How American slavery led to the birth of Liberia: in 1820, a private American group established Liberia as a colony for freed U.S. slaves. But it was troubled from the start.

• Author: Price, Sean
• Position: History

On January 25, 1851, Edward Blyden's ship dropped anchor just off the coast of Liberia, For the 19-year-old seminary student, it was the end of a weeks-long sea voyage and a kind of homecoming. To the very continent that Blyden's ancestors had left in chains, he was now returning as a free man. He could hardly contain his excitement as he wrote to a friend:

You can easily imagine the delight with which I gazed upon the land of my forefathers--of those mysterious races of men. It is really a beautiful country. ... The land is exceeding prolific--teeming with everything necessary for the subsistence of man. Along with beautiful scenery, Blyden was looking out over one of America's boldest social experiments. Liberia had been founded in 1820 as a colony for freed American slaves. A group called the American Colonization Society had purchased land on Africa's west coast to establish Liberia. Between 1820 and 1865, the society transported at least 12,000 people there. Shipping free blacks back to Africa seemed a sensible idea to the society's white founders and to some blacks, such as Edward Blyden. But the many controversies and problems that nagged at Liberia kept it from ever becoming the freed slaves' promised land.

THE SLAVERY QUESTION

By the early 1800s, slavery had died out in the Northern U.S., but it thrived in the South thanks to the region's labor-hungry plantations. Over time some slaves were set free. Others bought their freedom.

This growing class of society-free blacks--troubled many slavery supporters, who often subscribed to views similar to Thomas Jefferson's. The third U.S. President and author of the Declaration of Independence believed slavery was a necessary evil that would one day die out. Yet he saw no place for free blacks in U.S. society when that day came. He once wrote that blacks were inferior and that, "when freed, [they are] to be removed beyond the reach of mixture."

One answer, for people who agreed with Jefferson, was to send African-Americans to Africa. If the thousands of free blacks already living in the U.S. could be successfully settled there, the thought went, then millions could later follow. Other whites, more sympathetic to the plight of blacks, thought sending them to Africa would allow them to live in freedom and without prejudice.

Against this backdrop, the American Colonization Society, a private group, was founded in 1816. It attracted luminaries including Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, mad Francis Scott...