Recaptured Africans

by Fett, Sharla M. ;

  135. McCalla Journal, 8 August 1860.

  136. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, 123–45, quote on 123.

  137. Austen, “Slave Trade as History and Memory,” 238; MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa, 38, 160–65; Janzen, Lemba, 53–55. For twentieth-century anthropological studies, see Hersak, “There Are Many Congo Worlds,” 628, and Petridis, “Of Mothers and Sorcerers.”

  138. Log of United States Naval Ship Niagara, 19 September, 9 November 1858, LNS. Two infants boarded the ship in Charleston and two disembarked in Liberia. No deaths or births of infants were reported, so the child most likely survived.

  139. McCalla Journal, 7 August 1860.

  140. Drewal, “Beauty and Being”; Berns, “Ga’anda Scarification.”

  141. Lovejoy, “Scarification and the Loss of History,” 104–10; “citizenship symbols” in Ojo, “Beyond Diversity,” 367–68; Reis and Mamigonian, “Nagô and Mina,” 82–83; Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 104–10, verbs on p. 109. On linguistic terminology, see also Drewal, “Beauty and Being,” 84–85.

  142. Drewal, “Art or Accident,” 247–51, quote on 247.

  143. Ibid., 247; fieldwork described in Drewal, “Being and Beauty,” 96 n. 1.

  144. Drewal, “Art or Accident,” 248.

  145. Drewal and Mason, “Ogun Mind/Body Potentiality,” 332–35.

  146. With appreciation to Henry Drewal for confirming the plausibility of this historical application of his contemporary work in an email exchange, 6 April 2015.

  147. Drewal, “Art or Accident,” 252–53.

  148. Grymes Report, 12–13.

  149. Drewal, “Art or Accident,” 258 n. 6. However, it is important to note that since neither practitioner nor recipient was specifically identified by group origins, they may have come from other West African groups where older women practiced body artistry as well. See, for example, Berns, “Ga’anda Scarification,” 58. Although recaptive passengers on the Star of the Union were not likely to have come from the region of present-day Nigeria identified by Berns as Ga’anda, Berns does provide an example of female body artists in West Africa.

  150. Coghe, “Problem of Freedom,” 485–89.

  151. Law, Ouidah, 141–42; Law and Lovejoy, Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, 149, 150.

  152. Young Ship Log, 23 August 1860.

  153. Ibid., 29 July 1860.

  154. Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 23.

  155. Vermilyea, Slaver, the War, and around the World, 7.

  156. Grymes Report, 6; McCalla Journal, 5 August 1860.

  Chapter 6

  1. “Intelligence from Liberia,” African Repository 35, no. 9 (September 1859): 277–78. The Christian Advocate’s notice of the marriage appeared in the American Colonization Society journal African Repository as well as in the Weekly Anglo-African.

  2. The term “Liberian” in this chapter refers to the colonial population of African American emigrants and their families, who often called themselves Americo-Liberians to indicate their Westernized, American origins.

  3. John Seys to Jacob Thompson, 31 October 1860, reel 10, RSI; John Seys, “From the Rev. John Seys, Government Agent for Recaptured Africans,” African Repository 35, no. 6 (June 1859): 163; Crummell, “Address of Rev. Alexander Crummell”; see also Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 102. Tensions between the Liberian government and the ACS over control of recaptive funding and distribution of recaptives was apparent by the spring of 1859. See John Seys to William McLain, 10 March 1859, Series 1.B, Incoming Correspondence, Letters from Liberia, 1 March 1859–22 October 1860, ACSR.

  4. The Presbyterian Board of Missions in Monrovia adopted eight “youth” from the Niagara’s company. See “Recaptured Africans of the ‘Echo,’” in Forty-Second Annual Report of the American Colonization Society, 19. Plans for these adoptions were also reported in the Courier, 18 September 1858.

  5. Everill, Abolition and Empire, 10; Clegg, Price of Liberty, 4, 180; Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 428. Clegg notes that Liberia’s function as a haven for African recaptives proved rhetorically useful in fending off abolitionist charges against the proslavery leanings of the colonization movement.

