay to JHBL, 16 January 1839, MSCS.

  44. Nicholas Bayard to JHBL, 18 September 1841, MSCS.

  45. Paul Sansay’s name does not appear on colonial marriage registries; nor do the census records of the colony list him as married.

  Chapter Twelve: Rose-Tinted Glasses

  1. Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834–1857 (Baltimore, 2003), 25; Jane Jackson Martin, “The Dual Legacy: Government Authority and Mission Influence Among the Glebo of Eastern Liberia, 1834–1910” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1968), 55–57; Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford, 2009), 387–389.

  2. “Ninth Annual Report, Board of Managers,” 28 January 1841, MSCS.

  3. Quotations: ibid.

  4. For colonial statistics, see ibid.; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 475, 505–515. For mortality and food shortages in the colony, see Dr. Samuel McGill to JHBL, “Medical Reports on Illnesses, Deaths, and Births,” 1 January 1842, MSCS. Cf. Antonio McDaniel, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: The Mortality Cost of Colonizing Liberia in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1995). For reports from colonial officials about the hostility of settlers toward the Grebo, see, for example, JBR to JHBL, 12 February 1837, MSCS; JBR to Oliver Holmes, 27 December 1837, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 9 April 1839, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 22 September 1841, MSCS; Samuel McGill to JHBL, 4 January 1840, MSCS; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 197, 207, 583n7. For the preparation of the missions to move beyond the borders of the colony, see Dr. A. E. Wilson, “Report of the ABCFM Mission,” to RA, 24 August 1841, ABCFM; “Resolution,” signed by Episcopal and ABCFM missionaries, 1 January 1842, ABCFM; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 232; Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 144–145.

  5. For the impact in Maryland of the 1840 census, see Penelope Campbell, Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831–1857 (Urbana, IL, 1971), 211–237; Christopher Phillips, Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860 (Urbana, IL, 1997), 180–188; Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 388. For the massive movement of slaves from the Chesapeake to the Deep South, see Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA, 1998), esp. 358–365; Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA, 2005), esp. 45–54.

  6. Quotation: “Circular Sent to the Counties” and “Circular Sent to the Prominent Friends of the Cause in This City,” contained in “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Managers, Maryland Colonization Society,” 13 March 1841, MSCS.

  7. Quotation: ibid.

  8. The removal of Maryland slaves to the black belt of the South illuminates one of the challenges of “Atlantic history”—how to discern the boundaries of an Atlantic world. How far west into the American continents does an Atlantic world extend? See Peter H. Wood, “From Atlantic History to a Continental Approach,” in Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford, 2009), 279–298. Cf. also Alan Huffman, Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today (New York, 2004); Walter Johnson, ed., The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas (New Haven, CT, 2005); Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge, MA, 2011), esp. 346–368.

  9. For JLW’s and JBR’s mutual suspicion, see, for example, JLW to RA, 14 January 1839, ABCFM; JBR to JHBL, 12 February 1837, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 22 September 1841, MSCS. Cf. JLW to RA, 3 November 1836, ABCFM; JLW to JHBL, 15 January 1839, MSCS. For Russwurm’s relationship with Freeman, see Samuel McGill’s complaint about the governor’s confidence in “old Freeman” in Samuel McGill to JHBL, 17 December 1843, MSCS.

  10. JBR to JHBL, 31 May 1841, MSCS.

  11. Copies of the correspondence between JLW and JBR are in the “Minutes of the Board of Managers,” 12 November 1841, MSCS.

  12. Ibid.

  13. JBR to JHBL, 10 October 1841, MSCS.

  14. Dr. A. E. Wilson and BVRJ to RA, 24 August 1841, ABCFM.

  15. Quotations: JBR to JHBL, 22 September 1841, MSCS.

  16. For abolitionist attacks on the colony at Cape Palmas, see, for example, “Liberia a
nd the Slave Trade,” Morning Chronicle (London), 28 August 1841; “The American Board and the African Colonies,” The Liberator (Boston), 14 October 1842.

  17. Quotations: “Minutes of the Board of Managers,” 1 October 1841, MSCS.

  18. RA to JHBL, 9 December 1841, ABCFM.

  19. “Minutes of the Maryland Colonization Board,” 13 December 1841, MSCS.

  20. For the closing of the school at Fair Hope, see JLW to RA, 28 January 1842, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 7 April 1842, ABCFM. For details of Dr. A. E. Wilson’s death, see “Decease of Doct. A. E. Wilson,” Missionary Herald, May 1842, 1–2; Missionary Register (London), 1 April 1843, 209–210.

  21. Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 92–93.

