Recaptured Africans

by Fett, Sharla M. ;

  66. Tyler-McGraw, African Republic, 139, 159.

  67. Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 42–63 passim, uses “settler standard” to describe the U.S.-influenced culture of Liberian settler society, with its emphasis on propriety, piety, self-sufficiency, benevolence, and respectability.

  68. Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 73.

  69. “Articles of Agreement between the Republic of Liberia and the American Colonization Society,” 23 March 1849, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, ACSR.

  70. John Seys to Jacob Thompson, 31 October 1860, reel 10, RSI.

  71. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 28 December 1860, reel 10, RSI; Boyd, “Negro Colonization in the National Crisis,” 68–71; Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 435–37.

  72. Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds,” 13–16.

  73. John Lewis to John Seys, 22 August 1860, and John Seys to John Lewis, 23 August 1860, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder 1860 “Liberated Slaves,” ACSR.

  74. “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” African Repository 36, no. 12 (December 1860): 355–58. For the Liberian government’s objection to recaptives being held “under the auspices of foreign bodies,” see “From the Liberia Herald of September 19,” African Repository 37, no. 1 (January 1861): 28.

  75. “Articles of Agreement Respecting Recaptured Africans Entered into in the City of Monrovia,” 21 December 1860, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder 1860 “Liberated Slaves,” ACSR. Born in St. Croix, West Indies, to Danish slaveholding parents, John Seys (1799–1872) became a Wesleyan Methodist minister in 1829. He spent many years in Liberia in a variety of roles, including superintendent of Methodist Episcopal missions of West Africa and U.S. agent for recaptured Africans (whom he frequently called “liberated Africans,” following British terminology). Seys was a controversial figure in Liberian politics in the 1830s and ‘40s, an opponent of the ACS administration prior to independence, in alliance with less elite colonists and merchants. See Park, “White” Americans in “Black” Africa, 132–37; Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 119; Burrowes, Power and Press Freedom, 46–49, 59–62; and Boyd, “American Colonization Society and the Slave Recaptives,” 117.

  76. Several receptacles, including one in Monrovia and one farther up the St. Paul River near Virginia, were built in response to the arrival of the Pons shipmates. See “The Slaves Liberated from the ‘Pons,’” African Repository and Colonial Journal 22, no. 4 (April 1846): 130–31. Positive descriptions of Liberia praised the receptacles as signs of Liberia’s readiness for emigrants, while the more critical literature on Liberia in the 1850s criticized the receptacles as squalid and decayed. See Cowan, Liberia, as I Found It, 65–66; Nesbit, “Four Months in Liberia,” 90; and Washington, “Liberia as It Is, 1854,” 206.

  77. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 24 August 1860, reel 3, RSI.

  78. Seys receipts, reel 10, RSI: Seys to B. R. Wilson, $280.15, August and September 1860; Seys to Mary Anderson, $31.35, September 1860; Seys to Thomas Cooper, $66.28, September 1860; Seys to S. Washington, “country cloths for Congoes,” December 1860. See also John Seys to Morris Officer, 31 December 1860, and to Isaac Toucey, 16 October 1860, reel 3, RSI.

  79. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 24 August, 16 October 1860, reel 3, RSI; John Seys, “U.S. Agency for Liberated Africans, Monrovia,” 17 October 1860, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder June–December 1860, ACSR; Young Ship Log, 29 August 1860.

  80. Grymes Report, 29.

  81. “Roll of Names of Recaptives Landed at Robertsport Per Ship Castilian in August 1860,” Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder June–December 1860, ACSR.

  82. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 16, 31 October 1860, reel 3, RSI.

  83. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 26 October, 1860, reel 3, RSI. See also another, but probably less reliable, account of the reunion of Pons survivor Daniel Bacon with a brother on the Echo: [Seys], S. “A Leaf from ‘Reminiscences of Liberia,’” African Repository 41, no. 5 (May 1865): 149–51. This account bears similarities to the romance of reunion employed in press representations of the Amistad recaptives, in which reunion helped to reinforce a stark line between slavery and freedom and placed antislavery personnel in a heroic light. See Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 221–38.

  84. C. C. Hoffman, “The Recaptured Africans Returned by the Niagara,” African Repository 36, no. 6 (June 1860): 172; “From Liberia,” World, 7 July 1860.

  85. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 24 August 1860, reel 3, RSI.