  6. The African Repository, which reprinted the notice, used both the names Kalendah and Kabendah for the man, and Kandah and Kandah-Kabendah for the woman. Because the Echo embarked from Cabinda, it is entirely possibly that none of these names reflects a name of birth but, rather, names imposed at embarkation or some point in their enslavement. See “Intelligence from Liberia,” African Repository 35, no. 9 (September 1859): 277–78.

  7. Akpan, “Black Imperialism.”

  8. Sweet, “Quiet Violence of Ethnogenesis,” 210.

  9. Northrup, “Becoming African,” 17; Byrd, Captives and Voyagers, 20, 27, 29, 32; Peel, Religious Encounter, 283–88; Sidbury and Cañizares-Esguerra, “Mapping Ethnogenesis”; Burroughs, “‘True Sailors of Western Africa.’” For challenges or modifications to Peel’s arguments on the ethnogenesis of “Yoruba,” see Ojo, “Beyond Diversity”; Apter, “Yoruba Ethnogenesis from Within”; and Law, “Yoruba Liberated Slaves.”

  10. Cooper, House at Sugar Beach, 6, 10, 15.

  11. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 110–11.

  12. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement; Tyler-McGraw, African Republic. More analytic focus is given to recaptives in Clegg, Price of Liberty, 92–94, 245–46; Akingbade, “Liberian Settlers and the Campaign”; Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships”; and Lindsay, “Boundaries of Slavery.”

  13. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 148–58; Burin, “Slave Trade Act of 1819,” 6–9.

  14. “United States Agency for Recaptured Africans,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 6 (June 1846): 176–80; “Liberia a Means of Abolishing the Slave Trade,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 3, no. 5 (July 1827): 129–36. Other examples of the efficacy of colonization for ending the slave trade appear in “‘The Pons,’” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 137–40, and “Thirtieth Annual Report of the American Colonization Society,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 3 (March 1847): 78.

  15. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 57; Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 56–57; Mouser, “Baltimore’s African Experiment,” 116–17.

  16. Canney, Africa Squadron, 15–18, 135–36; P. F. Voorhees to Levi Woodbury, “Letter from Captain Voorhees of the United States Navy,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 10, no. 1 (March 1834): 20–22.

  17. “Articles of Agreement between the Republic of Liberia and the American Colonization Society,” 23 March 1849, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, ACSR; Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 436.

  18. Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 427.

  19. Lindsay, “Boundaries of Slavery,” 261–62; Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds”; Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 130; Akpan, “Black Imperialism,” 227 n. 66; Everill, Abolition and Empire, 28–29, 58–59, 63–78.

  20. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 94–95, 102–12, 214–17.

  21. Ibid., 201–2.

  22. Lindsay, “Boundaries of Slavery”; Clegg, Price of Liberty, 112; Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 438–41. On recaptives as a buffer population on a colonial “middle ground,” see Clegg, Price of Liberty, 92–95. An early articulation of this distinction between “native” and “recaptured Africans” from African American physician Robert McDowell appears in “Latest from Liberia,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 11, no. 2 (February 1836): 41–47.

  23. “Meeting Called on the Arrival of the ‘Pons,’” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 145–46; John Seys, “The Recaptured Africans in Liberia,” African Repository 41, no. 1 (January 1865): 15–18; Crummell, “Rev. Mr. Crummell on the Congo Recaptives.”

  24. Domingues da Silva, Eltis, Misevich, and Ojo, “Diaspora of Africans,” 253 and 369, table A.3. On Sierra Leone numbers, see Anderson et
al., “Using African Names,” 167. On Liberia and slave trade suppression in the 1820s and ‘30s, see Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 160–64.

  25. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 150, 175–79, 198–201, 261–63.

  26. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 93. In 1822, the first group of fifteen young African men declared free by federal circuit court Antelope decision arrived at Cape Mesurado with early U.S. colonists on the ACS brig Strong. See Chapter 1 for discussion of Antelope legal decisions. See also Bryant, Dark Places, 187–92.