  22. “Benjamin Griswold,” Missionary Herald, January 1844. On Griswold and the Amistad captives, see “Amistad and Yale: The Untold Story,” n.d., The Yale Standard, March 3, 2012, www.yalestandard.com/his-tories/amistad-and-yale/. For George E. Day and Yale divinity students during the trial, see Howard Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy (New York, 1987), 85, 119, 125, 203, 210.

  23. “Benjamin Griswold,” Missionary Herald, January 1844; JLW to RA, 25 July 1842, ABCFM.

  24. William Walker’s background and character are vividly portrayed in his diaries, which are lodged at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

  25. WWD, passim.

  26. JLW to RA, 14 April 1842, ABCFM; BVRJ to RA, 24 May 1842, ABCFM; “West Africa,” Missionary Herald, October 1842, 412–413; WWD, January–June 1842, WHS.

  27. JLW to RA, 25 June 1842, ABCFM.

  28. “West Africa,” Missionary Herald, December 1842.

  29. JLW to RA, 25 June 1842, ABCFM; JBW to RA, 20 October 1842, ABCFM.

  30. Cf. JBW to RA, 20 October 1842, ABCFM.

  31. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 7 August 1842, CTS. Leighton expressed their grief over leaving Fair Hope to a Methodist missionary, Thomas Freeman at Cape Coast. Freeman wrote to Britain about how the “heartless colonists” had opposed the work of the mission. The letter was copied by a visiting US Methodist bishop and read before the US Methodist Mission Board. The letter added much fuel to the fire of controversy between missions and colonization and between abolitionism and colonization. See Thomas Freeman to John Beecham, 25 June 1842, MSCS; and Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 150–152.

  32. Quotations: Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1846), 424, 429; James Hall, “White and Colored Missionaries in Africa,” Maryland Colonization Journal, July 1847.

  33. See, for example, JBR to Oliver Holmes, 27 December 1837, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 22 September 1841, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 26 June 1843, MSCS.

  34. Benjamin Griswold to RA, 5 September 1842, ABCFM.

  35. Quotations: WWD, 25 July 1842. William Walker’s diary provides daily details of the events surrounding the theft and its repercussions. See WWD, July–November 1842, WHS.

  36. Ibid., 25 July–28 July 1842. See also Benjamin Griswold to RA, 9 September 1842, ABCFM; JBR to JHBL, 26 September 1842, MSCS; Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 146–150; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 214–218. Hall’s book has an important account of these events, but unfortunately it does not give references.

  37. Quotations: WWD, 30 July 1842, WHS.

  38. WWD, 24 August 1842, WHS.

  39. For the plunder of the American ship and the arrival of the Vandalia, see Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 215–216. For Davis’s report, see WWD, 13 August 1842, WHS. For JBR’s anger, see JBR to Dr. James Hall, 26 September 1842, MSCS.

  40. WWD, 3 September 1842, WHS.

  41. Ibid.

  42. WWD, 3 September 1842, WHS. Cf. JBR to JHBL, 26 September 1842, MSCS; Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 215–216.

  43. WWD, 5–6 September 1842, WHS.

  44. Quotations: WWD, 8 September 1842, WHS.

  45. WWD, 8, 24 September 1842, WHS.

  46. Russwurm’s letter to Ramsay, 26 September 1842, is copied in Walker’s diary, WWD, 3 October 1842, WHS. See also JBR to JHBL, 28 September 1842, MSCS; JBR to JHBL, 26 September 1842, MSCS.

  47. WWD, 8 September 1842, WHS.

  48. Davis’s letter to Ramsay is copied in Walker’s diary, WWD, 3 October 1842, WHS.

  49. Ibid; Martin, “The Dual Legacy,”146–157.

  50. Quotation: “Circular Sent to the Counties,” in “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Managers, Maryland Colonization Society,” 13 March 1841, MSCS. JHBL to RA, 8 December 1842, MSCS; RA to JHBL, 28 December 1842, ABCFM; Benjamin Griswold to RA, 29 June 1843, ABCFM.

  51. Quotation: BVRJ to RA, 3 October 1842, ABCFM. For JLW’s response, see JLW to RA, 18 July 1842, ABCFM. See, for a summary of the controversy, “Connection of the Mission at Cape Palmas with the Maryland Colony,” Missionary Herald, November 1842. A special panel, headed by Chancellor R. H. Walworth, a distinguished New York jurist, reviewed the history of the conflict between the missionaries and colonists and concluded that there was a fundamental conflict of interests between the two parties and that the colonists were “hostile both to the native inhabitants of the coast and to the missionaries who are laboring for the spiritual welfare of such natives.” See ibid. In The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison published a detailed account of the conflict, giving examples from JLW’s earlier letters, as a part of the abolitionist attack on colonization. See “The American Board and African Colonies,” The Liberator, 14 October 1842.