  86. See receipts for services paid, John Seys, 1860, reel 10, RSI. The list of interpreters named in John Seys’s records (and billed for support of particular shipmate groups) includes John James (Cora shipmates), Benjamin Stryker (Cora), Adam Morris, Nathaniel Freeman, John Benson (Bonito), John Miner, and Thomas David (Bonito).

  87. Ibid.

  88. Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom; Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad, 22–65; Byrd, Captives and Voyagers, 122–243.

  89. Voyages, http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1808&yearTo=1866&fate3=3&sla1port=60200 (accessed 6 July 2015). The distribution of embarkation regions for the 446 voyages seized under the British flag and disembarking in Sierra Leone between 1808 and 1866 demonstrates the ethnic diversity of Sierra Leone’s recaptive population: 149 ships embarked captives from Bight of Benin; 136, from Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea Islands; 70, from Sierra Leone; 29, from West Central Africa and St. Helena; 22, from Windward Coast; 19, from other unnamed African regions; 10, from Gold Coast; 10, from Senegambia; 1, from Southeast Africa and Indian Ocean. See http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/sglhUfeg (accessed 4 March 2016).

  90. Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 194–98.

  91. Peterson, Province of Freedom, 184–87; Everill, Abolition and Empire, 17–32.

  92. Northrup, “Becoming African,” 11–12; Cole, “Liberated Slaves and Islam,” 383–403; Fyle, “Yoruba Diaspora in Sierra Leone’s Krio Society,” 366–80; Everill, Abolition and Empire, 21, 39, 47, 49.

  93. Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 186–89, 190–91. Lawrance notes the exploitative and abusive nature of these apprenticeships, often resulting in virtual enslavement but also kidnapping and literal reenslavement.

  94. Domingues da Silva, Eltis, Misevich, and Ojo, “Diaspora of Africans,” 359–62; Peterson, Province of Freedom, 163.

  95. Peterson, Province of Freedom, 150–73.

  96. Domingues da Silva, Eltis, Misevich, and Ojo, “Diaspora of Africans,” argues that Sierra Leone was the place where recaptive Africans had, in relative terms, the most control to shape their lives after slave ship interception. See also Peterson, Province of Freedom, 189–271. On liberated African villages in the Americas, see Schuler, Alas! Alas! Kongo, 65–84, and Adderley, “New Negroes from Africa,” 92–248 passim.

  97. After undergoing court proceedings to condemn captured vessels, adult male recaptives in Freetown received six months of per diem support, adult women received only three months, and children “above a certain age” were apprenticed. See Lawrance, Amistad’s Orphans, 197, and Domingues da Silva, Eltis, Misevich, and Ojo, “Diaspora of Africans,” 362.

  98. Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 437–38.

  99. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 28 November 1860, reel 10, RSI; John Seys, “Report of Recaptured Africans, Liberia,” 31 March 1861, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder Correspondence, January–June 1861, ACSR. See also receipt from John Seys to Tobias Outland for services on the “committee in giving out congoes” at Monrovia, 2 January 1861, reel 10, RSI.

  100. Lindsay, “Boundaries of Slavery,” 268–69.

  101. Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 185–88; Cowan, Liberia, as I Found It, 66.

  102. President Buchanan asked Congress for $45,000 for expenses related to transport and support of Echo recaptives for one year. See James Buchanan to William McLain, 7 September 1858, Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspond
ence, folder Letters Rec’d 1856–1859, ACSR. In addition to a separate agreement made for Echo recaptives, in 1860–61, the United States signed four separate contracts with the ACS for support of roughly 4,500 recaptives on 20 July 1860, 22 October 1860, 2 March 1861, and 29 July 1861. See “Contracts with the U.S.,” 4 March [n.d.], Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder June–December 1860, ACSR. The paperwork and reporting of these expenses posed enormous logistical challenges, leading to contestation of Seys’s reports by the U.S. Congress. See John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 16 October 1860, reel 3, RSI. The argument over U.S. reimbursement to Liberia based on John Seys’s reports continued through 1865. In the end, the United States paid only a partial amount of the contracted support, thus leaving the small republic of Liberia to subsidize U.S. recaptive policy. See Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 427–34.

  103. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 94, 107, 245–46; Younger, “Liberia and the Last Slave Ships,” 438; Akpan, “Black Imperialism,” 227; Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 115.

  104. “Letter from Rev. John Seys,” African Repository 37, no. 2 (February 1861): 62; Forty-Seventh Annual Report of the American Colonization Society, 11; Clegg, Price of Liberty, 245.

  105. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 246; Sawyer, Emergence of Autocracy, 114, 187.

