Part 1

THE AMERICAN NAVY AND LIBERIA.

AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, JANUARY 18, 1876,

BY COMMODORE R. W. SHUFELDT, U. S. N.

WASHINGTON CITY: COLONIZATION BUILDING, 450 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. 1876.

ADDRESS.

GENTLEMEN: It is not inappropriate to this occasion that an officer of the navy should address your honorable Society, and although your committee might easily have chosen a more worthy representative of that branch of the public service, they could have found none more sincerely interested in your cause or more deeply impressed with its importance.

From the first disastrous effort, in 1819, to colonize the negroes from the United States at Sherbro, up to the present time, the Navy has contributed with sword and pen to advance the interests and protect the rights of the Americo-Africans. In that year, 1819, the U. S. Ship “Cyane” convoyed to Africa the “Elizabeth,” the first emigrant ship, the “Mayflower” of these new pilgrims, and Lieutenant Townsend lost his life in the duty incidental to landing them. The inexorable march of time, however, has placed upon the roll of the distinguished dead most of those whose words and deeds contributed so much to the founding of the Republic of Liberia. First among these, and almost the first in the hearts and memories of his naval brethren, stands the name of Stockton. In 1821 Lieut. Stockton took command of the “Alligator,” a vessel sent out by the U. S. Government at the earnest solicitation of Justice Bushrod Washington, President of the Society, and Francis S. Key, one of its managers, for the express purpose of selecting a site on the Western Coast of Africa, better adapted to the purposes of colonization than Sherbro, a place notoriously unhealthy and in many respects undesirable. The first order issued by Lieut. Commanding Stockton to the crew of his little craft, while yet in sight of the shores of America, was to throw overboard the cat, (the lash was then a legal mode of punishment on board of our vessels of war,) informing them that he intended to exact their obedience by some other means. He was wiser than, perhaps, he knew, for, bound on this mission of humanity, there would have been a strange inconsistency in his conduct had he carried with him into Africa that vile relic of barbarism. Yet this act indicates the character of the man who in that day, and in the face of current opinion, dared to vindicate by word and deed the right of man, black or white, to exemption from a barbarous thraldom whether upon land or sea. December 11th, 1821, Lieut. Stockton placed his foot on African soil at Cape Mesurado, and, at the risk of his life, wrested from savagery that spot whereon now stands the light-house guiding the mariner to Monrovia, the Capital of a new born Republic, and in its firm foundations, and its light gleaming alternately on land and sea, fitly emblematic of him who ever stood fixed in his strong convictions of the right, and showed to all men the guiding star of his brilliant intellect and spotless character.

Liberia, then only an isolated spot of land, now spreads herself on the south to the extent of 500 miles from this point. A narrow belt upon the sea-shore, slowly but surely widening her influence, brightening up the dark cloud in the background, as year by year she struggles and penetrates here and there, now up a river and then into the forest, like the streak of light in the eastern sky which tells of the coming day. An author says that the name of Stockton will be associated in history with the names of the founders of this now prosperous State, for to his courage and prudence its original acquisition may be ascribed. Accompanied only by one companion he went into the presence of the native King of that part of the Coast, and when threatened with instant death, presented his pistol at the head of the angry chief, cowing the multitude by the danger of their Sovereign and obtaining from the subdued savages the desired territory.

If we add to this achievement in Africa the fact, that throughout his brilliant career, he adhered with wonderful pertinacity to his idea of punishment without the lash, until he obtained, or greatly aided in obtaining, the passage of that law which banished the cat from the Navy, we may fairly place him high on its rolls as one whose memory we may cherish, and whose deeds we may emulate, and point him out to the Liberian as the man whose nature, revolting at inhumanity in any form, taught his own men before landing on African soil that first lesson of freedom which Liberians have since learned to appreciate as it deserves.

The name of Perry, among the brightest in the annals of naval history, shone with undimmed lustre in the person of Commodore M. C. Perry while in command of our squadron on the Coast of Africa. Perry cruised along the Liberian seaboard, using force when force was necessary, discretion, combined with firmness, always. Under his surveillance the timid colonist became more bold, and the wary savage more circumspect, until when he left the station, Gov. Russwurm, of Cape Palmas, was constrained to write him under date of December 25, 1843, “Our prospects have been brighter since the arrival of your squadron on this Coast than ever, and however willing we were before to endure everything for liberty, our hearts swell with gratitude to you for the deep interest expressed in our future well-being. That a gracious Providence may long preserve your life for usefulness, is the ardent prayer of every citizen of Maryland in Liberia.”