  27. The designation of “Eboe” (Igbo) identifies Igbo-language speakers embarked from the Bight of Biafra among the first recaptive generation. The most likely origin for this group was the Guerrero, which wrecked near Key West in 1827, but some captives from the Bight of Biafra were also seized with the Fenix in 1830. Approximately 90 recaptives arrived on the ACS ship Heroine in March 1830. See Swanson, Slave Ship Guerrero, and Cowan, Liberia, as I Found It, 48. See also J. Mechlin to Rev. R. R. Gurley, African Repository and Colonial Journal 8, no. 7 (September 1832): 200–201; “Intelligence from Liberia,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 11, no. 3 (March 1835): 81–89; and “Kentucky State Colonization Society,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 10, no. 7 (September 1834): 209–10. On the process of “Igboization,” see Nwokeji, Slave Trade and Culture, 5–6, 105, 125.

  28. “The Recaptured Africans,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 10, no. 3 (May 1834): 90; Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 134; Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 100.

  29. “United States Agency for Recaptured Africans,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 6 (June 1846): 180; “Condition and Expense of the United States Agency for Recaptured Africans,” 146.

  30. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 93.

  31. Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 72.

  32. “Capture of the Slaver Pons,” Boston Daily Atlas, 19 March 1846; J. W. Lugenbeel to Wm. McLain, 29 December 1845, “Despatches from Liberia,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 4 (April 1846): 112–13.

  33. J. W. Lugenbeel, “Communications. Letter from Dr. Lugenbeel,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 143.

  34. “Table of Emigrants,” African Repository 27, no. 5 (May 1851): 149–50. According to ACS records, the ACS laid out provisions for Pons recaptives for which they were later compensated $37,800 by the U.S. government. See McLain to O. H. Browning, 14 April 1868, reel 10, RSI.

  35. Burrowes, Power and Press Freedom, 46–49, 59–62.

  36. J. W. Lugenbeel, “Despatches from Liberia,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 4 (April 1846): 112–13.

  37. J. W. Lugenbeel, “Despatches from Liberia,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 154.

  38. Ball, Report on the Condition and Prospect, 10–11. William Nesbit, an African American traveler sponsored by the ACS, wrote an even stronger denunciation of Liberian colonists’ labor system in 1853; see Nesbit, “Four Months in Liberia,” 102–4. Writing in 1857, black American missionary Samuel Williams defended the Liberian apprenticeships, arguing that although individual abuses might occur, it was a system regulated by the courts that applied only to a temporary period of a young apprentice’s life. See Williams, “Four Years in Liberia,” 172.

  39. Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 168.

  40. J. B. Benham, “Communication from the Rev. J. B. Benham,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 146, 149. In March 1848, John and Susan Benham returned to Baltimore traveling with a “Congo girl.” See Twenty-Ninth Annual Report of the Mission Society of the Methodist Church, 17.

  41. Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 190.

  42. Susan H. Benham, “Letter from Mrs. Benham,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 149–50; “Meeting Called on the Arrival of the ‘Pons.’” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 145–46. As Susan Benham saw it, indigenous family heads resisted sending daughters to the mission due to fears that “enlightened” young women would no longer submit to “all the drudgery imposed by their domineering lords” (“Letter from Mrs. Benham,” 150).

  43. A. Wilkins, “Letter from Mrs. Ann Wilkins,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 151–52. The naming opportunities described by Ann Wilkins resembled Church Mission Society practices in Sierra Leone, discontinued after 1819, where donors could rename a recaptive child. See Fyfe, “A. B. C. Sibthorpe,” 328, and Jones, “New Light on the Liberated Africans.”

  44. On missionary involvement with recaptives in Liberia, see also Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 439; W. B. Hoyt, “Extract of a Letter,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 5 (May 1846): 143–45; J. W. Lugenbeel, “Religion among the Congoes by the Pons,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 24, no. 2 (February 1848): 37–39; Hoyt, Land of Hope, 100; and Wm. C., “Methodist Episcopal Missions in Liberia,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 24, no. 10 (October 1848): 295.

  45. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 110–11, 241. James Sidbury argues that many black American emigrants over the course of the nineteenth century turned away from a diasporic label of “African” in favor of developing an “American” identity in Liberian colonial society. The third and largest generation of recaptives arrived in Liberia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century when this divide between black American emigrants and Liberian native groups had matured and intensified. See Sidbury, Becoming African in America, 183–202.

  46. Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 440.