  106. Crummell, “Regenerating Policy of Liberia,” 232.

  107. Crummell, “Rev. Mr. Crummell on the Congo Recaptives,” 313.

  108. Ibid.

  109. Moses, Creative Conflict in African American Thought, 82–138.

  110. William C. Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, 31 August 1860, 23 September 1861, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 210–12. On the migration of Burke and his family, see Virginia Emigrants to Liberia database, http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia/focus.php?id=211 (accessed 2 July 2015).

  111. The Protestant Episcopal Mission at Cape Palmas adopted ten children from the Echo’s company, but little other evidence is available for the apprenticeship or mission experiences of Wildfire and William shipmates. See “Recaptured Africans of the ‘Echo,’” in Forty-Second Annual Report of the American Colonization Society, 9.

  112. Ann Seys, “Appeal for the Congoes by Mrs. Seys,” African Repository 37, no. 4 (April 1861): 113.

  113. Imhoff, Life of Rev. Morris Officer, 237–39. In this account, Imhoff quoted from Officer’s correspondence. Officer’s journal entry discusses his visit to the receptacle but does not mention responses of recaptive children to being transported to the mission; see Officer Diary, 25 September 1860. Officer, a Lutheran clergyman who had also traveled to the Mendi mission in Sierra Leone, arrived in Liberia around April 1860 and had newly established the Muhlenberg school when the third wave of recaptives arrived in Liberia. See “Lutheran Mission Institute,” African Repository 36, no. 11 (November 1860): 350–51.

  114. Imhoff, Life of Rev. Morris Officer, 240–43.

  115. “Roll of Names of Recaptives Landed at Robertsport Per Ship Castilian in August 1860,” Series 1.E, Miscellaneous Incoming Correspondence, folder June–December 1860, ACSR. No “Frank” appears on the roster, only Francis and Franklin listed at nine and eleven years old, respectively. The rupturing act of forced renaming makes it extremely difficult to follow Francisco’s story further into Liberia. Given the close attention Young paid to Francisco in his journal, he would almost certainly have mentioned it if Francisco had died aboard ship. Therefore, I conclude that Francisco lived to disembark at Cape Mount. The ship’s roster of disembarking recaptives offers only one admittedly speculative clue to Francisco’s existence. The first name (“No. 1”) on the list was a twenty-two-year-old man, christened Steven Benson (also the name of the then-current Liberian president). Such a description generally matches Young’s identification of Francisco’s age in a newspaper article as twenty-two as well as Harper’s description of Francisco as a “young man.” For comparative purposes, see renaming process in Brazil in Mamigonian, “To Be a Liberated African in Brazil,” 39–46.

  116. Officer Diary, 15 September 1860; Imhoff, Life of Rev. Morris Officer, 243–44.

  117. Consider, for example, an ACS announcement about several Liberian students studying at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. The young men included Thomas Roberts (Vey nation), John Johns (Congo), Samuel Sevier (Bassa), Calvin Wright, and Robert King. See “Preparing for Liberia,” African Repository 56, no. 10 (April 1880): 63.

  118. John Seys to Isaac Toucey, 26 October 1860, reel 3, and 28 November 1860, reel 10, RSI.

  119. John Seys to Thomas Travis, Coroner, 28 September 1860, reel 10, RSI.

  120. John Seys to Thomas Travis, Dr., 6 December 1860, reel 10, RSI.

  121. Officer Diary, 16 November 1860; Imhoff, Life of Rev. Morris Officer, 258.

  122. In his 23 September 1861 letter to Gurley, Burke notes that “churches and Sabbath schools are every Sabbath crowded” with recaptives in Clay Ashland. See Wiley, Slaves No More, 212.

  123. Seys to Toucey, 16 October 1860, reel 3, RSI.

  124. “From Rev. C. C. Hoffman,” African Repository 37, no. 5 (May 1861): 132.

  125. Officer Diary, 24, 29 September 1860. On 10 September 1860, Officer notes, “Congo boys rebellious while I was absent would not get wood for cooking,” concluding that he expected to examine and punish the boys. On 6 October 1860, Officer mentions twenty “Congo boys” sent to cut rice in the fields of Jolla Billa, a “native chief.” See also Imhoff, Life of Rev. Morris Officer, 304–5.

  126. Officer Diary, 24 September 1860; Imhoff, Life of Rev. Morris Office, 245–49.

  127. Seys receipt to S. S. Winkey, 23 October 1860, and receipt for Burt Colbert’s “Apprehending two Africans,” 26 November 1860, reel 10, RSI. For Solomon Winkey’s emigration in 1839, see “The Sixteenth Annual Report of the American Society for the Colonizing of the Free People of Colour of the United States,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 16, no. 3 (March 1840): 25.