From the time of Commodore Perry’s command (1844) up to the commencement of our civil war the Navy was not without its representatives on the Liberian Coast. Many prominent officers not only gave that country their warmest support, but have recorded their meed of praise to its inhabitants. Commodore Joel Abbott, 1845, says: “Although it is the day of small things with our colored colonists in Africa, yet I believe there is no one who has visited them but is favorably impressed with their present condition beyond what was anticipated, and with the belief of their progressive improvement and of their growing importance in all the relations concerning Africa and the African race that should interest the Christian philanthropist and statesman.”

Commodore Isaac Mayo, 1853, says: “I have long felt the warmest interest in the only scheme which promised relief to the colored people of our country, and this interest was confirmed by my visit to Liberia, when in command of the frigate “Macedonian,” in the years 1843 and 1844. My more recent observations in this ship convince me that the Colonization Societies have been crowned with the most substantial success, and that the result of their generous philanthropy is no longer doubtful.... I have the strongest faith in the bright future that awaits Liberia, and the strongest confidence that she is to wield the most powerful influence in regenerating Africa.”

Commodore Francis H. Gregory, 1855, says: “Previously to my visiting Liberia I had a hope the Colonization Society would be successful. I considered it an experiment and entertained but little faith, but on my first visit to Monrovia every doubt was dispelled. I visited the people collectively and individually and had every opportunity of forming a correct judgment of their condition and prospects.... I found the people industrious and happy, apparently in the enjoyment of every domestic comfort, and some of the most opulent having many of the luxuries and elegancies of more famed and refined regions.” By those to whom Commodore Gregory was known, the value of his testimony will be appreciated. Throughout a long and earnest life this officer devoted all of his time and thought to the service of his country.

Paymaster General Bridge, in his “Journal of an African Cruiser,” remarks, “After having seen much, and reflected upon the subject even to weariness, I write down my opinion that Liberia is firmly planted and is destined to increase and prosper. This it will do though all further support from the United States be discontinued.... My faith is firm in a favorable result.”

Chaplain Chas. W. Thomas adds his testimony in the following extracts from “Adventures and Observations in Africa:” “Our duty as a Christian nation towards her (Liberia) is clear. Far be it from us to witness with cold-blooded indifference the struggles of those who have gone out from us with barbarism and ignorance. If Liberia is a weak and myopic child, it is not ours to look calmly upon her attempts to walk alone, guessing cruelly as to the chances of her making a safe journey, but it is ours by kind words to encourage her heart and to lead her by the hand until age shall bring strength to her feet and clearness to her vision.”

Perhaps upon the Navy list we have no purer and nobler character than that of the late Rear Admiral A. H. Foote. Foote wielded the sword and the pen of the philanthropist, the Christian, and the patriot. How much the lessons he learned while on the Coast of Africa in command of the brig “Perry,” among the iniquities of the slave-trade and the struggles of the Liberian colonists had to do with the excellence of his character, may be traced in the history of his life. He says: “Civilization with its peace, intelligence with its high aims, was rooted in Africa. The living energy of republicanism was there, Christianity in various influential forms was among the people. Education was advancing and institutions for public good coming into operation. Native hereditary enmities and factions were yielding perceptibly in all directions to the gentle efficacy of Christian example. All this constituted a great result.”

The Christian virtues of Admiral Foote are the property of the country, his professional qualities are the inheritance of the Navy—these will be remembered as long as we have a Country to defend or a Navy to defend it.

The concurrent testimony of these distinguished officers and thoughtful men, embracing the period from the foundation of the colony to the time of our civil war, express not only the hope, but the belief that Liberia, poor and weak as she is, yet possesses many of the elements of national wealth and strength, and proves beyond cavil the progress and the permanence of that Republic.

During the war, and while our own nationality was in peril, the Navy had but little time to spare for the interests of Liberia. The battle for the freedom of the black man was being fought upon a grander scale than within her narrow limits. After that victory had been gained our ships began once more to visit the African Coast, though at rare intervals.

In 1873 it became my duty and my pleasure to visit the Coast of Africa, after an interval of twenty-five years. A quarter of a century had passed leaving its furrows upon my face, as it does upon the face of every son of Adam, but the interest I had felt in that lone lorn colony was as fresh as ever. It was therefore with unmixed satisfaction that I landed again at Cape Mesurado, and in an instant recalled the familiar streets and many of the faces that used to greet me in Monrovia years ago.