  47. “Those Congoes,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 1 (January 1847): 25; J. J. Roberts, “The Recaptured Africans,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 10 (October 1846): 301–2; “Thirtieth Annual Report of the American Colonization Society,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 3 (March 1847): 77; “Letter from Dr. Lugenbeel,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 5 (May 1847): 142.

  48. Wiley, Slaves No More, 67. Matilda Skipwith was manumitted for emigration from Virginia in 1834. By 1848, she had married Samuel B. Lomax, a cooper. See Emigrants table on Virginia Emigrants to Liberia website, http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia/focus.php?id=1102 (accessed 2 July 2015).

  49. J. J. Roberts to A.G. Phelps, African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 2 (February 1847): 61.

  50. “The Africans by the ‘Pons,’” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 6 (June 1847): 188–89.

  51. One Congo man was shot during this conflict. See Solomon S. Page to Charles W. Andrews, Edina, 1849, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 107–8, 323 n. 2.

  52. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 24 August 1860, reel 3, RSI; “Letter of Rev. J. Rambo,” African Repository 29, no. 9 (September 1853): 261; “From Liberia,” African Repository 37, no. 11 (November 1861): 349–51; William C. Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, 23 September 1861, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 211–12.

  53. Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 226–28.

  54. For “umbrella terms” as opposed to more precise ethnonyms, see Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers, 45, 82–83.

  55. Examples of the term “Congo” used for Pons recaptives include Ball, Report on the Condition and Prospect, 10; J. W. Lugenbeel, “Religion among the Congoes by the Pons,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 24, no. 2 (February 1848): 37–39; and “Letter of Kong Koba,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23, no. 8 (August 1847): 244.

  56. “Return of the Stevens,” African Repository 37, no. 5 (May 1861): 130.

  57. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 245.

  58. Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 442. The Liberian colonist population in the 1858–61 period is difficult to determine. The 1843 census showed a total colonist population of 2,388, with 912 individuals residing in Monrovia. See Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 34, table 5. From 1844 to 1856, ACS records show 5,251 emigrants arriving, but mortality figures were high. See “Table of Emigrants,” African Repos
itory 33, no. 5 (May 1857): 152–55. Burrowes, Power and Press Freedom, 72–73, places Monrovia’s population at 5,000 in 1856 and 12,000 in 1861, indicating both Monrovia’s economic growth and large numbers of recaptives who arrived during that period of time. Kentucky State Colonization Society agent Alexander Cowan estimated Liberia’s colonist population in 1858 at 7,621; see Liberia, as I Found It, 166. On St. Paul River settlements, see Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 73–87.

  59. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 199.

  60. See John Seys to William McLain, 10 March 1859, Series 1.B, Incoming Correspondence, Letters from Liberia, 1 March 1859–22 October 1860, ACSR. Because, as discussed later, a Nathaniel Freeman shows up in Seys’s 1860 receipts as an interpreter for recaptives of the Bonito, it is possible that “Mr. Freeman” himself was a former recaptive, perhaps of the Pons, and that the conflict had more specific political dynamics understood only by Freeman and the Echo shipmates.

  61. See ibid.

  62. See H. W. Dennis to William McLain, 14 May 1859, and John Seys to William McLain, 19 March 1859, Series 1.B, Incoming Correspondence, Letters from Liberia, 1 March 1859–22 October 1860, ACSR.

  63. Voyages, IDs #4393, #4653; William Inman to Isaac Toucey, 14 August 1860, Letters received by the Secretary of the Navy, RG45, reel 11, NARA. On the capture of the Storm King, see Dornin to Judge of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, 9 August 1860, Letterbook of Thomas Aloysius Dornin, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

  64. Voyages, IDs #4655, #4656, #4955. On the capture of the Bonito, see Dornin to Judge of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, 17 October 1860, Letterbook of Thomas Aloysius Dornin, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

  65. Due to the similarities in recaptive experiences of Liberian resettlement as well as an abundance of Monrovia-generated records, this chapter draws on evidence for the entire pool of the third generation of recaptives in Liberia, including not only shipmates of the Echo, Wildfire, William, and Bogota, but also the Erie, Storm King, Cora, Bonito, and Nightingale. The latter group were transported directly to Liberia after naval interception near the West Central African coast.