  128. United States Agency for Liberated Africans, 30 September 1861, reel 10. RSI.

  129. Officer Diary, 28 September 1860.

  130. Seys to Laing, for medical attendance on Recaptives at Careysburg from 30 August 1860 to 7 January 1861, and Seys to M. Officer for bill paid to Dr. Laing, 25 January 1861, reel 10, RSI. Daniel Laing, along with Martin Delany, first attempted to train at Harvard but completed his medical degree at Dartmouth under the sponsorship of the Massachusetts Colonization Society after being ejected from Harvard due to white student protest. For Laing’s arrival in Liberia, see “More Immigrants Than Could Be Accommodated,” African Repository 30, no. 7 (July 1854): 194.

  131. Officer Diary, 29 September 1860. All references to the escape in this paragraph come from this day’s diary entry.

  132. See Chapter 3 for origins of Bogota shipmates.

  133. “Letter from Pres. Stephen A. Benson,” African Repository, 37, no. 1 (January 1861): 30; “From Rev. C. C. Hoffman,” African Repository 37, no. 5 (May 1861): 134; Crummell, “‘Africa and Her People,’” 66.

  134. C. C. Hoffman, “From Rev. C. C. Hoffman,” African Repository 37, no. 5 (May 1861): 134.

  135. Henry B. Stewart to Ralph R. Gurley, Greenville, 16 March 1861, quoted as spelled in Wiley, Slaves No More, 303.

  136. Hawthorne, “‘Being Now, as It Were, One Family’”; Watson, “‘Prize Negroes’ and the Development of Racial Attitudes,” 161.

  137. Established in the mid-1830s, first as Mississippi in Africa by the Mississippi Colonization Society, Sinoe consistently had the smallest population of colonists. The 1843 census recorded only seventy-nine emigrants. See Clegg, Price of Liberty, 146–47.

  138. Fernando Moreno to Jacob Thompson, 28 May, 10 June 1860, reel 6, RSI; “From Liberia,” African Repository 37, no. 6 (June 1861): 161–62; C. C. Hoffman, “From Rev. C. C. Hoffman,” African Repository 37, no. 5 (May 1861): 134. For a similar comparison of “fierce” Yoruba with tractable “Congo” in Trinidad, see Adderley, “New Negroes from Africa,” 111.

  139. “From Liber
ia,” African Repository 37, no. 6 (June 1861): 161–62.

  140. Perhaps indicating his disagreement with their treatment, Stewart portrayed the shipmates’ defiance as a predictable “native” reaction against the broken word of colonial supervisors, adding, “Whatever may be Said of these People of being Lawless or Rebellious I have not Seen it” (Henry B. Stewart to Ralph R. Gurley, Greenville, 16 March 1861, quoted as spelled in Wiley, Slaves No More, 302).

  141. “Dr. Hall, and the Sinou River Falls,” African Repository 37, no. 5 (May 1861): 147; “From Liberia,” African Repository 37, no. 6 (June 1861): 161–62.

  142. “From Liberia,” African Repository 37, no. 6 (June 1861): 162. Henry Stewart in 1863 remarked on the “industry” of recaptives at Ashmun, noting that they “in a great measure supplied the town of Greenville with the products of their industry” (Stewart to Gurley, 18 September 1863, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 303–4). In 1865, John Seys noted Sinoe recaptives’ cultivation of “plantains, bannanas, eddoes, yams, peanuts, capavas, sweet potatoes, and various kinds of fruit that they carry daily into Greenville for sale to the Liberians.” Recaptives freed Greenville emigrants from food production, Seys argued, thus allowing American-born Liberians to focus on commerce and export commodities of coffee, sugar, cotton, and cocoa. See John Seys, “The Recaptured Africans in Liberia,” African Repository 41, no. 1 (January 1865): 16.

  143. Peel, Religious Encounter, 28–30, 37–38. Peel argues that Yoruba speakers in the Oyo Kingdom established the “basic social forms” of the “nucleated settlement,” lineages structured along agnatic descent, “cultic” and occupational associations, and status conferred through title. However, even in what would come to be known as Yorubaland, war, refugee movements, and economic instability prevented these forms from being realized in their ideal; see ibid., 30–31. Thus, we can understand the Bogota shipmates as facing an extreme version of the challenges to social cohesion already under way in their home areas.