I do not propose to go into the history of Liberia; that is to be found in every Cyclopedia—those who run may read it. My own personal impressions will be of more interest to you; these have vitality which comes of contact, a freshness not to be found in the musty pages of a book however well written. Personal experience compared with history is the original compared with the photograph.

Cape Mesurado juts out into the sea, a promontory of gentle height, covered with the verdure which the tropics only can produce. The surf roars at its base and the water of the Mesurado river breaks over the bar by its side—the canoe of the native glides through the surf over this bar and lands you with wonderful safety at Monrovia, which lies just behind the cape by the side of the river.

In the growth of a new nation, in its consolidation and crystalization, _time_ forms no just measure of _progress_. Not to go back, to stem the adverse tide, to wait, is absolutely to advance. To be where you were, after years of struggles against obstacles almost insurmountable, is a point gained, and a success accomplished.

Monrovia presented the same sunny streets and shaded houses, the same evidences of comfort, and of the absence of want, that it did twenty-five years before; no great mark of improvement, no sad evidences of decay. In the meanwhile, however, more activity on the wharves, more canoes laden with produce coming down the river, steamships stopping eight times a month landing and receiving cargo, more sugar mills, coffee trees growing where the forest undisturbed had waved before—all this, and more, indicated life, business, commercial and agricultural prosperity.

I thought to myself as I walked again through the streets, “Monrovia is a _fixed fact_.” No reflux tide can wash her into the sea. She may advance more rapidly, she may stand still. But every event, whether rapid, slow, or stationary in her course, Liberia is there to _stay_. An island in the ocean of barbarism, “a little cloud out of the sea like a man’s hand,” yet full of portent to Africa, a herald of the coming of that army of civilization which by an inexorable law exterminates where it cannot convert.

But a great change manifested itself in the temper and tone of the people. Years ago I saw indicated everywhere that innate consciousness of inferiority, that deprecating humility which came of their birth—emigrants from the slave cabins in our own country—that absence of independent thought, that shrinking humility which feared to give an opinion; these came from the remembrance of that grand old thing, now of the past—the _master_. With warm affections toward their home, as they called America, favors easily remembered and wrongs as easily forgotten, they welcomed us and bore with us as we tacitly claimed that superiority which comes of being born white men.

Now a change had taken place, a new generation had come and a regeneration. We were welcomed with hospitality devoid of servility, and with kindness devoid of fear. They acknowledged gratefully the protection which the American flag affords them, not more for the fact than as a token of remembrance from the mother country.

President Roberts is an epitome of Liberian history. He stands pre-eminently the guiding genius of Liberia through all her struggles. That there is none equal to him in point of ability, combined with wisdom and linked to virtue; that he is superior to all in these respects, to every other Liberian, is no more an argument for the average inferiority of the colored race than the proud pre-eminence of George Washington is an argument for the inferiority of the American branch of the white race. The history of nations is written in the lives of individuals. President Roberts has shaped the destiny of his country, and as much as any other man living has contributed to the moral and physical good of the human race.

I dined at President Roberts’ table with the members of his Cabinet, Ex-President Warner, and the Haytien Consul, Mr. Yates. Most of them were new men to me. They exhibited a general knowledge of passing events which, from their isolated condition, would have surprised me, had I not in previous experience observed that men forced to read what others daily saw were generally more accurate in their knowledge and more critical in their deductions. The Cabinet of Mr. Roberts seemed to me respectable men, quite up to the average of men, whether white or black.

Without disparagement to others, I wish to make a brief mention of a pleasant visit to the house of a private citizen. This house was presided over by a lady whose refined and elegant manners would have attracted attention and admiration in any drawing-room. In her conversation she exhibited a brilliancy which was really remarkable, and an intelligence quite as surprising. She was Liberian born, but spoke of America with the love she had inherited.