  52. JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS; JLW to JBW, 29 July 1842, CTS.

  Chapter Thirteen: “The Liberty of Choosing for Themselves”

  1. JLW to JBW, 24 May 1842, SCL.

  2. For Eckard letters sent through England, see ibid. For letters traveling Atlantic highways and the ways in which they closed spatial gulfs, see Sarah Pearsall, Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later 18th Century (New York, 2011). For an Atlantic world being a part of larger networks of travel and communication, see Peter A. Coclanis, “Beyond Atlantic History,” in Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (New York, 2009), eds. Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, 337–356.

  3. See, for example, “Western Asia,” Missionary Herald (Boston), January 1836, 7; “Mission to the Mohammedans of Persia,” Missionary Herald (Boston), January 1837, 10; “Southern Africa,” Missionary Herald (Boston), January 1839, 3–4; “Mission to the Cherokees,” Missionary Herald (Boston), January 1839, 12–13; “Appeal of the Mission in Turkey,” Charleston Observer, 21 August 1841; “Jamaica,” Missionary Herald (London), November 1839, 86.

  4. For the Tamil mission, see, for example, “Tamul People,” Missionary Herald (Boston), January 1835, 13–16; “American Board of Missions,” Missionary Register (London), 1 April 1839, 185; “American Board of Missions,” Missionary Register (London), 1 April 1840, 208; “American Board of Missions,” Missionary Register (London), 1 May 1843, 233. A. A. Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge D.D. LL.D: Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ (New York, 1880), 18.

  5. For JBW’s illness, see JLW to “Parents, Brothers, Sisters and Friends,” 27 October 1841, CTS; “Decease of Dr. A. E. Wilson,” Missionary Herald (Boston), May 1842, 177–179; JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS. For JBW’s treatment by Hodge, see JBW to RA, 20 October 1842, ABCFM; JBW to RA, 19 November 1842, ABCFM.

  6. For James Bayard’s role in the colonization movement, see James Bayard to JHBL, 22 October 1833, MSCS. For JBW’s views on colonization, see JBW to RA, 20 October 1842, ABCFM; JBW to RA, 19 November 1842, ABCFM. For published accounts of the conflict between the missionaries and colonial authorities, see, for example, Missionary Herald (Boston), November 1842, 424–427.

  7. For public comment and reports on JBW following her trip to the United States, see, for example, “Anti-Slavery Selections,” in Emancipator and Free American, 10 August 1843. See as well her reports in Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Weste
rn Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1846),425–426. For the role of the missionary home on furlough as “the great American window on the non-Western world,” see Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT,1972), 865–866. Cf. also Patrick Harries, “Anthropology,”in Mission and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford, 2005), 238–246.

  8. JBW to RA, 10 February 1843, ABCFM.

  9. For JBW being with the Eckards in Savannah, see JBW to RA, 19 November 1842, ABCFM; JLW to JBW, 15 March 1843, CTS. For details of the Eckards’ time in Ceylon, see Missionary Herald (Boston), January 1835, 13–16; January 1836, 13; January 1837, 12–14; January 1838, 8–9; January 1839, 9–10; January 1840, 10; January 1841, 9; January 1843, 9. The Eckards had spent their early years in Ceylon at Panditeripo and later at Tillipally.

  10. Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1837–1843, passim, SCCC. For the rapid development of railroads in Georgia, see George White, Statistics of the State of Georgia: Including an Account of Its Natural, Civil, and Ecclesiastical History; Together with a Particular Description of Each County, Notices of the Manners and Customs of Its Aboriginal Tribes, and a Correct Map of the State (Savannah, GA, 1849), 87–93.

  11. For Paul Sansay and his dispute with the Catholic mission, see JLW to RA, 7 April 1842, ABCFM; Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834–1857 (Baltimore, 2003), 250. For Charlotte Sansay’s adoption of two children, see Hall, On Afric’s Shore, 470, 478; BVRJ to JLW, 8 July 1859, CTS. For the Catholic mission, see Edmund M. Hogan, Catholic Missionaries and Liberia: A Study of Christian Enterprise in West Africa, 1842–1950 (Cork, Ireland, 1981), 12–22. For John, Catherine, and Rhina Johnson working at Sutra Kru, see JLW to JBW, 15 January 1843, CTS; JBW to RA, 1 April 1843, ABCFM.

  12. JBW to RA, 10 February 1843, ABCFM; JLW to JBW, 15 March 1843, CTS.

  13. JBW to RA, 19 November 1842, ABCFM; JBW to RA, 10 February 1843, ABCFM.

  14. For slaves overhearing conversations among whites, see Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic (New Haven, CT, 2005), 149–151, 263, 321–322.