Along the streets and by-ways of Monrovia are to be seen the ordinary variety of human beings, young and old, rich and poor, sick and well. You note the absence of grogshops and the presence of churches. Like pilgrims as they are, or were, the prevailing and controlling sentiment of the community is a religious one. To land upon a foreign shore, to cut one’s self off from kith and kin, to plunge into a wilderness, needs faith absolute, vital, in the personality of God and in Divine protection. Add to this the emotional character of the negro and you have the ordinary Liberian; law-abiding and, from his nature and race, indolent, timid, willing to be helped, loth to help himself. I do not mean to compare this colonist with the great domineering, self-asserting, self-dependent Anglo-Saxon, who bullies and conquers and rules wherever he emigrates, but I do mean to say that Liberia and its inhabitants will compare, and favorably, too, with the towns and the people scattered over Central and South America and Mexico, settled by the Spaniard, the Italian, and the Frenchman. Go where you will in these countries you see the same evidences of indolence, the same apparent lack of progress, yet these people _are_ prospering in their way, gradually but surely reaching a higher plane, and so I contend are the Liberians. Remember, the Liberians were _poor_ even to abject poverty, they had received no inheritance but the badge of their servitude, they were ignorant—the law in this free country of ours had taken care to keep them so—painfully ignorant, not only of the common principles of law by which they were to construct a government, but of the common principles of life by which they were to live.

God measures people for Himself. He is patient because He is Eternal. Fifty years in the life of a nation born under such adverse circumstances, struggling under poverty and obliquy—predicted a failure by the prophets of caste, checked and thwarted by the priests and politicians of conservatism, unaided, uncheered, born in a wilderness, surrounded, hemmed in by barbarism while just emerging from barbarism itself—fifty years in the life of such a nation is but a moment of time in the Providence of God. Let us then endeavor in our imperfect way to imitate God’s patience and wait while we hope and pray.

The Krooman, whose tribes are scattered for eighty miles along the Liberian Coast, is the Bedouin of the African sea. He is the sailor-man and the boat-man for every ship that comes and sails down the Coast. His skill in landing through the surf and passing over bars in his frail canoe is something wonderful. His canoe and himself are one and the same thing; together they glide over the swell of the ocean _with speed and safety, now hidden, now seen_. If capsized he soon rights his boat, rolls in again and paddles away. He is a bird upon the water and a fish in the sea. Always willing and obedient, he is honest and trustworthy. He wants his wages when his contract is up, when he returns to his tribe and invests in another wife. Wives are his treasures; they are the support of his old age. He speaks a little English, of which he is very proud. Some ship-master gives him a fantastic name, as “Draw Bucket” or “Plug of Tobacco,” to which he clings as his badge of honor, and his merits are duly recorded in his “book,” which he receives from his employer and carries around his neck, each succeeding master increasing the wealth of his recommendation. His mother is his great object of reverence; he never ventures to dispute her authority. In this respect he never “comes of age.”

If Monrovia, the capital, had not largely increased in wealth and population during these twenty-five years, Liberia had extended her boundaries league by league, each additional possession encroaching upon or destroying some well-known haunt of the slave trader, until for six hundred miles of the adjacent Coast not a slave factory could be found or a slaver get a cargo. In the very nature of things slavery was abhorrent to Liberia. It could not exist within or near her borders. It disappeared by virtue of the expelling force which exists in the power of light and civilization. These two things could not be at the same time in the same place. By this moral alliance with the Powers of the world—this silent partnership, which in the end banished the trade in human beings from the entire Coast of Western Africa; this passive victory over the greatest sin of modern times—by this deed alone she has earned her title to the possession of her territory, and her friends and the friends of humanity have met with more than their reward.

An author says, in 1853: “The fact stands acknowledged before the world that Great Britain, after the expenditure of more than one hundred millions of dollars, has failed in suppressing the slave trade on one mile of Coast beyond the limit of her colonies, while Liberia has swept it from nearly four hundred miles of Coast where it existed in its chief strength, liberated 80,000 slaves, and bound by treaties 200,000 natives never to engage in the traffic in their brethren.”

Liberia, geographically considered, is situated upon the West Coast of Africa, between the latitudes 4° 20´ and 7° 20´ north. It extends from the British Colony of Sierra Leone, on the northwest, to the Pedro river, on the southeast, a distance of 600 miles along the Coast, the interior boundary varying from 10 to 40 miles from the seaboard, an area of 9,700 square miles, every mile of which has been _purchased_ from the original proprietors. No war of conquest marks this gradual enlargement of territory or mars the record of the consequent progress. In 1873, the period of my last visit, Monrovia, the capital, had about 13,000 inhabitants. The total number of Americo-Liberians in the Republic at that time was estimated at 20,000, and 700,000 aborigines. The Americans are settled in sixteen towns, all of which have the characteristics of Monrovia, and are situated in propinquity to the sea. Millsburg, which is twenty miles up the St. Paul’s river, is an agricultural settlement.